And yes, my income is my income, not yours. I essentially trade my time and skilled effort in exhange for goods/services/savings for me and my family, not you. We are not all in this together.
Right. Because your income doesn't depend on the success of the company you work for,If the value of my total product to the company I work for exceeds or meets my salary, I have earned my income and done my part to contribute to the success of the company.
The purpose of production is consumption, so if what I am producing is not consumed by the market I need to be rational and find something else to produce. Turning to a government bailout (i.e., Chrysler how many times???) is ultimately not in my self-interest, let alone the self-interest of the economy as a whole.
People are largely free to choose what to consume and what to produce. There is no government entity directing, let alone controlling, their behavior.
Yes, highways are an example of a public good that I pay for through taxes. Did I ever say that I am in favor of paying absolutely no taxes, or that nothing good can come from government? Of course not.
Yes, national defense is another example of a public good that I pay for through taxes. I essentially trade my time and skilled effort in exchange for goods/services/savings for me and my family. One of those services I pay for is our military.
Sorry, but there is no "socio-political arrangement" that individuals enter into. There is essentially an arrangement where I, and everybody else, uses and holds money because everyone else uses and holds money. If said money stops being considered sound, everybody will stop using it and use something else for money whatever it may be. The only alternative to facilitate trade is barter, which requires a double coincidence of wants and is therefore much less efficient.
People are free to choose to live in communes if they do not like our market-based economy. There is no "group" of people that decides to live in "society" and make "basic commitments" to one another's well-being. There is no "society." There are only individuals pursuing their own separate self-interests based upon their own individual characteristics.
Yes, education is a prime example of a signaling device I have paid for, and will pay for, for my children. Teachers do not work for free. As I put it, I essentially trade my time and skilled effort in exchange for goods/services/savings for me and my family. One of those services I pay for is education. Why? The market looks favorably upon it.
Yes, because mankind was unable to survive before government bureaucrats started inspecting food a few decades ago. Furthermore, you highly overestimate the ability of said bureaucrats to prevent bad food from coming to the market. The truth, and I know it is inconvenient for your ideology, is that food inspectors almost exclusively react to outbreaks of E. Coli, etc. Have you not followed the news about the hundreds of deaths reported in the past couple of years due to outbreaks? By the way, no government bureaucrat ordered those news organizations to report said news (with the exception of PBS, which is considerably funded by public donations anyway). The news is market-driven demand because consumers demand information about such things as bad food, bad products, etc.
I can only imagine what a disastrous economy we would have with people like you in "charge" of your glorious command and control dream. You would be like the type of person who spends every waking minute of their time cleaning their house in order to attempt to rid it of dust. You would get nothing else done. It is impossible to get rid of every spec of dust even if it was all you did. Likewise, some degree of bad things such as bad food, pollution, etc. are a fact of life given our current state of technology.
The only government services that have benefited me also benefited you (i.e., basic infrastructure, courts/law enforcement, and national defense). You ought to write to your Congressman about the parasites who take from us (e.g., not people who are down on their luck, but the chronically poor who have no desire whatsoever to make anything of themselves; not our men and women in the military, but overpaid government bureaucrats who do work that could be automated by machines in this day and age, etc.).
