Why I stopped Being even a "Small L" Libertarian

...a long time ago.

Because I saw this coming. Think of it as a proto-awareness of what Taleb discusses as the tyranny of the intolerant minority and more to the point what happens around that with skin and the game, risk, and consequences pushed off to others.

Or put another way - that company towns and their abuses existed because the government gave up on enforcing the law there.

So leaving aside "crony" capitalism and bending politics to exclude competition, and leaving aside corporations large enough to be good-sized nations in their own rights, is the fact that they are exercising power over others instead of simply trying to make a profit - also leave aside that in practice the desire for repeat business doesn't always improve the quality of a product and encourages shortcuts you can get away with... until you cannot, and humans are subject to temptation.

In short, the almighty profit, to keep selling stuff to people at a fair value to have repeat business, is no longer the motive. See Gilette. I'm going to quote Breitbart but you can find the original they refer to.

Gillette CEO and president Gary Coombe is defending the $8 billion write-down Procter & Gamble experienced last quarter related to his brand, saying in a recent interview that it was “worth paying” and that he doesn’t mind alienating some customers.

Hunh.

Another ad debuted in May showing a transgender male youth learning how to shave. Gillette also attacked traditional feminine beauty in ads for its Venus razors for women, featuring obese and transexual models.

The commercials received widespread pushback on social media. Coombe told Marketing Week that the backlash was more intense than he expected, but that he doesn’t regret running them.

“I don’t enjoy that some people were offended by the film and upset at the brand as a consequence. That’s not nice and goes against every ounce of training I’ve had in this industry over a third of a century,” he said.

“But I am absolutely of the view now that for the majority of people to fall more deeply in love with today’s brands you have to risk upsetting a small minority and that’s what we’ve done.”

A "small minority"

Smell the bullshit. This is a company willing to tank the company to the tune of billions to push a political ideology, and writes off the massively unexpected - only to them - backlash as a "small minority," likely because such people are in their circles, but utterly forgetting the fact that most people don't bother to complain, they just go somewhere else.