blatham wrote: Of course, even though a work such as On Liberty might contain seminal notions and broad truths, it isn't necessarily entailed that the work is either correct or complete in all eventualities.
Yes. But J.S. Mill did cover the eventuality which you said matters here: monopoly power. Not in
On Liberty, but in his economic writings. Economies of scale in printing newspapers were larger in his time than in ours. This suggests he considered the argument you made, and would have included it in
On Liberty if he'd found it persuasive. He didn't.
blatham wrote:Mandatory seatbelt legislation, for example, I thing results in more positive real good for the community at large than does the lack of it, reduction in choice (choice, we agree, is preferable) notwithstanding. How about curricula? Will students/education/your institution be better served with absolute choice in courses and in assignments?
Government intervention on paternalistic grounds can be fine with me if we know that government knows better what's good for the people affected than those people do. This merits some intervention on behalf of insane people and of children, but not of grown-ups acting of their own free will. That said, I reject your seatbelt example -- if grown-ups in cars think they are better off without seatbelts, and grown-ups in government think they're better off with them, I trust the car driver's judgment over the government's.
Your curriculum example is fine with me as far as it goes, if schools are run by the government. But I would prefer it if curricula were set directly by the schools, and if the parents had more of a say in it.
blatham wrote:Pandering to cronies is clearly not eradicated or even lessened by relying on the private sector.
I think you have to distinguish between the state of being deregulated and the process of deregulating. The process of deregulating is ripe with pandering to cronies, because it allows the government to trade preferential deregulation for friendly coverage by the media companies being deregulated. By contrast, the state of being deragulated clearly reduces pandering because the government has nothing to pander with.
blatham wrote:By pure definition, conservative bully is a more coherent notion than liberal bully, though you likely won't buy that one. It's a tad like saying "he's an idealogue about open-mindedness".
That would be a valid point if "liberal" still meant what it used to mean in J.S. Mill's lifetime. It doesn't anymore, and the trade-unionist, environmentalist, anti-globalization liberals strike me as no more open-minded than Rush Limbaugh. I really think you're succumbing to the fallacy of "bullies aren't bullies if they're on my side" here.
blatham wrote:I do trust government to help make things better. Well, I don't really 'trust' them to, but expect them to, and consider there is much evidence they can.
As a German with a sense of recent history, I'm afraid I cannot agree with that.
blatham wrote: Ten or fifteen years into the twentieth century, New York city was a hell hole for most everyone living/working there.
I don't buy that, given the millions of migrants who chose to settle in New York when they couldn't have settled everywhere else in the world -- or stayed at home, for that matter. This revealed prefeference is strong reason to believe that New York City was
not a hell holes in the judgment of the people involved.
blatham wrote:It was government-established agencies and regulations which not only enforced humane regard for workers, but which (as these moved into the New Deal) ushered in the most productive and innovative period in american history.
No. Working conditions improved dramatically during England's period of laissez-faire, ca. 1840-1910. They improved dramatically in America even before the Progressive Era, which was also close to laissez-faire. Safer workplaces are a consequence of technical progress just like faster cars and bigger houses, and they emerged independently of increased regulation. I challenge you to find evidence that working conditions increased more in countries with more regulations, other things being equal. I'd be very surprised if you found much.
blatham wrote:People ought to be free to get what they want, absolutely? Craven wants nukes.
As long as they don't infringe on the equal rights of others, yes. If Craven want's nukes, that's reason to believe he wants to infringe on some of my rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of nukes by myself. The situation in the press is different. Fox's right to broadcast what it wants, where it wants, and my right to watch Fox wherever I want, don't infringe on your right to watch CNN. There is no lump of media outlets, and one more conservative news channel doesn't mean one less liberal news channel. Even if *all* TV stations were Fox, which they aren't, that doesn't stop you from starting up your own TV station, and it doesn't stop me from watching it.
blatham wrote: new corporate owners have demanded that the news portions of the enterprise contribute to income production in the same manner as a sit com. That was not previously the case.
Maybe not in TV. But it has been that way in the press for at least 200 years, and the regimen has produced decent reporting for those who wanted to read it. This is reason to distrust your sources' reasoning.
<straw man alert>