Totalitarianism is sometimes far more efficient than a free market. You have only to go into a modern grocery store to realize how much less effort and resources would be spent if there were only one or two brands of everything. Freedom is inherently messy, but it tends to be better at getting people where they'd rather be.

The "tragedy of the commons" is exactly what you get when you are dealing with "public" property owned by nobody and used by all.

The free market is the natural economic consequence of the moral principle that people have a right to the product of their skills and effort, and the right to trade these products and services without force or fraud.

It's really that simple, and all the crap written and printed on this subject is mostly an attempt to conceal these basics, usually by those who want a moral sanction to take these products and services for their own purposes.

But the main point I was making is that concerns about freedom and privacy being squelched for the public good seems to be a remarkably flexible concept. Not one person seemed to be bothered by the idea of "fireplace police" or hotlines for neighbors to fink on you. You think this will stop with fireplaces?

And these are often the same people who think the dark night of our civilization has fallen because phone traffic is being tracked to keep people from killing us.

The rule of thumb seems to be that if it's for something I think is important, privacy and freedom be damned.