whole socialist/capitalist conversation I have to side with Joanne because there never has been and never will be a true free market, at least until we have matured enough as a species to practice anarchy (Nod to Orlando.). I am from Canada and I am grateful for our mild socialist practices like affordable, accessible healthcare. Looking around the world it seems clear that the highest qualities of lives averaged out across a nation favours at least the acknowledgement that there are services we as civilized societies can receive better through some structure of governance. I think William does a good job of describing some of the roles a government can reasonably provide. I like his idea about more power divested to states with the migration being the incentive against things getting too weird or unsavoury, BUT he doesn't take the idea far enough. In my opinion the entire globe should be politically divided into "states" that answer to a world governance council made up of representatives of those states. The same freedoms of diversity would apply but we could do away with all the horrendous consequences of that, as Einstein called it, "infantile disease of nationalism". Before someone gets worked up about a world government let me add that if we want to mature as a species on a beautiful and biodiverse world we will have to one day begin to develop political structures that reflect the reality of our planet, its weather, its renewable resources, its panoply of life;