One of the sadly amusing things about the right's fawning rhetoric toward business is how often the speaker has little actual experience in the business world, and especially the corporate world. Love of corporations seems proportional either to distance from corporations, or one's height on the corporate hierarchy. The truth is, familiarity really does breed contempt.

I've witnessed firsthand corporations and their capitalist owners doing everything I accuse them of. I've been ordered to lie to customers to make the sale at any cost, and to turn down a qualified applicant because of his skin color. I've seen stock manipulation and bad faith negotiation. I've helped draft product launch plans whose primary objective was to secure "first mover advantage" to lock up a market and prevent competition from upstarts. You can go on about the virtues of free markets till you're blue in the face, but you'll never convince a businessman that competition is a good thing. People in business hate free markets...for everybody else.

While employed by corporations I didn't rise higher than a manager, before fleeing to go freelance; but more often than not I was in the kind of "staff" position where I would be called in to try to educate some MBA CEO about what the company actually did, and to provide technical advice during negotiations (I once sat across the table from Steve Ballmer of Microsoft as my company negotiated an OEM deal). Let me be very clear: I agree with recent studies that indicate that most CEOs are sociopaths because I have personally worked alongside many CEOs. They are sociopaths.

I didn't know that particular Mitt Romney, but I've met a lot of Mitt Romneys in my lifetime.

There's a huge difference between prejudice and the lessons learned from experience, Rob. I stand behind everything I've said about corporations.

As ER noted, nobody here is opposed to free enterprise or free markets. But I also understand full well that capitalism and free markets are not the same thing, and in practice they're often opposed. The first thing a successful capitalist does with his winnings is place side bets to stack the deck against erosion of advantage--hedge funds, for example. It's actually possible to be rich enough to be able to take out insurance against poverty. And through generous inheritance laws, indemnify your descendants forevermore.

The rich are not like you and me.

And I'd rather be me.