I could do a line-by-line "rebuttal" as you have done, but I simply ask you to consider this:

Who would be better motivated to do better and more work, a worker whose livelihood depends on how good a job he does, or one whose livelihood (or at least the "right" to live as well as anyone else does) is guaranteed either by the government or the union, regardless of what he does?

That's the whole premise of the argument between socialism and libertarianism (oh, that and the whole question of fundamental liberty, but that's philosophy; nothing practical about it).

Socialism tries to ignore human nature. Libertarianism tries to work with existing human nature. It's up to you to decide which is a more ... practical endeavor. I've decided long ago that I shouldn't try to ignore the reality as socialists do.

P.S. BTW, even with all the supposed de-regulation, the U.S. financial sector was far, far from being "free market". For one, legislations like CRA practically forced mortgage lenders to take bad loans (I'm not talking about "minorities" specifically, I'm simply talking about those who couldn't afford the houses they bought). And even when we suppose that CRA had no bad unintended consequences on the financial sector, at this point we shouldn't spend public money on "bailout", because apparently some banks still managed to make good investments and they can carry us through. If anything, we should encourage (not pressure), deals like Chase's buyout of WaMu and keep government hands (and public funds) out of these purely private endeavors.

I didn't say WWII "got us out of Depression". I only said that it shook things up.

Truth be told, if there had been no New Deal or WWII, i.e. no government intervention and obstruction, the "Great Depression" would have been little more than a good sized recession. After all, nothing substantial actually had been destroyed (at least before WWII); it was just a stock market crash.

Those who lost jobs would have eventually found jobs somewhere (maybe in a different field, maybe with some paycut; but that's all part of reallocation of resources), much sooner if government hadn't crowded out all the private investments.

Perhaps I should be careful in saying that government can never help the economy. I mean to say that the government action can never help the economy in long term, and that even the short term benefits of "stimulus spending" is overrated (as New Deal has shown in how long Great Depression lasted, even though it was supposed to fix it).

Suppose I agree (I don't) that New Deal was what got America out of Great Depression (it wasn't; it was the whole shake-up with WWII). And suppose that I completely agree with the goals of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Suppose all these programs are God's finest gift to men. Suppose these socialist programs are the best thing ever happened to United States of America.

From those (preposterous) suppositions, does it follow that because a little socialism was good, a whole lot of it would be better?

No. U.S.S.R. proved the contrary nearly 2 decades ago.

I do think government should provide some things to some people at the expense of others, if nothing else just because we live in softer times. I do think that government should provide "safety nets" so that people don't starve. So that people don't die of horrible diseases easily treatable only if they had a little bit of money. These things don't help the economy or promote general welfare (as defined by amount of "wealth" in the society), but we can afford to be generous to those too ... lazy to lift themselves up. (And before you argue that Social Security is paid for by its beneficiaries, I'm talking only about those who put hardly anything into the system and yet receive some minimum pension.)

But, just because these things make the society look nicer doesn't mean we should argue for even more socialism. Just because the government should make sure no one starves doesn't mean it should make sure everyone has a car or even a computer. Just because the government should ensure some sort of health care for those who can't afford any doesn't mean it should set up a national health care system that answers to no one (or, one that is as responsive and responsible as, say, your local DMV).

Just because a little socialism was good (and I would argue against even that) doesn't mean we should have more socialism. There is wisdom in moderation in everything.

You know, you are right. I actually read Atlas Shrugged and agreed with most of what was in the novel and shed a few tears here and there as well.

But that speech was so long I skipped past it after reading, oh, what 10 paragraphs of it or so?

I plan on getting an audiobook version and listening to it, but I am not sitting down and reading that radio speech from beginning to the end.

It's not a matter of someone wishing America to go belly up against someone wishing America to soar like eagle.

It's a matter of what is (something Clinton had trouble defining, BTW). As far as history has shown, socialism (and if Democrats are in charge, that's the way we are going) has never been good for economy, at least not of large powerful countries like U.S. (small countries often can get away with a lot of economically bad things because they are dependent on foreign nations anyway). So, we conservatives (or at least libertarians, I couldn't care less about social conservatives) say that if Democrats get their wish, it will be bad for the country, and what GP said is that when that happens, he wants Democrats to own up to their mistakes rather than passing the blame off as they have with CRA.

On the other hand, if the economy benefits from the socialist policies passed by Democrats, then, well, it will be a shock to most economists and we will have learned something new. Maybe human nature has changed or the main drivers of economic forces changed. Something that wouldn't have been true 200 years ago would have become true, if that happened.

But, let's wait to see that happen. Until then, I'll side with those who say socialist policies don't benefit the economy, but that doesn't mean I wish for America to suffer (after all, I am an American; when America suffers, I suffer). It does mean I think, based on all the facts and what happened before, if Democrats get their socialist policies enacted in such a large country as U.S. our economy will suffer (not that I want it to).

I am simply being realistic.

Perhaps this will go nowhere with us outsiders talking about it back and forth, but if you follow his anecdote through, it wasn't (necessarily) that the printer driver didn't come with sources. It was that when he found someone who had a copy of the source, and he asked for it, he said he couldn't share it because he agreed not to.

To the extent that copyright is used to prevent spreading of such knowledge—so that even those who do have access to the source and are willing cannot share it—FSF must be against copyright (and it doesn't make a difference as far as its mission goes whether copyleft dominates the world or copyright (at least on technical materials as software) is abolished).

Now, as far as secrets (such as source code) can be kept without copyright protection, namely, trade secret and all those NDAs, I frankly don't know which way FSF would go. Copyleft doesn't help in this case (after all, since it's secret how is anyone going to know whether copylefted material has been used? Enough changes in the code, and the traditional methods to spot GPL violation may not work), and copyright doesn't matter.

Until we see an authoritative source saying clearly one way or another, i.e. whether FSF would have no copyleft or copyright at all than copyright balanced with copyleft, it's just a speculation—speculation based on more than 20-year old anecdote that some say are not factual anyway.

P.S. One could argue that we should do away with copyright and outlaw NDAs ... but I feel that outlawing of something like a nondisclosure agreement would be outright unconstitutional with its infringement on the freedom of contract.

Well, I don't speak for FSF either, but I will say that I support FSF because I also believe that FSF would rather see copyright (at least ones on software) abolished than to keep its leverage of copyleft.

If I ever see evidence that's not the case, well, FSF would lose my support.

Because BSD-like license will not motivate the big players to abolish copyright. The only way to get traditional backers of copyright to oppose copyright on certain things is to poison it—and copyleft is exactly that. If enough software libraries and tools are under copyleft, and the big players want to use them without putting their own work under copyleft (or paying for separate license, if such option is available), then the only way is to abolish copyright.

Using BSD-like license (which is little better than just putting it in public domain) will just let the big players keep trampling on you.

Er, no. It's "small government is better (for everyone)" versus "government should do what the most people demands".

And you know what? The government (or the elite that does the governing) should know better than hoi polloi. What the public demands often is not what is good for them—and high taxation of "the rich" falls into that category.

The argument libertarians and free market advocates make is that "free market" is the option that does the most good for the most people (in fact all the people), as well as those who have the initiative to earn their money. (Note, we don't support government subsidies or contracts—we think there should be less of that too.)

So far, the only argument I heard is how people feel jealous and that makes them "unhappy". You know, I would bet those studies and surveys that "found" this trend were probably badly designed—hampered by political bias of whoever that ran them. They probably didn't mention the downside of being the person who makes $20,000 in a society where everyone else makes $10,000 compared to being the person who makes $30,000 in a society where everyone else makes $80,000.

I, for one, am glad that there are rich people who make the stuff I enjoy using. I am glad that someone made money developing DVDs, high-storage hard drives (who could've thought of a portable 500 GB hard drive 30 years ago?). I am glad that there are some companies that are making fortunes on GPS so that I can have my handheld GPS.

And I say this as a graduate student who makes less than $30,000 a year (at the moment, anyway).

If there are mentally unstable people who can't be happy that everyone is better off (just some people who took the initiative tad bit more than others; there is diminishing return effect when you have more money), why should we make radical changes to our free society to accommodate them?

Using that same logic, in classrooms we shouldn't give A's or A+'s to anyone because that makes people who got B's unhappy.

There are a few things that the government should concern itself with (such as national defense, and maybe making sure that no one actually starves from lack of food). Doing the bidding of the jealous public isn't what a free government should do—it's what a totalitarian state or a "democracy" led by demagoguery and mob justice would do.

These people who are so jealous that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are doing so well had the exact (well, almost, on a logarithmic scale) same resources and could've done that themselves. They should be held responsible for what they didn't do, and that's what the "gap" between the rich and the poor is about. As long as this "gap" isn't killing them or preventing them materially from overcoming it by their own effort, the government should do absolutely nothing.