I am convinced that if Jefferson were alive now, he would see no fundamental difference between big government and big business. After all, there really isn't any.

The dream of an all-powerful state with humble businesses laboring happily under its yoke is as big a pipe dream as Jefferson's.

The idea of economics separated from government power is a radical one. Most societies in history had a symbiotic relationship between the merchant classes and the political/royal classes. You've mentioned examples, and there are countless more. The founders didn't deal with this effectively, because the concept of a national government micromanaging every aspect of people's lives and businesses was so completely alien that they had no more idea of how to deal with it than they did the danger of asteroid impacts. Even in the most oppressive nations of that time, most things were pretty much run locally.

If you start to remove the government's power to control the economy, you'll begin to eliminate the inherent corruption and business abuses that are an inevitable consequence. Without access to government force, the biggest corporation on the planet can't really make me do one damn thing.

Give the government more power, and you make the problem worse. As one example, giving government control of the health care system will not result in socially-responsible medical and pharmaceutical companies happily delivering excellent services with little or no profit. It will result in gigantic corporate monoliths, finally freed of all competitive forces, with money and influence connections to Washington like M-5's power conduit to the warp engines. Whether or not they deliver services cheaply will become irrelevant.

Look at the "private" defense industry. Is it efficient? Does it do things cheaply? Is what they do based on the best solutions, or political pull? How about NASA? Or any other major endeavor the government controls?

Until I can get this fundamental idea across, I can't get anywhere.