And free market doesn't "stand for" anything, it's simply an economic optimization tool society uses to benefit its members, and couldn't exist without a strong state enforcing rules for its participants.

This is of course an opinion, and not a fact.

but I guess free market fundamentalists aren't any better than other fundamentalists in learning from observation, so now our economy is in the gutter too.

First of all, how could you be so naive to think that what we currently have -- or did have, under anti-free-market GWB and all of his predecessors, liberal and "conservative" -- here in the USA is a "free market"? You are placing blame on a system that does not exist. The MSM, GOP, and Dems like to throw the term around as if what we have or did have was a "free market" (so they can shift the blame away from themselves, of course... "see, see what the evil free market did? now let us have more control so we can fix the problem!") but that's completely false.

Secondly, if you had actually been paying attention to the people who actually advocate a truly free market and who subscribe to the Austrian "School" of economic thought, then you wouldn't have made such a dumb statement, as for years prior to the downfall, these people, people like Peter Schiff (just to name one of many, many others) were warning that the government's interventionist policies were creating a bubble that would eventually lead to a crash.

Check out Mises.org for more information regarding truly free market economics.

Are you sure about that?

Assuming it was possible to fully divert the asteroid, they'd (let's call them company Z) have to convince all of us that there's no way to fully divert the asteroid, even though there was. That would be pretty tough, unless company Z had a way to prevent every single scientist on this earth from letting it be known that what company Z was telling us was completely false.

So then they'd have to forcibly extract monthly payments from us. Which in turn would also be pretty damn tough; they'd have to have access to a whole lotta guns. They'd have to go through a whole lot of violently angry people and companies too (who would have plenty of incentives to bring evil company Z "down").

So there'd be a massive, massive risk involved. I think the only way they'd have a chance of pulling it off is if they had as many guns, and were as big and powerful as the US Government (hey wait a minute!)

I could be wrong, but I think the more likely scenario is that company Z (perhaps along with company A, B, C, and D), seeing this at the very least as a great PR opportunity -- and investment, since fewer humans means less revenue -- fully diverts the asteroid and consequently sees a major spike in business for saving a shitload of human beings.