"Profit is inherently dishonest." -- Mindjob

You essentially are an anarchist. That is the logical conclusion of what you want. You say you want some vestiges of a government, but society itself would turn into something reminiscent of a third world country. You say that whatever society values would continue, but what it turns out to be is what those with money value would continue. Just like any group in the country, they will vote and pay for what is the most self-serving while leaving everyone else out. Money and power will pool at the top while everyone else gets screwed, and government would do nothing to right it. Whatever was left of it would only serve those at the top. So for the vast majority of the country, it would be economic anarchy for them. You're living in a fantasyland if you think libertarianism would end up any other way. But as you say, back to the actual debate. Oh yes I can claim that, because those companies only decided to not play by the rules established by the government. Profit itself has no rules aside from making more profit any way it can. The Enrons and Worldcoms of the world are the examples of what would happen routinely if there was no government to enforce rules and fair play. Pre or post dating stock options, including lead and other hazardous metals in products, overstating profits to artificially inflate stocks, using hazardous chemicals that damage the atmosphere, hiring arbitration courts that are suppose to decide in cases between injured customers and companies but who are bought and paid for by the companies...the list goes on and on. Without a government that mandates disclosure and punishes companies that don't follow the rules, companies would be able to take advantage of their lopsided amount of knowledge over the customer a lot more than they do now. That IS the basis for the health care crisis in this country now. The athlete who beat out his competitors would be screwing his competitors if he won because he shot up HGH before the race. Without regulation, and with winning all he cares about, what is there to stop him without regulations and enforcement measures put in place by an organization above the athlete? The government serves this purpose. Really? Do you not know anyone caught up in the mortgage crisis right now? You make enough to have an insurance that might actually give you decent coverage, but most of us don't. After watching my gf's struggles with Aetna, trying to get them to cover what she had bought a $500 a month policy for, I can tell you even the most respected and expensive providers look for ways to screw you over anyway they can. Its disgusting and disgraceful, and to say the industry is any different than that is ignorant or shut away in a bubble that the rest of us should be so lucky to be a part of. To live in the world that you love so much, consumers would need to have perfect knowledge. Because they never do and could never have perfect knowledge, rational choice theory is flawed at best. Companies, who know that customers don't have perfect knowledge, skirt the rules and break them when they can all in the name of profit. Profit doesn't give a damn who it hurts in the process, because to care about anything else decreases the amount of profit you can make. We need to have a strong government to balance out information asymmetry that naturally exists, and only gets worse as government gets weaker in its ability to enforce the rules.