Rabsteen, putting it very well. Pure free-market capitalists forget that all means should serve one end: the public good. There shouldn’t be much debate over this; no sanctity attaches to economic systems in themselves, and capitalism is only as good as its results for humanity.
I believe in capitalism but do not perform the magic trick free-market-obsessives do: transforming a functional system into a moral value. There is nothing moral or ethical about capitalism except this: when properly adjudicated, it maximizes practical freedom for citizens.
However, capitalism, like any system, has structural problems which require correction; as pure democracy needs checks and balances to prevent tyranny of the majority, so pure capitalism needs restraint to prevent tyranny of the capitalized.
I imagine Lodwick, whom I gather is an Objectivist of some sort, would express contempt for the checks and balances of the US Constitution. For example, we could rephrase his statement, “…either government can intervene in private business, or it cannot” (which is a ludicrously reductive way of phrasing this issue, hardly dialectic in our society) as being about votes and representation.
But we see the public good as being paramount; it matters more than the will of the majority. In the US, there was a time when the majority favored the disenfranchisement of blacks; more recently, the majority opposed the legalization of interracial marriage. Lodwick, who believes that government ought not interfere in the rights of individuals to aggregate power and control their lives, might suggest we accede to the majority just as we’d allow any corporation to do whatever it wants with “its property.”
But all economic activity (and governmental activity, for that matter) exists at the discretion of the governed, the people; and when it can be demonstrated that their interests are being subverted, government has a responsibility to act as our agent and prevent tyranny of the powerful in the market as surely as in Congress.
Concentrated power distorts the freedom of the market, a fact amply demonstrated in America’s own history. And the market is not a value to be senselessly defended when it’s manifestly clear, at least to economists, that unrestricted capitalism is unsustainable.
Notes from others: