Glad we could find common ground here.

What about my distinction in your definition of government? You seemed so adamant about the fact that a private owner and our current government are the same, effectively. I thought I gave a reasonable response to that claim. You didn't continue that line of debate in your response, though.

Remember your world history. The East India Company was a publicly held stock by merchants and aristocrats. They were completely unrelated to the crown. That didn't change the fact that they were the de facto rulers of India (complete with a standing army and navy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

Companies can become Governments rather quickly. The difference between Companies and Governments is that there is none. The US Government is simply one of the largest companies created on this land.

The US Government has also claimed monopoly privileges on armies and police force. Within the lands that the US Government owns, no other groups of people can organize an army. Basically, Companies and Governments are all the same thing. They are a collection of people, attempting to work together for some abstract purpose.

Besides, the US Government has adopted anarcho-capitalism before. Calvin Coolidge's quote: "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business."

I'd say, Calvin Coolidge probably did more for the Anarcho-capitalist cause than any thought experiment revolving around an Anarcho-capitalist utopia. A heavy pusher of deregulation and a "Hands Off" approach to governing.

Certainly, Calvin Coolidge was less oppresive to the American population than the East India Trading Company was to the Indians.

I guess in practice I don't disagree with you, if your definition of government is "anything that can fully oppress you". Sure, our government is an organization that has the ability to take away our self-claimed rights. The whole point that our founding fathers set out to achieve was to give government so little power, and to check the power it did get, so as to allow people to live free of government coercion. But no, people decided along the way that we needed to make government bigger, and here we are.

I have yet to understand where you're going with this. If companies inevitably become so powerful that they become governments, then letting the sitting government regulate them is inconsequential; takeover is inevitable! Let's just all eat worms and die!

No. I think the original thinking during the age of reason makes more sense to me. I think that the people truly hold the power, and as long as we don't give up our inalienable rights to governments (in whatever form they exist), and be sure to always question and hold suspect the people we put into the collective positions of power, then we'll be ok.

Don't forget that the limited liability that we give corporations is a government-granted right. That's one of the major reasons we have issues with large companies.

(I'm not going to get into a debate about Coolidge. I think he was a great President, truly the last of his kind — though even he had his moments of growing government.)