Why wait? Somalia should be a libertarian paradise right now, anyone can do whatever the fuck they like.

Yeah, some of the most extreme even wants to privatize police (and thus the right to use force and violence against citizens), military and courts. So yeah Somalia... :-I

Spoken like a true serf. As I have stated before, there are some things government should do but government has this bad habit of overreaching, over-regulating, and running things to the ground since many bureaucrats are not subject to competition, consumer demand, publicity, or failure risk. The bureaucrats running public education don't have to worry about losing their houses because the school districts are in such a mess. The bureaucrats running Veterans Affairs don't have to worry about getting bad credit preventing them from starting their own businesses if another injured war veteran gets screwed over. A business owner on the other hand worries about failing to bring in more customers or failing to satisfy because he/she will get ruined because of such failures.

Also, the FDA is not the reason we have the safest products. The reason is because a meat company that puts out junk meat will have a boycott on its hands not to mention trouble involving basic criminal justice laws. It is impossible for FDA bureaucrats to inspect every steak or chicken that gets shipped out especially if we are dealing with modern inspections as suppose to the archaic method of visual checks. The FDA is still also responsible for keeping dying patients from buying the medicines that would have saved their lives. Case and point: the 1970s FDA-induced moratorium on beta-blocker approvals.

This is not to say that the government should not enforce basic criminal justice laws or that there shouldn't be an FDA. It's just that the government has this bad habit of overdoing it and the FDA should act like an investigative and law enforcement agency instead of a regulatory body.

Any issues we have with the private sector stems from government overreaches especially how local, state, and federal regulatory overreaches have prevented people from starting and growing their own businesses thereby undermining competition and opportunity. Also, the reasons some in business rely on government to tell them how to act are because people are now starting to think safe products are government responsibilities instead of the responsibility of the producer and because of how many regulators keep telling business owners to keep making changes so the owners want to try to satisfy the first time around.

Bottom line: private entities are subject to consumer demand, competition, publicity, and failure risk unlike some government bureaucracy that can have you waiting in line until your arm falls off for medical treatment, keep you from legally buying the medicines that would have saved your life, give your kids low-quality education in an undisciplined facility, and shut down your kids' lemonade stand for not having a business license and get away it. There's nothing magical about government bureaucracy either. If they want money, they'll tax you and you'll have no choice but to pay them even if you get very little or no benefit from them unlike a private business owner who has to offer something.

Now to make this comment on-topic, I will say that sometimes the best way to be patriotic is to question and challenge government officials. That means vilifying the worship of the state, bringing up government fuck ups, and refusing to look the other way just because of some shiny GPS satellites.

It must be tough to be a patriotic American these days when the president is a Kenyan Muslim. I feel for you guys.

The UK is privatizing police service too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/02/police-privatisation-security-firms-crime

The US already has private prisons. Privating the military and courts seems like a logical next step.

I'm going to make a claim based upon your claims and that is that they are not based upon scientific observations of the world. They are partly based upon some of your own (biased) observations and mostly upon the ideology to which you profess, which is libertarianism or something similar.
The same appliance of blind ideology is quite similar to that which is often done by marxists who have an underlying conviction on how society works and then bend their observations through their lens of ideology. They are at the opposite end of the spectrum in the traditional left \ right axis but make the same stupid mistake.

As a counter to your claims I will encourage you to read up on the economy of the Scandinavian countries. Preferably from a poltically "unbiased" source. My own country, Norway is a capitalistic country but because of our Social-Democratic tradition there are many ideas from socialism that have been applied too. Our mixed economy should make dogmatic free-market types throw up in repugnance, yet we are extremely wealthy, and some of the most free people that ever walked this earth. (Very good actual freedom mixed with the great possibilities that come with great wealth). Yes, a lot of our wealth does come from the oil we drill up in the North Sea, but compare with us with Denmark, Sweden and Finland which are quite similar but do not have the oil economy that we do. Also, compare us with many of the other oil rich countries or other countries that are rich in natural resources. Often, for the general population being resource rich is more of a curse than a blessing.

Yes, the Scandinavian model is far from perfect and would probably not work as well everywhere. For example, getting foreigners who are seeking refuge or coming here to work to be economically viable seems to work a lot better in the USA because of less social security guaranteed by the state.
However, your claims do not stand up to scrutiny. You should understand that ideologies are just shallow memes (thought viruses) that may or may not carry some truth or wisdom with them. They can give a little insight but offer only a shallow understanding of the very complex fabric that is society. Hell, even the scientific disciplines that study society does not understand it very well, how on earth could you believe that a simple ideology would?
fucked up

So lawsuits (enforced by government?) and boycotts can sort everything out, huh? That's working out so well isn't it? Do you even know what PG&E is or what they did? They're still in business. Coal mining operations regularly give people cancer in the US and are night untouchable, you care to boycott electricity for awhile until things change?

Consumers are not informed, Odin's buttcheeks you're the iconic example of the average consumer, dead sure about something and still wrong. I imagine you think the same about me and a lot of people you talk to, you really trust everyone in aggregate to perpetuate this ideal system of "forcing perfect behavior" from companies? Hint: if you need robots and not people to make your utopia work it's not a utopia for human beings.

"True serf" indeed. You might try your hand and visiting some other places and actually living there for awhile, it might change your perspective a bit. No one says we don't need to demand the government does better when it's in the wrong. We're just saying the axiom to which you seem to cleave, that government can never do anything right or nearly so well as private entities is so fucking absurd on the face of it I'm not even sure how an adult can manage to actually say it with a straight face.

It's interesting that you bring this up. I wrote a dissertation in my medical law module on direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs. What is interesting is that the FDA is extremely overworked - they simply do not have the resources to deal with the amount of advertising that comes in. Now, at the same time, your basic ad span campaign is about one month anyway. What happens is that before you are given the order to withdraw your ad, you'll have got the spruce out of it anyhow.

Now mind you, DTCA of prescription drugs is banned in the EU (so far as it was when I was writing my dissertation). It does have its benefits, but as far as your post goes, it's probably a bad idea.

To the initial question, not near as patriotic or nationalistic as I was.

As for FDA, useless government body that does little to protect the consumer over what they get.