what nonsense. 1. A local business COULD do a better job than starbucks because it IS a local business, it COULD share a closer relationship with the community, which COULD result in greater profits. this is EXACTLY the reason why I avoid starbucks and frequent the local coffee shops instead. 2. As for this side issue of bailouts, you missed the point entirely. this whole "magic hand of the free market" is absolute nonsense, over-simplified to cover the complexity and uncertainty with the theory. With the bailout issue we face today, if we allow one huge company to die out, countless jobs would be lost, lowering consumer spending, and further harming the economy (and then multiply this times the number of companies dead). Government intervention is simply necessary to avoid a worse result. Also, the application of this free-market theory to our economic problems today would be most unwise - see the following about former federal reserve chief Alan Greenspan, a lifelong advocate of free markets: Asked by committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, whether his free-market convictions pushed him to make wrong decisions, especially his failure to rein in unsafe mortgage lending practices, [Alan Greenspan] replied that indeed he had found a flaw in his ideology, one that left him very distressed. "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right?" Waxman asked. "Absolutely, precisely," replied Greenspan, who stepped down as Fed chief in 2006 after more than 18 years as chairman. "That's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence it was working exceptionally well." Greenspan offered his re-examination as decisionmakers and the public are broadly questioning the deregulatory trend that dominated federal policymaking circles for three decades. Many now have concluded that lax oversight permitted bad housing loans to overwhelm the financial system. Even Republican presidential candidate John McCain vows much stricter regulation of Wall Street. Fed watchers said they were stunned by Greenspan's mea culpa. For his whole adult life, the former Fed chairman has been a devotee of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who celebrated free-market capitalism as the world's most moral economic order and advocated a strict laissez-faire approach to government regulation of the marketplace. "Alan Greenspan has been one of the stalwarts in arguing for free markets and he was backpedaling today," said Brian Wesbury, chief economist with the Illinois investment firm First Trust Portfolios. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/23/BUI513N8QM.DTL