Ron Paul

[lilyannerose]

I've noted a few folks posting that they are Libertarian. What exactly does that mean? Are you all Ayn Rand and The Fountainhead Libertarians? Or what?

What it means for me is minimal government, with a focus on protecting the life, liberty, and prosperity of all their citizens. The main thing for me is the upholding of people's rights to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't directly affect anyone else (so legalizing all drugs, removal of marriage from any form of government sanctions, etc). I also believe in a strong free market, where the government has minimal to no direct involvement, and where the corporations are held to account by lobby groups and their own consumers.

You seem to have more faith in the honor of business and corporate entities than I have ever been able to muster! Unless business/corporations are absolutely subject to law for doing harm to individuals and environment, just to ID two sectors, IMHO business cannot be trusted to comply with either lobby groups or consumers, greed conquers all. Is your idea based on strong competition? At this time we have so many near monopolies that there is very little price competition. How would you suggest that monopolies be broke up and a competitive environment replaced the current business models? In order for lobby groups and consumers to be an effective "policing" force you would have to have a system in place that wrong doing would affect the bottom line, how would you achieve this?

At this point in our history it would be very difficult to unwrap business from the spine of government.