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actually, guys, I believe that I said elsewhere that the state provides infrastructure for capitalism, such as a legal system, law enforcement and defense. My issue isnt with that sort of thing. My issue is with attempts to pick winners and losers, to second guess economic outcomes, to prefer certain groups at the expense of others, and other such things. Contrary to your contentions, history amply demonstrates the folly of such activity. Friedman demonstrated, for instance, that the federal govt turned a manageable business downturn into a Depression. Japan just had a 15 year recession because it was unwilling to have a market shakeout.
And almost invariably the governmental schemes become instruments of corruption of one sort or another - corruption that is much harder to root out than in a business and, because it's at the governmental level, much more dangerous and insidious because it affects more people and requires years -- several elections plus legislation plus enforcement - to get rid of. "Corruption" as used here refers to invocation of public machinery for private purposes, usually cloaked under hifalutin' rhetoric about the public good.
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