Like schools, roads, health care, welfare, and a military. What is the best most efficient way to deal with this commonly parroted argument? I have mine, but im curious to see what others use.
Isn’t food a basic thing? Government should provide it then. How about shoes? Should the poor walk around barefoot?
if something is a legitimate service, there is no reason people won’t voluntarily pay for it. People will voluntarily pay tuition, road tolls, doctor fees, or donations to charity if those services are truly necessary. Indeed, voluntary spending is the only viable option, as involuntary (taxed) revenues create an enormous moral hazard.
Competition is more efficient than monopoly. Economic calculation.
Regarding incentives and information, market>government.
It needs to, but it can’t and doesn’t.
Generally something like:
Would you buy schooling in a free market?
Do private schools generally do better than state schools and cost less?
Then why is government needed?
To provide for the poor
Then you have to tackle the problem of inequality…
I’m a big fan of Milton Friedman (though I’m highly critical of a number of his policies, especially monetary), and well, you may want to try his style of argument…Friedman would usually take the core of an idea and push it to its extreme limits, and therefore, it’s ultimate and logical conclusion.
A guy that I know justifies a number of governmental controls because its part of the “commons” (currency, health-care, roads, schools, and a number of other services); if you want to take his argument to the extreme (and whoever is bothering you with the argument above), then merely expand, in your argument, what the government should provide its citizens with, and don’t hesitate to be absolute ridiculous…after all, if you can make the argument for the government to take care of someone (welfare) and provide for their continuance (healthcare), and their wellbeing (military), you pretty much have core basis, already, for the government to provide for, well, litereally everything.
After you’ve done that, point out it’d be no different than a single corporation controlling literally everything; there’d be no pricing mechanism, no competition, and no diversity…but then, point out that that single giant corporation can be gotten rid of because competitors will move in (eventually), while a government has the power of force to perpetuate itself at someone else’s expense.
healthcare, IMHO is easier to deal with than school, roads, and welfare…and I’d say providing an argument against a collectively funded military will be the most difficult…but, never the less, it can be dealt with.
Here’s a book about privatized defense: http://mises.org/etexts/defensemyth.pdf
Roads? I suspect Walter Block’s new book thoroughly covers that topic.
Just my 2 cents though.
People have gone without these things (certainly by means of government provision) for most of human history, so ipso facto they are not “basic” in any sense.
I think most people can’t imagine how they would pay for things like schooling, police and fire service, and so on, because they’ve never lived without witholding taxes and inflation. If you can put the idea into their minds that they would be taking home alot more of what they made, in a world where prices tended to go down over time, rather than up, you might be able to make them see how government services are a problem rather than the solution to a problem.
The Rev
market services are actually more affordable than government services for two reasons:
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you only have the pay for the stuff you want to use
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competition between businesses drives down the price
The argument against private schools is as pathetic as it gets. Why is it surprising that they’re costlier (still more cost-efficient though) than public schools when the latter have captured most of the market? I question the intelligence of education socialists.
there are other things to consider than economic efficiency. for example would you privatizr military? then would just have groups of armies around the countries waiting to control more area. Same argument could be said about police. if there are only public schools, we would loose potential intellegent people who can not afford schooling (however only gov schools is another extreme).
i agree that govenment controled system is inefficient, but it provides stability in some cases.
The poor DON’T need “free” government-run education to thrive. Here are two examples of how affordable diy solutions work.
http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/22573.html
so you are saying that there are enough schools like the one you have mentioned to accomodate all the poor children?
what about my other point about military/police
Also should be privatised. If you’re concerned about that, give Hoppe’s Democracy - the god that failed a read. We don’t need a coercive monopolist in any domain of the market, and that includes defence, law and order. It is a tumor to be excised. Stability in expropriation is all it provides.
My political science professor at very liberal college used the Declaration of Independence as justification for universal health care. Basically his argument was, “How can you be happy without proper health care?”
Really.
Whether or not there are “enough” schools for the “poor” is not a justification for forcing people to pay for more such schools.
As for the military/police, I do not agree with privatizing them in the same way as other goods/services, but I do agree with them being subject to the same principle of voluntary funding. The government must be prevented by law from initiating force.
That’s an interesting statement. I’m still in the process of exploring what role government should have in our lives, if any at all. The major sticking point for me from becoming a total anarchist is the military/police/court system. Are you suggesting that you support government monopoly over those things, yet you believe people should only pay for them if they choose to?
Yes.
The monopoly is in the use of retaliatory force. There is no need for a monopoly on dispute resolution, or security systems. There is definitely the need to prevent government from initiating force. It must be strictly limited to the use of retaliatory force which in turn must be strictly limited to punishing proven wrongdoing. And the criterion by which to judge who is in the wrong is by answering the question, Which party initiated force? Did the buyer refuse to pay? Did the seller not supply the service/good that was contracted for? Was some other term of their contract broken?
Or in a situation where there is no contract - e.g., a thief breaking in and stealing stuff - the victim has to provide proof that is objectively verifiable, meaning that anyone possessed of a working mind can examine the facts and reach the same conclusion.
As for the military - it would require providing proof to the people that an attack is being threatened, or has even already occurred and convincing people to pony up time & money to respond.
What about having the funds already available for such things? Again, the onus is on those in government to convince the people to contribute funds and time. If the government cannot convince people to voluntarily pay for a given service, then that service just won’t be funded. And it is not necessary to convince EVERYONE to pay - only to convince enough people to pay.
For example, a lot of people think that “government” ought to provide education. But if put to the test, would people really pay government, or would they realize that it makes more sense to donate money to a local school?
No matter what happens with the details of a given good or service, the law prohibiting initiation of force is what is needed to govern all interactions between & among human beings. That is the law that is missing from government today, and why it runs roughshod over the big and the little guys.
I wouldn’t call any of those “basic.” I wouldn’t even call them “necessary,” as in a sine qua non for sustainable society.