We seem to have evolved two antithetical approaches to dealing with this: do as little as possible because we really don't know what we're doing, or alternatively, we must adopt an activist approach and seize control of the chaos and make changes to solve problems or institute solutions while they are still amenable to intervention and before they have become institutionalized and developed a constituency that will resist change and improvement. We call these the conservative and liberal approaches, respectively.

That's what you wrote. "Seize control of the chaos." I'm not sure how you interpret the "liberal program" other than how I did, as another way of saying "control of the private sector by government agencies." The latter, by the way, also become institutionalized and develop constituencies that resist change and improvement. In fact, even more so.

Maybe the key to this discussion is how "we" is defined.

"We" can be the head of a company that needs to revamp its products and way of doing business to stay profitable. "We" can be consumers who make our opinions known by where we buy and where we don't. "We" can also be a government bureacracy telling the company what it can charge for its products, where it can build plants, what it can pay in salaries and benefits, and how much of its profit it can keep.

Free markets and decentralized economies are not perfect by any means. But decentralized systems tend to isolate stupidity and bad behavior. Highly centralized systems fail in a very big way when they fail. Compare what happened to the economy when Enron went south compared to what happened when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which control or guarantee about 60 percent of all single-family mortgages in the U.S., hit the skids.

If Kaiser Permanente goes broke, it will be bad. If a nationalized health care system goes broke, it will be infinitely worse.

If your real concern is monopolies, fine. The government can set up a robust anti-trust system, then sit back, shut up, and not try to micro-manage every aspect of how business is done in America.

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.

You keep talking about compromises and middle ground, but I only see the ratchets going in one direction. Again, where do we stop? When does control become control for its own sake?

The data I posted on economic freedom speaks for itself. That's really the bottom line, isn't it?