: Perhaps for the two parties involved, but that is certainly not the case for everyone else external to the transaction. A good example would be air pollution; I may or may not purchase goods from a factroy and I do not won it, but I still have to breathe the poisoned fumes spewed forth from the aforementioned factory.Environmental effects of trade (and I dont mean just the 'natural world' - which isnt somehting other than humanity anyway) can be argued to be in your benefit to. The trades that developed various medicines, communications and leisure goods which you now have a choice to use, for example. Other than that your argument that trades can have deleterious effects on third parties i valied, but needs the most scrupulous and specific evidence to be of merit (and not to simply be used as n excuse to enacy controls whose necessity has not been shown. Highly contested generalisations about global warming are too broad to even 'blame' any particular activity (or indeed any human activity according to some sun scientists), your local company throwing mercury into the town river is more directly and meaningfully attributable. You cant do much about that at the moment because you dont own rivers, some govt agency probably does and to them its just a bargaining chip.
: When a fellow has to borrow just to stay alive and the rate he pays, interest, will simply drag him further into debt.
Can you describe more specifically what kind of transactions you believe fall into this category - I have shark loans in mind, perhaps you mean other things.
: So in this case I guess Gee believes the government is a mere tool of private interests,
Not quite, no
: No, of course not. is it the intrinsic nature of government at fault? No, of course not. Do not mistake the corruptors and the corrupted; business, BIG business, is responsible for the shabby state of medicine in the USA.
What has corrupted govt is the unwillingness of govt to follow any principle, to act as referee among competing interest groups to, as a quotation I like "live off the sores of some and the blood of others". Govt needs production to live and grow - so it desires to keep business active so as to 'bleed' it for resources. Second rate US businesses need the government to protect them from more competent companies (especially them that foreigners!). Only a government canb protect a company from competitors. If govt stuck to the principles outlined in its constitution and bill of rights then such corporate welfare would be barred.
