Unfortunately, "Fairness and Freedom" and "Hypothetical question", both excellent and interesting, are now archived and cannot be commented in their original threads.

 So, I'll add some ideas here:

 Colman's analysis of the gross abuse of the notion of "freedom"--and particularly how it is so often reduced simplistically to economic freedom is very astute and right at the heart of a major problem area.

  Though "fairness" may be "old", as he seems to lament, that is not, for me, a drawback.  More important, "fairness" is both powerful for obvious reasons in its appeal and it also well encapsulates what is so deficient about the programmes and ideological views so opposed by many of us here.  Fairness is what I believe many people are palpably aware is missing from political affairs and they rightly long for it.

  All of this seems to have been accepted and incorporated into what Colman did already in the "faireurope" site.

Another point I'd like to interject is that the very essential issues of corporate powers and their too-often supposedly counterpart, political (or public authority powers) is directly and astutely addressed in the latter chapters of volume 2 of Popper's The Open Society where, some sixty years ago he urged that people move beyond a focus on and a concern for political power alone, in favor of a fully general view of the essential need for some checks and controls on all power generally-- that is, _both poltical and economic factors of power.

  This necessarily implies that some market regulation is always necessary in order to achieve the fair society.  The essential interest is in understanding how to decide which markets are best placed under more or less public regulation and why that is the case.  I do not think that those who approve such a view should be shy or coy about their reasons and the arguments in favor of their views; that is, I think they have every interest in arguing the merits of their beliefs directly and openly and straight-forwardly not only because, simply put, the merits are I believe quite compelling but also because the central if not the only overriding virtue of democracy is in the opportunities it affords publics to actually learn, grow, and better understand where their political interests lie and why that is so.

  You might consider that from another seemingly more practical point of view: suppose that you did have a rather effective formula for selling your political agenda and that it's success was due largely to its rather deceptive character--that is, people are led to find a set of beliefs appealing more because they are allowed to be mistaken in what they mean than because they actually see and agree with their meaning.  Question : how long and how effectively can such a "clever" sales approach be expected to prevail before it is necessary to redevise new strategies to compensate for revealed weaknesses and counter efforts by opponents to expose and undermine the beliefs' theoretical (principled) foundations?  

  Do you want, that is, to have to engage in what can be described as constant rear-guard actions to defend and support your public-relations efforts or couldn't you simply do better to actually undertake the longer-term but more durably effective work of educating people--which has to be done anyway--in how to recognise their political interests in fair and general freedom as opposed to some impoverished version of freedom which means "all of the freedom one can afford to buy on the private market" ?

   I promise to persist annoyingly on these and other points in this, to me, fascinating area of discussion.

  [ And, (hint, hint) I take the opportunity to reiterate here how very valuable are the points and the analyses and arguments Popper offers in his The Open Society to the central features of the topics under consideration in this thread.  ;^)   ]

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge