Private roads, private courts, private military, private police & fire fighters? Now that's just moonbat crazy.
Why? What can government, a group of people, voted for by people, do for people what other people cannot do for people?
Because when you make crime & war a private, for-profit, industry, you tend to see a lot more of it. See Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial-Complex" for details. The military is privatized enough as it is already, with huge money being made by defense contractors who hold a lot of sway over what the military does. We wouldn't have anywhere near the Empire or wars we do now if there wasn't so much money to be made in it.
This does not involve privatisation, it involves contracting out. It is still the government, raising taxes to pay for tanks and bombs. There is little private about it. What difference does it really make if the government doesn't gave to gather the people together to do this because somebody else has already gathered them together, as a "private firm" and the government just pays them?
And when you privatize police, they'll be even more incentivized to find crimes to punish than now, and an erosion of your liberties far beyond what we have now.
Why would you choose to pay for a police force to punish "crimes" you have no interest in having punished? The police's incentives would be to punish the offesnes people are willing to pay for being punished, not just any offense they want. They have to get customers, after all, don't they?
You want legalized drugs? It'll never happen, ever, with a privatized police force when there's money to be made kicking in your doors to steal your plants and put your ass in prison.
Why? Who is going to pay for that? And are they going to pay enough, considering that I will be paying my own police force to arrest anybody that tries to kick in my doors to steal my plants and put me in jail?
Private courts? How does that work? The guy with the deepest pockets wins? This one seems awfully susceptible to corruption. Like what we see in these third-world nations where there is little,
No, like what you see in the USA, where 75% of all business disputes are handled by private arbitration, where, if you get in a dispute with your employer, the chances are that it will go to arbitration before it goes to court, where, if the person you bought something from on ebay, fails to deliver, they issue will be settled by the arbiter you agreed to when you opened your ebay account, etc. etc. Private courts are already a part of everyday life. I can open my yellow pages and find dozens of arbiters and dispute resolution services right now.
if any, government to speak of, only bribery.
This is one area I don't want to mess with. A jury of your peers should decide the law. Not $$$.
If a private arbiter was suspected of being corrupt or open to bribes he would lose money. Why would anybody agree to take their disputes to an arbiter they knew may have taken bribes from the other party?
Other than the odd on-ramp or bridge, private roads, by and large, are an impossible dream anyway.
The first roads in the US were privately owned and built, and were competitive.
I think the best way to deal with that issue is to pay for the roads ONLY with fees collected from car owners when you register a car, or buy gas.
So I pay the same when I drive on a road that is hardly used at all as opposed to aroad with a high volume of traffic? I pay the same when I drive at non-peak times as when I drive at peak times? I pay for roads I never use at all?[/quote]
Non-car owners shouldn't be expected to pay for the roads, just like I don't want my tax dollars going to fund a public rail system I would
never use.
A lot of hard-core libertarians spout off against One-Size-Fits-All solutions, and Zero-Tolerance policies.
But isn't a complete, anti-government mindset on every issue just another One-Size-Fits-All solution?
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No. You want your government provided this and that? Fine. Gather up as many people as you can persuade to help you, and go about it. Just don't force it on anybody else. Don't force people who don't want it to pay for it, and don't attack them for trying alternatives. Think of anarchism as basically a big opt out system: Completely legalise the private provision of whatever it is you think government should provide, and let people opt out of paying for what government services they don't want, and let them contract for whatever alternatives they may want. That is all anarchists want, because in effect your "government" would then cease to be a government and become just another organisation competing amongst others for subscribers. The instant you recognise this it becomes obvious that anarchists have no intention of forcing their scheme on anybody who doesn't want it, just ensuring that no scheme is forced on those that don't want it, whilst opponents of anarchism are all in favour of forcing people to have what they don't want.