I don't think there's any question that a small group of administrators at the top is NOT automatically blessed with any more ability to make the right decisions, or that they are immune from corruption and the temptation to seize control for their own benefit, or for some mistaken idea of what they think is the public benefit. If that is the way you perceive the liberal program, then you have certainly defined it in a way so it has to be wrong. You've rigged it. No wonder you speak with such confidence.

On the other hand, you also seem to assume that it is self-evident that a system based on a totally decentralized distibution of economic power will magically,
somehow have to remain that way indefinitely. I think what actually happens is that an initial distribution of small competing groups tends to coalesce, both vertically and horizontally, until it is dominated by a handful of enormous power centers that not only dominate their competitors (horizontal monopoly), but also control and manipulate their suppliers, associated industries, customers and even other enterprises they gobble up for no other reason than their profitability (vertical monopoly). Left to themselves, laissez-faire societies are more like the primeval solar nebula, a confusion of collisions, breakups and coalescence until what is left is a tiny handful of giant planets serenely orbiting in totally empty and sterile space.

I'm sorry that it appears to you that my little essay was an attempt to justify some form of collectivist dictatorship of the proletariat, if so, then I did not make myself clear. I was trying to put into abstract, non-threatening terms the origins of what I see as two fundamentally opposed but equally necessary approaches to governance which still are going to have to find an accomodation and operate simultaneously in the same society if it is going to have any chance to work.

Purely collectivist societies are so cumbersome that I don't believe any have ever existed in history for more than a few decades, with the possible exception of the pre-Columbian Andean civilizations. As far as I can tell, all the great empires of the past, although headed by Pharaohs, god-kings, or whatever, still were organized hierarchically on regional and class lines. The Emperor might be boss through force of his own personality, but sooner or later he had to keep the aristocracy happy, as they had to satisfy the needs of their individual landowners and petty landlords. As always, the guy on the bottom never got a chance to vote, until in late eighteenth century France.

Purely laissez-faire societies are also pretty scarce throughout history. In fact, I can't think of any. The closest we've come is the mercantilism of the eighteenth century (colonialism and imperialism, slavery and war) and the nineteenth century and the industrial revolution. And in spite of the blessings of technology and mass production, life for the people who actually had to do the work was intolerable. Industrial capitalism not only made socialism possible, it made it necessary.

As for my nautical friend, he is perfect testimony to what I have always believed, that the innovation and excellence of his products could only have arisen from his personal ownership and control of the yard that builds his boats, the government could not take over that business without the yachts that result declining in quality, appeal, and economy of construction. But I know enough about the boat-building industry to know that most boat yards eventually get gobbled up by holding companies and non-nautical businesses, and the product drops in quality while the price goes up. The smug accountants always smirk that so-and-so was "a great sailor but he was lousy businessman". By the time they are through running a great company and a fine boat into the ground, the result looks just like your version of a government bureaucracy: a gang of petty crooks who don't care about anything but their own careers. And like government bureaucrats, they are not accountable to anyone, because the companies they plunder just go on their resumes as highly profitable operations while they were being looted. They are free to do it all over again. That's not the way free enterprise is supposed to work, but very often that's exactly how it winds up.