Ants and Entrepreneurs

I'm just never impressed by the Libertarian point of view. If each of us
was a well-armed vigilante, authorized and encouraged to seek out injustice
wherever he perceives it, then all of us must of necessity waste enormous
time and resources to stay fully prepared to defend home and hearth against
any better-armed crackpot who decides he doesn't like the color our house is
painted, and can argue that he's serving his form of justice by slaughtering
all inside. If you ask me, the Rule of Law, combined with police, armies,
and by extension, lean and aggressive government agencies of other types,
are the best protection we have against violent incursions, foreign or
domestic. It's only because these forces hold the crazies of our own nation
in check that we have the leisure to fantasize about arming America into an
army of 300 million Arnold Schwartzeneggers to go over and kick the butt of
people we don't want to try to understand.

The exact same argument applies to entrepreneurs and corporations. As it is
now we all have to be MBA's to even begin to fathom all the ways our
legislative bodies have been hijacked by idle billionaires and corporate
sneaks. Corporate America tries to bolster our confidence in the Securities
and Exchange Commission to cover up the sad truth that this one and only
government watchdog probably gets circles run around it hourly by corporate
plotters. That wouldn't be so bad, but corporations have also devised more
and more clever ways to get the US taxpayer to actually foot the bill for
their Bahamian beachhouses and grandkids' Harvard educations. The net
outflow from the US Treasury to corporate slush funds, in the form of crop
price supports, corporate tax refunds to firms with billion-dollar profits,
and Lord knows what kind of Congressionally-sanctioned pipelines, has
probably quintupled since Sheriff George rode into town. This is not
harmless fun, folks, it's money that would be paying for your kids' health
insurance, but has been diverted with the blessing of your elected
representatives to pay for corporate junkets to Bangkok, gold trimmed
Maserattis, and for more lobbyists to perpetuate the cycle. This is a crime
in all ways analogous to the Uzi-armed neighbor taking out your grandma.
It's just less noisy.

Bottom line: ants cooperate, share, and sink or swim together; humans find
it easiest to prey on their own kind.

What's this guy's article got to do with space settlement anyway?