On the West, I forgot to mention the massive federal tariff. The state and local level of government also featured various forms of intervention.

Medieval Iceland had communal, "use" ownership (like most places in the world), not Lockean private property. I can't comment on Ireland, but the American old west was settled and developed through massive state intervention including extermination of the native inhabitants, monopoly railroad construction by immigrant labor that was sometimes forcibly repatriated after no longer needed, institutional racism, forms of communal land, and on and on. Hardly a market utopia.

Why don't you tell me what "religious people" believe, since you obviously consider yourself in a position to authoritatively judge the authenticity of "religious people['s]" beliefs. If we wanted to be technical, we could concede that the statement is correct in that most religious people don't follow the Christian Bible, but we'll go ahead and substitute the word Scripture (or whatever) for Bible.

Sadly, I think Davis is dead on here. Calling out Palin's whacky religious beliefs only serves to energize the Republican base and those "swing" voters inclined to embrace culture warriors.

I didn't say or imply that you said it was the only way to spread information. I didn't say that buying a product is delusion. I said commercialism deludes people into buying things irrationally. If your product is virtually identical to your competitors', how else do you convince people to buy it? And computers, the internet, and much more were developed by the state sector: the Pentagon system, universities, and other state-funded agencies. They weren't developed by "capitalism."