If the market cannot support choices naturally, you are actually diminishing choices by forcing them artificially.
Tom DiLorenzo’s talk at ASC 2009 was on competition myths. You should watch it.
I was not saying that the forcing of wrapper companies was a good idea - I just observed that it has happened. Mrs thatcher introduced a lot of them.
I had already watched it, and IIRC I agreed with much of it. Its over an hour long - was there some particular point you wanted to draw my attention to?
Then they aren’t private.
There is hope for you yet.
When I say “introduced” I meant, enacted legislation that allowed them to come in to existence. They are private companiues. EDF energy for example.
That’s still not private.
Private firms can exist without the state. Licensed firms are not private. They are created by the state, because a license is permission to do something NOT LEGAL. That’s why if you do something that requires a license, without a license, it is punishable under law. It is ILLEGAL.
EDF is just an energy rate arbitrage agency, right? Would it be possible in a market where there was no monopoly on energy provision? Probably not, because it would be redundant, right?
Like tax accounting, it is an artificial industry and/or market.
Austrians do not handle competition that way. For them what is germane is not some fixed or even variable number of suppliers (ultimately each market will have its own structural demands) but the threat of competition, be it by opening up a new store, introducing a new product or outright corporate takeover (the latter being hampered presently by legislation.) All firms are prone to the latter.
You may be right, I’m not sure, but coming back to the three mechanisms for"private" utility provision, I can only envision 1,2 and 3. 1&2 suffer from many of the defects (use of force etc) of government provided utilities and according to you number 2 is’t even private. So the crunch issue for the anarchists looking for a solution is to see if 3 is viable. If people post messages giving examples of places in the world where there is true multiple choice of sewerage systems for neighbors in the same street then I may have to reconsider my position, but for now I maintain that 3 is hard to do.
I’ve got a septic system. My immediate neighbors do as well, but across the street they are hooked up to the sewer system.
Imagine in an anarchist state, a single water/sewerage company services a large town. The company was very efficient and cheap (compared to other suppliers in other cities) but then the company comes under new evil greedy management. They run everything in the same way but charge 50% extra just because they can. Please describe what happens next and how market forces lead to the townfolk getting cheaper water again.
Ok… and I think many government based systems do (or at least could) let you opt out and do it yourself. But for most people, and especially in cities, this is either not an option at all or would come under the heading of “extremely clumsy and expensive mechanism” as per my earlier post.
Why are you obsessed with wanting to know exactly how the market would provide a good or service in a free market? If we knew that, it would assume that we would have perfect knowledge. Which we don’t and neither does the government.
Scenario 3 has a bunch of obvious downsides. So why would anyone risk allowing option 3 unless they has some idea of the upsides?
I guess you missed the corporate takeover bit in my post? Seems so.
BTW even if one were to grant the above being “difficult” (and I don’t) the non-state solution is merely to set up a consumer cooperative with regard to certain utilities, again a market solution involving solely private individuals contracting. Why involve the state at all?
Suppose the sewer system itself is a clumsy and expensive mechanism in comparison to something we haven’t tried yet. With a government monopoly on sewage it forces people to keep using that. And as for septic systems there are many different types, with some of the newer ones taking up very little space and not needing much maintenance.
You are only looking at the present (and what you can see) when you evaluate the options. What is good today might not be good tomorrow, and governments don’t adapt well to new circumstances. The market does this very well and quickly.
Because option 3 is the only one that doesn’t violate a person’s rights. Even if it were slightly worse than the other two options (which it isn’t) this would still be enough of a reason to do it.
Sure. But your assumption is that the government has perfect knowledge. The government is scientifically capable of providing a wide range goods and services, but how will it know if it should?
Tell me about how that would work. If the bosses are running an efficient company and making loads of money for their shareholders, tell me how the company would get taken over.
“consumer cooperative” sounds like an area we’ve already been over and discussed how it has almost the exact same problems as a state run system.
mickanomics you must be carful to comment on things you are ignorant about.
- Septic Tanks, Leeche Fields, and other small systems of that type (Especially leach field septic systems) are vastly cheaper, less clusmy, and certainly less mechanical than a public sewer system.
It is true however that in some cases realestate density will not allow those types of units to be installed. This is especially true in cities. Your argument however is flawed because it assumes the following:
- You assume the most effecient way to dispose of waste is via the current public sewer system. You assume this because it has only ever been this way. You may argue that the free market has been incapable of providing something supior. We cannot prove you wrong because government has a legal monopoly over the industry barring out competition. Your argument is Argumentum ad ignorantiam(argument to ignorance) It’s also Argumentum ad antiquitatem(Arguing to tradition)
- You assume it’s possible for a body of people to detirmin the most effecient way possible to dispose of waste. The market is one of discovery. In government they force extremely large ineffecient investments onto the populous, like a sewer system. Then lock people into that system. Once in place there exists no insentive to improve the effeciency of the existing system. Instead the sytem operates at a loss just trying to maintain it. In the market however a discovery process occurs and the most effecient system ends up being the one most widely used. It’s folly to beleive that a board of people could fabricate the most effecient system possible. We cannot see into the future to see what technology will bring us. Things improve every day on the private sector due to that discovery process.
- Therefore it is futile for us to pretend to assume that we can do no better, when in fact we could as people complain about their public utilties on a daily basis.
So the argument is that the government has no insentive to continously offer better service, where as a private utility company does.
Cooperative’s also have many of the same problems as the state as they have no insentive to improve or expand service.
I already explained this to him regarding roads. But then responds with an argumentum ad retardum. I’ll be surprised if even responds to you since he tends to ignore posts that completely destroy his arguments.