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jrodefeld posted:The market, in contrast, is not the "absence of all constraints" but is the exact opposite. The free market is a system of regulation that the consumers impose upon businessmen. The rules are strict and decisive. No one may be permitted to initiate force against anyone else. Live up to your contracts. Respect private property rights. If a businessman anticipates consumer desires and satisfies them, then they are permitted to continue to make a good living. If, on the other hand, they offer a lousy product, poor customer service or they act poorly and attract negative press, then the consumers can put them out of business in short order. Something that I know you've been asked time and time again and that you always ignore is this: Say we have a businessman in a town, the only town for quite a long ways away. This businessman owns not only all the arable land for hundreds of miles around, but he also owns all the mineral rights and most means of production. On top of all this he owns a number of stores and other businesses. He is quite successful. People rent small homes from him, and in exchange they work his fields and staff his businesses on top of a small salary with which they buy food (from his stores) and products (that his factories made). Now, it would be impossible for anyone to open any other stores here or start any new farms as he owns all the land, and he refuses to sell even a square-inch of it. On top of this anyone renting a house from him is bound by contract to never attempt to start competition with him. What's more, he owns all the roads, and he sees fit that anyone using them to enter need only do so for $.01, but anyone leaving must pay $10,000.00, or ten years salary if you literally never spent a single cent that you earned. Hey, they're his roads, he built them, and they're on his land, right? And anyone trying to use these roads without paying have initiated force, and he has a DRO (that he owns) on standby to subdue and return anyone leaving without paying to toll to their homes. Agreeing to only use this DRO is obviously part of the renters contract. And the toll fee is not openly posted to outsiders, as pricing is a key part of his business and he only does business with people that have contracts with him already, our are export buyers. So we have people that per contract that they willingly signed must work for him, can only pay their wages to him, and can only leave after many years of squalid living can they leave. To try and escape would be both initiating force against the Businessman by misusing his private property in a way he does not see fit and/or constitutes trespassing as well as a breach of willingly entered into contract. And yet how is this effectively different than slavery? Let's take this scenario a little further. This is a short one, don't worry. Now let's say that this businessman, in secret, begins mass producing firearms and body armor, and outfits a PMC over 10,000,000 strong, and then proceeds to invade all the neighboring towns to conscript the people into contracts and to "buy" all the land for $1. Who is going to stop him? Let's drop the businessman scenario, and let's say you get what you want, a totally stateless America. It is now whatever form of self-governance you see as best. Then as the last vestiges of federal and state governments and destroyed, China invades the land formerly known as California in a blitz, dropping almost all of its troops by both air and sea as quickly as it can, and begins shooting everyone in sight. Who is going to stop them? How does your perfect Libertopia protect itself from foreign powers?
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Sep 30, 2014 16:47
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I wish I were good with gifs. I'd take this: and replace the Wikipedia logo with this 
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Sep 30, 2014 16:56
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Who What Now posted:It is now whatever form of self-governance you see as best. Then as the last vestiges of federal and state governments and destroyed, China invades the land formerly known as California in a blitz, dropping almost all of its troops by both air and sea as quickly as it can, and begins shooting everyone in sight. Who is going to stop them? How does your perfect Libertopia protect itself from foreign powers? Why, every rationally self-interested individual independently donates to the most effective effort to protect their libertopia, of course! 
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Sep 30, 2014 17:24
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Ratoslov posted:Why, every rationally self-interested individual independently donates to the most effective effort to protect their libertopia, of course! Well at the very least we know that my hypothetical Businessman/Despotic War Lord's lands and
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Sep 30, 2014 17:39
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To add to the fantasy, what if China in fact made it in everyone's self interest to ignore California being annexed by China? Like paying out $1,000 or so to everyone living in the surrounding states as a sign of good faith and swearing they only invaded to protect the sizable Chinese minority in California (and probably Hawaii as well). Declare that they have no interest in the surrounding states, and any other states with sizable Chinese minorities are just too impractical to rule that they have no interest in them either. Maybe China doesn't have the best reputation after that, but funding a PMC capable of forcing China out (even assuming the USA managed to auction off nuclear weapons to American PMCs as it dissolved without anyone going "Um maybe mercenaries with nukes kinda sucks?") would be such a titanic investment, that the risk of trusting China at that point would be way smaller than the cost of doing anything about it. (granted, Chinese invasion and occupation of California and Hawaii would already be a titanic investment, but for the purpose of the hypothetical, assume China wants both badly enough they would take a short term massive economic hit to have them)
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Sep 30, 2014 17:56
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Who What Now posted:Let's drop the businessman scenario, and let's say you get what you want, a totally stateless America. It is now whatever form of self-governance you see as best. Then as the last vestiges of federal and state governments and destroyed, China invades the land formerly known as California in a blitz, dropping almost all of its troops by both air and sea as quickly as it can, and begins shooting everyone in sight. Who is going to stop them? How does your perfect Libertopia protect itself from foreign powers? Easy. Concerned individuals will go around asking people to join the fight against the foreign invaders. By this process we will assemble a militia to engage the enemy troops. To direct the militia, we will select a leader from among us. Everyone will chip in to send donations to the leader who will use the money to arm the militia and finance the war effort. People who own land or property in any area the foreigners are attacking will be benefiting from the services of the militia, so we would require them to pay for protection. Free-riding is for socialists, and not tolerated in freedom-loving Libertopia. After we win the war, we will attempt to live in peace with each other and resolve our disputes through our chosen leader. To make sure the leader always stays accountable to us, we will make him share his power with many others. We will come up with a definite system of how leadership is transferred between people in a peaceful and orderly fashion to prevent anyone from making an impromptu claim to power. Over time, precedents will begin to accumulate over how things are done in this new anarchist society and we will respect these precedents to maintain stability and order. People will study and teach these sacred precedents in educational institutions and all our societal disputes will be solved by reference to this body of precedent. Our leaders will have to thread a careful needle between keeping with precedent and staying faithful and accountable to the people they lead. All of this will be done with absolutely no government interference or state of any kind, and only through the work of the free people of this anarchic society.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:09
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Stateless America would collapse into an orgy of race war, re-enslavement, and the rise of a fanatical millenarian fascist order much quicker than the Chinese could get over here. Everyone (worth saving) in California would be long dead by the time the Sino-American War was under way.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:13
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I'm really honest to god curious what Jrod (or even The Mutato) has to say about this in his own words. I mean, obviously they don't think that outside nations will automatically respect the Non-Aggression principals, and America does have quite a lot of natural resources others with fewer moral scruples would take be willing to take by force. Hell, people within Libertopia would do it. My hypothetical slave owning warlord would crop up by the dozen inside of a month.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:21
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I feel really narcissistic asking this for a third time but I really, really want Jrodenfeld or The Mutato to answer the point I brought up on the other thread. Short version this time: If my house is on fire in Libertopia I feel I should not have to stop and make a rational decision to figure out who has the best fire department in my community. I am opposed to having the right to this decision because I know I will make the wrong choice every time, as my only criteria for "Best fire department" is the one that shows up first. I will pay them literally anything to save any valuables and/or family members trapped in the blazing inferno, and I would not regret that decision, and if I tell my friends that they are a terrible fire department that overcharged me, I feel it would not impact their decision to hire that same fire department if their house was on fire. That is a situation I would like to avoid and have come to the conclusion that a state can prevent that from happening.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:33
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From earlier.The Mutato posted:Liability insurance would be necessary in a free society. Sounds more like the failing of a monopolised legal system to me. How dare you require that I insure myself! I have a system of beliefs that says insurance is gambling. Are you saying that if I don't insure myself against liability, MEN WITH GUNS will come and force me to do it? These colors don't run, come and take it etc. I will hole up in my compound with myself and my legally contracted indentured servants, who share my beliefs. They welcome the freedom from liability insurance! Well in any case, they are required to say that they welcome it, or I will stop feeding them and eject them from my land.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:39
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DarklyDreaming posted:If my house is on fire in Libertopia I feel I should not have to stop and make a rational decision to figure out who has the best fire department in my community. I am opposed to having the right to this decision because I know I will make the wrong choice every time, as my only criteria for "Best fire department" is the one that shows up first. I will pay them literally anything to save any valuables and/or family members trapped in the blazing inferno, and I would not regret that decision, and if I tell my friends that they are a terrible fire department that overcharged me, I feel it would not impact their decision to hire that same fire department if their house was on fire. That is a situation I would like to avoid and have come to the conclusion that a state can prevent that from happening. If you're making that decision while your house is on fire instead of contracting with a fire department when you buy the house you're learning a valuable lesson in forward thinking. DarklyDreaming posted:That is a situation I would like to avoid and have come to the conclusion that a state can prevent that from happening. Why would you come to that conclusion? If the state runs the fire department there's only one that serves your area and if they suck your choice is to organize a bucket line.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:49
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DarklyDreaming posted:I feel really narcissistic asking this for a third time but I really, really want Jrodenfeld or The Mutato to answer the point I brought up on the other thread. Short version this time: I'm an ex-libertarian, so maybe I can answer that with some sincerity. As a practical matter, you can expect most citizens living with no government provided fire protection to make such plans well in advance. They could have an arrangement with a specific private firefighting firm to come help in case there is fire, eliminating any need to make this decision at the time of a fire. Sure, some people will neglect to do this. In their case, there'd probably be a business that would specialize in tackling this particular problem. That is, there may be a business you can contact whenever you have any emergency, and it's their business to match you with the best possible responders be it firefighters or medical staff. Where there is a need, there is an opportunist ready to make a profit, so theoretically all needs will be taken care of, for a price.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:51
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wateroverfire posted:Why would you come to that conclusion? If the state runs the fire department there's only one that serves your area and if they suck your choice is to organize a bucket line. And here's where you ultimately lose me. If I live in a city with a poo poo fire department I get the impression I have two choices: -Get a bunch of people together to drop their existing day jobs, put up a little money for engines and hoses and make a competing fire department that does it better -Get a bunch of people together to vote in the next municipal election to improve the city fire department. Which is easier to accomplish and more likely to yield lasting results? Show your work. Because I am under the impression we tried privatized fire departments and it sucked.
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Sep 30, 2014 18:57
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Just a reminder from earlier in the thread that the world's only Glorious Anarcho-Capitalist Libertarian nation: led by Captains of Industry, Borne of the Power of the Unfettered Human Mind, backed by the limitless genius and sagacity of the First Unenslaved Men, lost its War of Independence to twenty dudes and a four-piece brass band and was annexed without a fight to the mighty superstate known as the Kingdom of Tonga (population less than 1/2 that of Waco, TX)BrandorKP posted:Further, how do these regulatory standards come into being. Well bad poo poo happens and people die. But on top of that somebody has to pay out for the damages. When enough bad poo poo happens for the same drat reason repeatedly insurance companies get together and say we need to do something about this. They collaborate with government agencies, experts, politicians, and participate in coming up with those bodies of regulation they will later use and rely on to reduce risk. Ah see, right there you've proven that the regulatory standards are agreed upon by private companies based on their experiences, who obviously have a rational interest in following those standards even without redundant and tyrannical enforcement by state power. For example, take a couple of long-recognized basic insurance standards: insurance may only be taken out by someone who has a material interest in the insured item (allowing people to gamble on accidents natural disasters by insuring property they don't own increases risk rather than managing it because insurance companies could have to pay out dozens or hundreds of times over on a single asset), and insurance companies must meet minimum capital requirements based on risk determined from actuarial data to ensure the ability to pay out with some acceptable level of probability (say 99.5% over the next 12 months). Since violating these basic rules is not in the rational self-interest of an insurance company that wants to maintain long-term solvency and profitability, it is unnecessary to impose them by force as statists wish to do (with the ulterior motive of gaining control of the industry). Rather than strangling insurance companies with regulations at the point of a gun, the market would be much healthier if we recognize that an established and venerable firm, like oh let's say, AIG, would never sell insurance on debt to people who don't even own it, and would certainly never rack up huge short-term profits by catastrophically underpricing their insurance by assuming based on zero real-world evidence that the risk of having to pay out was essentially zero. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 18:59
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DarklyDreaming posted:And here's where you ultimately lose me. If I live in a city with a poo poo fire department I get the impression I have two choices: You show your work, dude. Don't be lazy. But really it's easy. With your lack of work ethic and planning skills (see: your original question) clearly neither choice is realistic. Luckily in Libertopia you have a third option, which is to contract with a competing fire department run by someone more motivated and capable than you. 
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Sep 30, 2014 19:06
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DarklyDreaming posted:If my house is on fire in Libertopia I feel I should not have to stop and make a rational decision to figure out who has the best fire department in my community. I am opposed to having the right to this decision because I know I will make the wrong choice every time, as my only criteria for "Best fire department" is the one that shows up first. Eh, to be fair to Libertarians, this doesn't seem like that much of a problem. Banks already require mortgage-holders to carry insurance on the home or commercial property they're buying because banks don't like the idea of foreclosing on a pile of ashes. In a world where fire departments were private outfits, it's actually reasonable to suppose that your home insurance provider would have a preëxisting contract with a fire department and pay rates negotiated ahead of time. The insurance company pretty obviously won't do business with poo poo fire departments and if the FD incompetence makes you lose your home, the insurance company would still make you whole and they'd have the deep pockets to go after the FD if they want much like auto insurance companies do now. Yeah if you own your home outright and you're caught without it, you're hosed and you'll never be able to afford their disaster pricing, but really you're basically just as hosed today if your home burns down and it's uninsured. The real issue is what happens when a fire starts in that abandoned warehouse, or that blighted slum, or the shantytown just past the city limits, or in the nearby drought-ravaged wilderness with no burn ban in place. It's obviously in everyone's best interests to put out fires in abandoned buildings as quickly as possible before it turns into an uncontrollable city-destroying conflagration, but whichever fire department is the first to respond gets saddled with costs it can't recoup...
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Sep 30, 2014 19:22
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VitalSigns posted:Eh, to be fair to Libertarians, this doesn't seem like that much of a problem. Banks already require mortgage-holders to carry insurance on the home or commercial property they're buying because banks don't like the idea of foreclosing on a pile of ashes. In a world where fire departments were private outfits, it's actually reasonable to suppose that your home insurance provider would have a preëxisting contract with a fire department and pay rates negotiated ahead of time. The insurance company pretty obviously won't do business with poo poo fire departments and if the FD incompetence makes you lose your home, the insurance company would still make you whole and they'd have the deep pockets to go after the FD if they want much like auto insurance companies do now. This is actually a really good point that doesn't use  STATISM to shut down the argument, so I admit to being wrong about this one.wateroverfire posted:But really it's easy. With your lack of work ethic and planning skills (see: your original question) clearly neither choice is realistic. Luckily in Libertopia you have a third option, which is to contract with a competing fire department run by someone more motivated and capable than you. Can I just say I officially like you better than Jrod now? He keeps talking about a utopia that everyone will benefit from under a libertarian society but you cut straight to the point and admit I'm too lazy to live in that world. Hell I'll admit it. I am too lazy to live in a libertarian society, my time preference is poo poo and I am terrible at investing DarklyDreaming fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 19:34
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The Mutato posted:Uhh minus the tie clip cam you just explained government right now. The last time that jrodefield, his ancap libertarianism scenarios kept falling apart until he introduced the idea of a universal surveillance society, where cameras are pasted everywhere and on everyone. Other ancap libertarians support the same thing becase it's the only way to logically defend their ideas. Your counter is "well a government could just do the same thing", but a government hasn't, whereas an ancap libertarian society literally can't function without a total surveillance state. Oh, did I say state? I meant DRO, of course it's all totally voluntary, unlike a state where you can't just leave. Oh, you can leave states? Well..... Ron Paul End the Fed The Mutato posted:You know, or just put in a fire safety door which is much cheaper than hiring an expensive violent agency. This often wasn't true 1) The Pinkertons kept their services competitive with the concessions being demanded by workers, making them an economical choice when a factor owner has to decide how to deal with a strike 2) Violently putting down a strike helps prevent future strikes, which keeps wages lower and prevents you from having to buy additional non-productive factory improvements in the future So even if the "safety improvement" is something as simple and cheap as "don't lock your fire doors", a lot of factory owners still hired thugs to stop a strike over spending money on improvements because the Pinkertons had secondary effects as a form of risk reduction. Free market!
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Sep 30, 2014 19:44
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LolitaSama posted:I'm an ex-libertarian, so maybe I can answer that with some sincerity. Wow, I remember your (relatively insane) posts from way back when you were a libertarian. This may be a bit of a derail, but what happened to convince you that libertarianism wasn't quite right?
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Sep 30, 2014 19:55
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The Mutato posted:Sorry, in a developed country. This has been pretty much what the entire thread's debate has been assuming. You know, it's almost as if capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:04
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QuarkJets posted:So even if the "safety improvement" is something as simple and cheap as "don't lock your fire doors", a lot of factory owners still hired thugs to stop a strike over spending money on improvements because the Pinkertons had secondary effects as a form of risk reduction. Free market! "But the workers' DRO (union) would stop Pinkerton DRO from ruling that strikes are an illegal initiation of force against the property owner, and they'd protect the workers!" Oh wait,  which DRO is more likely to be well-funded and well-equipped, the one that caters to the top 5% of the country that owns 60% of the wealth? Or the one protecting the bottom 40% that commands 0.2% of the wealth? "Ah, but those wealth concentrations only exist because of statist coercion by monopolists. In a truly free society, the wealth would be much more equitable and no one could amass those kind of resources without the state initiating force on his behalf." And then we remember: jrodefeld posted:SOME business owners collude with the State. There is a limited viability to any plan to retroactively redistribute all coercively redistributed wealth that occurred during a century of State control over the economy. Everyone is forced to deal with the system as it exists, to survive in the best manner they can. Now, as I've said before, if property was legitimately stolen and it can be proven to be stolen, then said property should returned to its original owner. However, the burden of proof must rest on those that want to overturn existing private property claims. That's right, the first step to a free society is to leave the wealth disribution almost untouched and then remove any restraint on the oligarchs who control the majority of the resources in the country from imposing their will by naked force. Eh, it will all get sorted justly with no private armies initiating force though, no worries. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 20:08
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:Stateless America would collapse into an orgy of race war, re-enslavement, and the rise of a fanatical millenarian fascist order much quicker than the Chinese could get over here. Everyone (worth saving) in California would be long dead by the time the Sino-American War was under way. I see this sort of talk a lot in this thread. Most "Small-l libertarians" are not angling for a completely anarcho-capitalist stateless society. National defense is commonly held as one of those things you need a central government to accomplish properly. DarklyDreaming posted:If my house is on fire in Libertopia I feel I should not have to stop and make a rational decision to figure out who has the best fire department in my community. Situations like this already exist. Small cities often do not have the ability or funding to maintain and keep up their own fire department. Or sometimes individuals live well outside any city limits. Typically, they pay a yearly fee, and there are examples of houses being allowed to burn for those who didn't or "forgot" to pay. I believe there was also an incident where a woman had her housefire put out without paying once, went on not paying, but it was allowed to burn down the second time. I am not sure the fire departments are high on the list of targets for your average liberatarian's hit list, but it comes up over and over again as this example of a system that "needs" to be socialized, and therefore socialized services in all cases are a clear good.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:19
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AlternateAccount posted:Situations like this already exist. Small cities often do not have the ability or funding to maintain and keep up their own fire department. Or sometimes individuals live well outside any city limits. Typically, they pay a yearly fee, and there are examples of houses being allowed to burn for those who didn't or "forgot" to pay. I believe there was also an incident where a woman had her housefire put out without paying once, went on not paying, but it was allowed to burn down the second time. What you're thinking of is the rich landowner in the rural south, who refused to pay the fee to get city coverage miles out in the countryside (the fire department being paid for by taxes within the city), was allowed to get by without paying once as a standard policy, and then refused to pay when a fire happened the second time. The second time, it was an extra home on the property that got burned, because he allowed his son to burn trash near it and lit it up - the guy's own home on the property wasn't touched or basically anything else on the property. Of note is that the county he was in had multiple times shot down raising a property tax so that everyone in it could have fire services by way of the city FD and extra money used for a satellite station of the city FD for better response in the countryside. And the FD had special plans available for poor people who might have trouble affording to pay the fees and other stuff like that. But that's all not really like what you're talking about. It's not like there was the city FD and another FD to choose from or something, there was one FD available and he refused to start paying despite wealth and the fact he'd been helped once and informed he'd have to pay from then on.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:31
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Nintendo Kid posted:Of note is that the county he was in had multiple times shot down raising a property tax so that everyone in it could have fire services by way of the city FD and extra money used for a satellite station of the city FD for better response in the countryside. And the FD had special plans available for poor people who might have trouble affording to pay the fees and other stuff like that. Interesting, was this a generalized vote in the county? How was the decision made to turn this down? And like I said, fire departments are functionally a non-issue for the vast, vast majority of libertarians. I can't imagine how many thousands of other issues would have to be dealt with before we'd have to finally do something about those drat nuisance fireFIGHTERS, pardon me. AlternateAccount fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 20:36
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AlternateAccount posted:I see this sort of talk a lot in this thread. Most "Small-l libertarians" are not angling for a completely anarcho-capitalist stateless society. National defense is commonly held as one of those things you need a central government to accomplish properly. jrodefeld is though. He argues that all taxation is theft and even a monopoly on force is immoral. AlternateAccount posted:Situations like this already exist. Small cities often do not have the ability or funding to maintain and keep up their own fire department. Or sometimes individuals live well outside any city limits. Typically, they pay a yearly fee, and there are examples of houses being allowed to burn for those who didn't or "forgot" to pay. I believe there was also an incident where a woman had her housefire put out without paying once, went on not paying, but it was allowed to burn down the second time. Those cities pay other cities to provide their fire protection though. They don't leave fire protection up to property owners buying individual subscriptions from competing companies. The case you're referring to was a rural area, and the fire department did show up to protect the neighbor's property in case the fire spread. Dense cities don't have that luxury. Maybe you'd care to address my earlier implied question for fire protection by individual subscription: what happens when a fire breaks out in an abandoned warehouse in the blighted slums where you can't just wait until the conflagration reaches a subscribers' property? It's in every fire department's best interest to put out the fire regardless, but whichever one actually does it just incurred an un-recoupable cost that its competitors don't have to pay. AlternateAccount posted:Interesting, was this a generalized vote in the county? How was the decision made to turn this down? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 20:39
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VitalSigns posted:jrodefeld is though. He argues that all taxation is theft and even a monopoly on force is immoral. Well, I don't necessarily 100% disagree with him, but there's some realism to be applied. I don't know, I figure the easiest thing to do with the non-subscriber but unowned properties like you mention would be to attach something like the Universal Service Fund for phones, where a small portion of an owner's bill to cover their own property also covers situations like that. But to belabor the point, "What about fire departments?" is only slightly less cliche and functionally useless to a discussion of libertarianism as "What about ROAAAAAAAAADS?!" They represent a statistically insignificant amount of taxation and no direct utilization of force.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:46
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So let's say a person is banging on my door with a bloody axe and a shotgun? In libertopia, who do I call and how do we proceed from there? What if I have no money?
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Sep 30, 2014 20:48
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Vahakyla posted:So let's say a person is banging on my door with a bloody axe and a shotgun? In libertopia, who do I call and how do we proceed from there? I'd say unless you have either a very stout metal door or some means to defend yourself, you're probably hosed.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:51
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We keep asking "what about roads?" because it is a really good question and no one has ever come up with a satisfactory response to it.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:53
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AlternateAccount posted:I'd say unless you have either a very stout metal door or some means to defend yourself, you're probably hosed. Alternately, your community may have contracted an outfit to keep order and generally deal with situations like this that you don't have to be specifically subscribed to.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:58
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There are many satisfactory responses, but here's one: "Who gives a gently caress about roads? Roads are not a symptom or cause of any of the major issues that libertarians are attempting to address, and the idea that suddenly road-building would make it to the top of the list of tasks to remove from government oversight is to assume such a massive-scale libertarian victory over all of the more important issues as to be slightly silly." Probably the simplest way is to lowest-bidder the roads and fund them via excise taxes on fuel. Not every loving thing has to be privatized.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:58
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wateroverfire posted:Alternately, your community may have contracted an outfit to keep order and generally deal with situations like this that you don't have to be specifically subscribed to. I mean holy poo poo, even HIS HOLY SAINTHOOD JOHN GALT HIMSELF said that police are a valid function of government. There are some major issues with the current police situation, but I am not going to chase down that rabbit hole with all the nonsense of competing "private police" and the various nightmarish videos on Youtube.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:59
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AlternateAccount posted:Interesting, was this a generalized vote in the county? How was the decision made to turn this down? It's Obion County in Tennessee and building a county-wide FD has been on the ballot and discussed in the county government multiple times and shot down. The county's got about 32,000 people, 10,000 of which live in Union City which has its own FD. South Fulton, which is the second largest incorporated town in the county at 2,000 people has the fire department, which allows residents of the unincorporated areas and certain of small towns pay for fire services. Two small towns in the county also have fire departments that cover the town and a selection of surrounding area: Obion and Troy. For the most part it seems to be that people just didn't want to raise property taxes neccesary to run a county-wide or outside-current-service-areas-wide FD. This is actually fairly common in rural areas such as this, to only have real fire coverage within the small towns and some manner of paid service to outlying areas, for the same sort of reason that the extent of law enforcement outside the towns will often be the sheriff and a few deputies.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:01
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Cool, I guess it makes sense, hard to get people that are already covered to pony up more $$$ to pay for the outliers.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:05
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wateroverfire posted:Alternately, your community may have contracted an outfit to keep order and generally deal with situations like this that you don't have to be specifically subscribed to. Is it like a government and a law enforcement agency established that people do not pay directly into?
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Sep 30, 2014 21:10
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AlternateAccount posted:There are many satisfactory responses, but here's one: That's the best answer, but it's also one that puts you in the wilderness as far as libertarians are concerned. Libertarians say yes, everything does have to be privatized. If you are trying to argue to the contrary you are either lying or have not been following the conversation.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:14
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SedanChair posted:That's the best answer, but it's also one that puts you in the wilderness as far as libertarians are concerned. Libertarians say yes, everything does have to be privatized. If you are trying to argue to the contrary you are either lying or have not been following the conversation. I would say that taken as a whole, as in, including people who don't post on this dumb forum, libertarians in general are not a group to say that Every drat Thing Must Be Privatized. Hence the "small-l libertarians" who are just trying to push policies more toward personal freedom and individual self determination, not actually get an [L] on the ballot or elected President. (Gary Johnson 2016, though!) There are plenty of things to abolish/cut/privatize before you get to roads/firefighters/police(by that I mean nouveau friendly, not poo poo police that aren't racists and aren't always looking to play Quickdraw McGraw and blow you away if they feel "threatened" or just don't like your face.)
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Sep 30, 2014 21:18
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Vahakyla posted:Is it like a government and a law enforcement agency established that people do not pay directly into? Could be, sure. NO GOVERNMENT EVER is a pretty radical position and most libertarians would probably tell you it doesn't seem like a great idea.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:21
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AlternateAccount posted:Cool, I guess it makes sense, hard to get people that are already covered to pony up more $$$ to pay for the outliers. Yeah, about half of the population of the county already has service from a fire department, and then there's another significant section of the county that has paid service from the one (even though if a property tax was raised for that service instead, they'd probably pay a bit less than $75 each a year through that). This appears to stymie any momentum to getting a county service going. The county happens to be on the path of a future full extension of I-69 down to Memphis and beyond though. So that might bring enough new development outside the existing towns to drive the creation of a county FD.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:27
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wateroverfire posted:Could be, sure. NO GOVERNMENT EVER is a pretty radical position and most libertarians would probably tell you it doesn't seem like a great idea. Is it because wealthy and white people want to gently caress poor people over in the workplace but would be horrified if the same people could just knock on their gated community and beat the poo poo out of them or take their stuff? Hence why protecting land ownership and stocks and private guards (that cost money) that protect the "right" people is important?
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Sep 30, 2014 21:28
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