And religious governments worst of all.

Historically, this is demonstrably false on several levels (and even by numerical orders of magnitude) yet I keep hearing it. I have run the numbers before on this. Do I need to do it yet again?

First: Bill Gates is showing himself to be a man of conscience in the distribution of his wealth...

Gates was just the first rich businessperson who came to my mind. Historically, many very rich people have done similar beneficial things, even during the evil days of the Corporate Barons. Spend some time looking around at the libraries, universities, art museums, and foundations that wouldn't be there without the generosity of the wealthy--and quite a bit of it long before there were any tax reasons to do so. I used to work at Stanford University. I have been in a lot of public libraries where some of the bricks have names on them. Does yours?

Oddly, this kind of giving dismissed as morally insignificant by the same kind of people who believe that the same money, looted from taxpayers and paid out by a politician who has contributed absolutely nothing of his own, shows that politician to be a paragon of generosity.

Second: Only the very naive believe that business is separate from politics.

Nobody said it was. Ironically, Bill Gates was largely apolitical until the government tried to destroy him. It makes a big difference if a business is lobbying to gain tax money or destroy a competitor, or if it is lobbying in self-defense. Both are happening all the time. The one truth is that it's no longer possible for a successful business to ignore politics, even if they want to.

I see that you prefer not small government to large government, but a privately-owned octopus to a publicly-owned one. In other words, you trust a bunch of rich and powerful strangers to appreciate your interests and safety more than you trust your own neighbors, your fellow voters, the co-owners of your municipality. Maybe you need to talk to them some more.

You can't have read my stuff all this time and not know that I believe much more of our government should be local/state and not Federal. I wasn't attacking local government so much as I was drawing an extreme comparison of different levels in the different realms. Bill Gates doesn't have a gun. Mrs. Grundy on the permit council does. That's the point, not that Mrs. Grundy is more dangerous to my freedom than a U.S. Senator is.

The advantage to private ownership as far as my freedom is concerned is that at least there are many smaller octopusses instead of one giant octopus.

This isn't the first time you've mentioned "the lowliest local zoning bureaucrat". What did he do to you?

Not me personally--I keep a low profile around here. But I have friends and others who have been hauled through the wringer by little Fuehrers-In-Training on issues that should never have been issues in the first place. Here in California, "private property" is a very loose concept, and that's just for normal property owners. God help you if you're a small business.

Local governments tend to accumulate the Mrs. Grundies who would never have a shot at power or influence in the private sector, and want it bad. You are right that they are also the easiest to boot out of office if you want to, but their replacements are too often more of the same. As I have often said, the people who are attracted to politics are usually the kind of people who shouldn't be in politics.