Light bulbs, thermometers, hunting, obesity, batteries, spray paint, gun training, health care, gun carry, car design, safe storage, driving habits, blood alcohol content, gun free zones, 'stupidity,' sanity...
I'll reiterate;
"What aspect of a person's life don't you want some say in? Seriously; go on and tell us."
"The Chinese air picture was not trying to illustrate their government, but rather show our own country if the EPA did not exist."
Think about the logic of the situation for just a moment. A nation run by well educated engineers and businessmen, fully abreast of what carries the most cost and benefit, in the interest of maximum utility*, and they decided that state of affairs is acceptable. China is actually clamping down on emissions like never before, since the illness and cancer levels have finally gotten to the point of costing the important people money. The system works alright, just not for the human element, which is merely another resource to be managed.
"Wanna know why their air is so crappy? Because they don't have the air quality standards we do."
Actually, it is because the local industrial magnates pay off their superior bureaucrats, who then get to crow about their sector's productivity at the high-echelon planning meetings. Production is everything in a command economy. The only time accountability comes into play, is when conditions on the ground get so bad as to cause embarrassment that can be used to dethrone politicians (in which case the magnate and his superior get thrown in prison/executed by their replacements). In theory, the worst bad behavior is efficiently punished and good behavior rewarded. In practice, there is massive corruption, and the ragged edge of what is tolerable is pushed doggedly.
"I challenge you to point out just one example of where government intrusion into private industry in the USA has ultimately been more helpful than harmful"
I would argue wage, labor, and food laws were. But only because the time period they came into being in required that people were uniformly ill-informed. Today, we can readily determine which companies will sever your hand through incompetence, who pays the best, and what restaurants are to be avoided if you value your innards. In the olden days, companies went to great lengths to shield workers from such advantageous data (to the point of hiding their wages through the use of company stores and tokens). The only reason the tycoons were opposed by the government for the good of the people, was because the new oversight gave the feds a chance at a piece of the action (money, power, and influence). Now that this veil of ignorance is broken, our ostensible protectors --the government-- seek to reassert control on the tools used to dismantle it. This time, so they can control the entirety of the action.
Be wary of Greeks bearing gifts (i.e. our government is and always has been in bed with interests that seek to rule us for profit)
TCB
*Look into the Chinese system sometime; it's actually quite efficient at giving people just enough to generate the most production. It is what happens when humans cede their existence to a higher power of this world.
