Me: "Your political ideas don’t sound like those of someone who distrusts politicians."

You are the record multiple times as supporting increases in government power at many levels. I could go back and pull quotes to show I'm not "making this up," but I shouldn't have to. Primary among these is enthusiastic support for a total government takeover of the health care system.

This does not match with "I don't trust politicians."

It's as though I said "I don't trust businessmen" and then turned around and declared that everyone in America should be forced to buy all their computers from Microsoft.

We have seen only recently how government power is used to "punish" Americans by withholding services. You really want that power dangling over our health care system? When they run the whole show, what gets cut off next time an administration demands more loot? Oxygen in hospitals?

I do not trust politicians. I simply trust businessmen less. Like lawyers, they are careerists, middlemen, essentially non productive parasites living off the labor of others. You will note I did not say they did not work hard, or skillfully. What I said was that they primarily live off the labor of others.

And politicians aren't non-productive parasites living off the labor of others? Wealth in this country is generated by the private sector. All politicians do is take it and pass it around in return for power. The only difference between the parties is who gets the bribes. It is no coincidence that damn few people in government have ever run a business.

And finally, here's the big one:

Politicians can be controlled by constitutional limits. Failing that, they can be voted out of office. Failing that, you can have a revolution and force them out at gunpoint. With businessmen, you have no choice but to put up with them until they go broke.

That's mind-boggling. I'm trying to remember the last time I heard of anyone, employee or customer, having to hold an election or an armed revolution to shake the dust of a crummy business off their feet. Maybe back when Mother Jones was alive.

Employees quit and go somewhere else. All the time. I showed you the turnover statistics in this country, all the way down to blue collar workers.

As for customers, if I don't like a corporation's product, I go down a few doors or flip to another website. They've got nothing to say about it.

I don't have to trust businessmen. It doesn't matter. I have free choice, not to work for people I hate, and not to buy products I don't like. In spite of your myth of millions of workers chained helplessly to their jobs while overseers whip them to work, they have no real power over us. There's too many of them, competing for sales and workers.

I wish the same was true of politicians. Who was the last bureaucrat you voted for? And do you really think who wins elections is going to change the fundamental equations of state power? "Government is accountable to the people" will get you the horselaugh from most people you try that on.

What I think? Every chance we get, we should reduce the power of the central authority. Distribute it. Break it up to the states and localities again. A crackpot running some county is going to do a lot less damage than a crackpot running a country.

Anti-trust for government.

When you think about it, the reasons for breaking down Federal power are exactly the same as the reasons for breaking up a corporate monopoly. We need more choices and more ways to do things, not fewer.

Power to the people. But literally, this time.

You're not baffled. You're smarter than that.