From a social-democratic perspective, I’d put things differently. There are large sectors of the economy where competitive markets either can’t be sustained or don’t perform adequately in the absence of government intervention. These include human services like health and education, social insurance against unemployment and old age, production of public goods and information, and a range of infrastructure services. In all these sectors, governments are bound to get involved. Sometimes, the best model is private production with public regulation and funding, and sometimes it is public ownership and production. The result is a mixed economy.

The result is that the ideological swing towards neoliberalism has done little more than slow a structural shift towards a larger role for government. - [John Quiggin, Milton Friedman on social democracy]

Natürlich ist die Forderung nach Gleichheit, egal in welcher Form, "Anspruchsdenken", und alle Einrichtungen zur Erreichung von Gleichheit sind Privilegien, die das Ergebnis einer "Schacherdemokratie" sind; und wenn gar jemand hoch oben auf die Idee kommen könnte, dass Leute tatsächlich Anspruch auf irgendetwas haben, und diesen auch gewähren sehen will (Nehmt euch in Acht, Reste des unterdrückerischen sozialpartnerschaftlichen Establishments!), ist das Paternalismus. Uneingeschränkt schützenswert ist aber natürlich das gute alte Eigentum, denn - so wissen es alle Naturrechtler - Eigentum ist die Grundlage des Rechts, und Recht muss sein, und wenn Recht nicht sein muss, ist Eigentum halt die Grundlage des Heiligen Individuums und damit der menschlichen Zivilisation überhaupt; so oder so ist es das höchste und im Prinzip einzige zu schützende Gut, was Herrn von Liechtenstein sicher nicht ungelegen kommt.

Time after time, undecided voters would agree vociferously with every single critique I offered of Bush's Iraq policy, but conclude that it really didn't matter who was elected, since neither candidate would have any chance of making things better. [...] Undecided voters, as everyone knows, have a deep skepticism about the ability of politicians to keep their promises and solve problems. So the staggering incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration and the demonstrably poor state of world affairs seemed to serve not as indictments of Bush in particular, but rather of politicians in general. Kerry, by mere dint of being on the ballot, was somehow tainted by Bush's failures as badly as Bush was.

More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number. [...] As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.