Jeff Schnelz’s letter last week promotes the fundamental fallacy in libertarian thinking: the idea that less government equalsmore personal freedom.

It is true that as government power declines, a power vacuum is created — but into that vacuum steps, not we, the peasantmasses, but the billionaires and giant corporations that control so much of our lives already and would like to control muchmore. The working people of America have had stagnant wages for 40 years, while the top earners have sucked up every dollarof increased productivity that has been squeezed from our economy. There’s a reason for that.

The notion that less government equals more freedom is heavily promoted by the billionaire class, which sees government as theonly power that can possibly stand in the way of their total domination of our lives. The more they can convince us thatgovernment is the problem, the more they can increase their extraction of every penny we make and turn it into mountains ofcash for themselves.

The truth is that the only power that has any chance of protecting us from the super-rich is the government. Only it can tax theincomes and wealth of these people and restore some balance between the working people and the hedge fund magnates. Inweakening the government, we are weakening ourselves.

— Steve Graham