re: Compromise
Well, I didn't bookmark the links, but I remember googling
libertarian "concentration of wealth"
...and the results page this time shows lots of visited links, so that's the one.
BTW, just relocated a nice quote from PJ O'Rourke:
"Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people."
I expect you've already found the Libertarian Wiki They have a taxonomy of various flavors of Libertarianism, within the broad category "individualist anarchism". It's really all over the map, subdividing into American flavors and then down into specifics that have been promulgated over the years. I would by no means want to argue with you over whether one particular idea is or isn't Libertarian; either one of us could find an authority who'd agree.
Wikipedia has extensive articles too, but I don't see the link on the Google page. I probably found it through a lateral clickthrough.
Another random quote:
Now, the label "libertarian" covers a multitude of sins. Everyone from anarcho-capitalists to constitutional democrats seems to like to latch on to this label. It’s what being an "activist" was in the 60s – except that libertarians bathe more often.
It's possible that my idiosyncratic viewpoint is like a "constitutional democrat"--you've read me analyzing the hell out of what the Founders designed and advocating a return to their fundamentals. I think that over the years people have drifted from consideration of the values embodied in the system, and focused on implementation, becoming defenders of a particular approach to achieving those goals/values as if it's the values themselves. That's how I see your resistance to discussions about something better than free-market capitalism--defending something that goes a long way toward those goals and values becomes a defense of the values themselves.
The current SBA isn't intended to turn a profit, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be reoriented. Not that there are too many shining examples of quasi-government corporations, like Amtrak. But where I too would be skeptical of the government operating a business that produces goods and services, capital and finance are very abstract and nothing but paper-pushing; and god knows, if there's one thing the government does well, it's pushing paper. Give a low-level clerk a spreadsheet with predefined formulas and an underwriting handbook, and I think they'll do OK.
(Trust me on that. My time in the mortgage industry gave me a look into the backroom, and I can tell you for a fact that your mortgage was evaluated and underwritten by somebody no brighter than a DMV clerk. You no more want to know how the mortgage business really works than you want to see sausage being made.)
Ahhh, geez, almost missed it, but right there I came up with an example of quasi-government corporations that do this sort of thing quite well: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They handle $trillions in capital and their stock is publicly-traded.
And might those two be better candiates for this than the SBA? Wow, I think so. Heck, even the justifications are the same: Providing access to capital for ordinary people.
Thanks, in that last bit you really helped me connect the dots and nail it. Otherwise I'd have simply stopped at "SuperSBA", which really is kind of lame.