Q:I do see your points, and they are excellently made, but what makes my skin crawl are the ever-present crony capitalists buying our legislators. I do see your point about corporations exercising free speech, but at what point does that free speech become an implied "we scratched your back, now scratch ours". If businesses were truly free-market, Ron Paul's coffers would be overflowing right now. I just question what the motives are behind free speech . But limitations on free speech is bad.

libertarians-and-stoya

I share your frustration with crony-capitalism, but consider this:  Suppose those in power decided that they would help General Motors by giving everyone a voucher for $10,000 that could be used to buy only a GM car.  In the process of helping GM, the government would likely put Ford out of business.  Can you blame Ford if it wants to (1) give money to candidates opposed to this measure, (2) spend money to defeat the office-holders who support this measure, and (3) run advertisements decrying this measure and those who support it?

Big companies don’t just spend money to buy government power; they also spend it to buy protection from government power.  And this, it seems to me, is a rather good thing.

The solution to the problem of crony-capitalism isn’t to constrain the power of people to influence the political debate.  The solution is to reduce the power of government, so that it will become less valuable to those who want to buy it, and less necessary to buy protection from it.  

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