> I don't care that some people round here squirm when the C word is criticised I am probably one of the staunchest defenders of capitalism, but I totally agre

> I don't care that some people round here squirm when the C word is criticised I am probably one of the staunchest defenders of capitalism, but I totally agree with your stance here. Capitalism is a really really good mechanism for optimizing for outcomes through competition. A huge majority of problems can be solved well by competition, but for those problems that can't be, rules and governance are absolutely critical. For instance, contracting out maintenance of the Washington monument to the best-suited firm makes total sense as a competitive market. Deciding whether we want the Washington monument to exist or not is not something that capitalism or a competitive market is best suited to answer. The wacky thing is that we don't even need to totally discard intellectual property publication rights here -- the New York Times had plenty of exclusive interviews they publish which I can access for free the next day at the library. The government has the unique right to say "Yep, you retain the rights to this publication, but we're giving access to it for free", and to do that by dictum if necessary.