that’s not necessary. Do you know how culture’s evolve?
I may know a few things about that, but its not my field of expertise… where is this line of questioning heading? Its getting way past my bed-time.
mine too.
So you answered that you know how to learn by providing your educational background and you may know a few things about culture’s evolving. i wonder about your honesty, but that is something that will take a bit of time with me - so no worries i guess.
How do people build roads?
What sort of level of detail are you requiring in your answer? How about getting to your point… I’m off to bed.
What sort of detail are you able to provide?
good night
A) So you can’t get out of this contract untill your Grandma dies or sells the home? No offense but you get what you deserve for signing up for such rediculousness. (In all honesty I have a hard time beleiving this is the case)
B) In a free society you can use the private court system to help your grandmother out. In all honesty though I think you could have this issue resolved now. You should put that PHD to use, a little critical thinking, and help your Grandma Out.
The free market is not egalitarian, it doesn’t reward stupidity and ineffciencies. This isn’t meant to be derogatory, I am mearly pointing out that the situation you got your grandmother into is not the fault of the free market, but the fault of yourself.
The free-market is about individual responsiblity. If you find yourself rather placing blame on others perhaps you should join the egalitarian socialists who wish to breed a nation full of retards, status quo, and the sub-par.
City of North Oak, Minnesota. Population 4,500. All roads are privately owned, the city owns none of the land.
Thank you for that. Thanks to posts in this thread my original position on private roads has changed somewhat. It now appears to me that private roads can appear so long as there is some kind of governing body or person that can make the rules in advance so that people coming to live on the road have to sign a contract agreeing to the policies and payments for that road as a pre-condition to moving in. However this mechanism appears to lead (in the long run) to a very similar set of conditions that the anarchists so complain about with respect to government roads. i.e. the policy makers having the threat of physical force against non-payers and the residents having very unsatisfactory options with regard escaping the contracts.
(Its mother - not grandmother). Well the contract no doubt simply said something like “I agree to pay my share when the outside of the building needs repairs”. That doesn’t sound very ridiculous to me. But of course “needs repairs” is open to very wide ranging interpretation.
The freeholders were probably not breaking the law.
What should she/we have done differently to have avoided/escaped the situation?
Perhaps so, but the residents most likely have a vested interest in the upkeep of the roads. It’s not like our government today where each individual pays for the roads and highways for everyone, regardless of their personal usage.
Of course it does not. A government will impose a uniform policy on every road and destroy competition. A free market for roads will provide many competing roads for residents to settle on. The more successful roads will earn more profits and buy out the less successful, and new competitors will appear at the margins. This is the definition of a free market.
As it stands today people cannot escape the contracts because they are not contracts but government legislation. They can still try to escape from one jurisdiction to another. (For example, from Detroit to the suburbs.) That process is actually quite fluid. What they can’t do is compete with the government by starting a new city under their own administration, and since Detroit is not allowed to fail, this results in the city going to complete ruin.
Not have purchased the service. Plain and Simple.
Law’s shouldn’t be made to protect dumb decisions. Also, in the free society the private court system won’t necessarily be used for people who are breaking “The Law”, but those individuals that have contracts that need to be disputed.
Look, bottom line is your Ma made a mistake. Now you want a blanket protective legislation which will effect every man, women, child, and businessmen in this country just to protect your Ma’s poor decision making?
With no clause to leave or stop service? I highly doubt this. Whats the name of the company? I’ll be glad to look them up.
If something is really needed, it will be delivered one way or another.
With or without doubtful “help” of the government…
As a customer I like clean shops with clean surroundings.
As a shopkeeper I know of my potential customers’ likes and dislikes,
so I choose a place for my business in appropriate - e.g. clean - neighbourhood,
where other shopkeepers care of cleanliness as I do and I also hire eligible personnel.
If something is of true benefit to society - the society will surely manage with that question.
I have learned a great deal from the process of this discussion. I’ve decided to summarize my current understanding as follows:
Comparison of Government and private utility provision.
Government utility provision |
Private utility provision |
|---|---|
Slow change by voting. |
Slow change by market forces. |
Great economy of scale. |
Less economy of scale. |
Decisions can be made once. |
Repetition of the same decisions being made by multiple parties. |
No understanding of contracts / smallprint required by consumer - no need to even read any contracts. |
Great understanding of contracts / smallprint essential to avoid poor value service provision. |
Utility provider can use force against you if you don’t pay. |
Utility provider can use force against you if you don’t pay. |
No easy way to switch from one provider to another. |
No easy way to switch from one provider to another. |
Competition between providers is hampered.* |
Competition between providers is hampered.** |
- Often governments will tender out or licence utility provision to different companies in different parts of the country. Over time the government can see which companies provide the best value. Unfortunately this “competition” mechanism is hampered by A) cronyism and B) by the fact that some parts of the country may be fundamentally easier to provide utilities for than others, there by making it harder to determine who is really doing best.
** One may argue that people may migrate form areas where the provision of a utility is better than an area where the provision is worse, but this is a very weak “market force” because the provision of a single utility will usually be only be a tiny component of the whole decision about where to locate.
Do you see this as a positive?
Yes (everything else being equal). Who the hell wants to plough through reams of additional legalese every time they move house.
I suppose not people who defer use of their brains to the state.
What are your thoughts on institutional corruption and how it develops?
I’m a beginner in this field. I will bow to the greater expertise in this forum. If any of my arguments appear flawed because of my lack on knowledge in this area please feel free to put me right. This is not a sarcastic answer, I genuinely mean it.
I have a hunch though, that many types of cronyism can occur within private utility providers because the market forces (that should reduce cronyism) are weak in the field of utilities (as opposed to consumer goods, where they are strong).
This is a trap.
I’m a big fan of Stephan Molyneux’s “against me” style of argumentation. If someone believes in the initiation of force to create order, then fine. You can’t debate with someone willing to use a gun on you. If they do not, then they have to reject state monopoly. It really is as simple as that.
It is a trap, having to explain how a libertarian world would work, because if we could know, that is an argument for central planning.
I get stuck into it sometimes (see my posts to this thread) but what turned me from a minarchist to an anarchist was that while I was hung up on who would create the roads (and I still don’t profess to be an expert at that topic) I had to accept the truth that the initiation of force is illegitimate.
I don’t know how defense will occur. I don’t know what will happen to children. I don’t know what will happen to space exploration, or universities.
But I believe that people working together peacefully can solve these and unforeseen problems as well as, if not better than, people currently solve them by using violence against one another.