There are literally thousands of competing cities in any country. You do not understand what competition is.
What everyone is leaving out is that there is already a quite extensive road network in existance.
Just off the top of my head…how hard would it be to extend property lines to the center of the street instead of having them end at the edge of the road as it is today and nip the monopoly argument in the bud.
There is already well established ‘access rights doctrine’ to property that would end the whole ‘deny access to be an asshole argument’.
You end up with people who have the choice to either maintain their own section of the road (like their front yard), hire it out to a private company (like hiring a landscape company) or selling off that section of land to a private company (like a HOA).
Now all you have to worry about is having the type of neighbors that keep ten cars on cinder blocks in their front yard no matter how much social pressure is put on them to clean it up.
Which begs the question; is a nice front yard a ‘public good’ that needs to be maintained by a coercive monopoly?
Hi, Juan! Long time no chat, and like that.
Would you be so kind as to point to or quote where I admitted to wanting a monopolistic provider of security? I’d thought we were discussing transportation. I would be perfectly happy to do without the security forces provided by my local government - or even to be able to hire a competitor to protect me from them.
Straw man doesn’t work well.
Certainly not the ideal where the tyranny can’t be avoided, in any case. Mutually beneficial transactions are best, but not always guaranteed when competition is not practicable.
That darn Real World keeps on getting in the way of those great theories. Drat!
Danno, foiled again.
I understand that assertion, and agree that in the vast majority of situations, private enterprise can easily outperform government. I just remain unconvinced that it’s universally applicable, and roads is the most obvious ‘must-have’ commodity in which the argument is sketchy, particularly urban roads.
This is, apparently, annoying some who have been convinced that a free market would be an improvement over government in the provision and maintainence of roads. How their becoming annoyed is supposed to convince me continues to mystify me.
Danno, glad that sticks and stones are not available in this venue.
Oh, heavens no. Eminent Domain is not something I’ve ever been happy with. However, I can imagine that, if I were building a road, and a stubborn and recalcitrant property owner forced me into using a less-than-optimal route, that it may be fun to buy all of the land around him and force him to remain on his own property, stewing in his own juices. It could even become profitable - I’d expect the value (and thus, price) of that land dropping sharply in that situation.
I just don’t see such a situation as being an improvement over the public-access road running past my house, as annoyed as I usually am with the government that provides it.
Danno, who’s been stubborn and recalcitrant on occasion, too.
Without the local government’s security forces, how would you prevent your local community from transforming itself into a private enterprise?
Thanks, but I am quite aware that the Feds have a firm lock on the mail delivery monopoly - and can even force me to maintain and pay for a mail receptacle that they approve of. That they can be competed with on a limited basis (by FedEx, UPS, etc) is a good thing.
While I have done no studies, and have no evidence, I expect that, if competition were allowed (as package delivery became lawful to compete in a few decades ago), and the USPS were forced to make their own way without tax subsidies, that it may be remarkably difficult to compete in that area anyway - a monopoly, governmental or not, is going to be able to provide that service more efficiently and cheaply than if the business were split between two carriers who would each get a portion of the available business. I could easily be wrong about this, however - I’ve not studied the situation carefully.
In any case, I have never claimed that the USPS was an example of a government-provided service that could not be just as well-provided by the public sector.
Danno, who has had runins with the USPS before.
How inconsistant of you.
Oh, my - can people really do that? Is it a respected tactic here?
I guess the reasoned exchange of ideas just shuddered to a halt, and I’ve been vanquished. I’m in awe, truely.
Or should I hold out for being called a Nazi before I give up on trying to exchange ideas in a civilized, productive fashion?
Danno, polishing his SS insignia, just in case.
But you do prefer socialized roads..
That would, indeed, be a pretty good idea on how to make that transition.
Assuming that every private security provider wrote that into the contracts, everyone agreed to such contracts, yeah. But that is an assumption that I’m not entirely comfortable with.
Or, in glee, to spike the cannon of the evil internal combustion engine, refuse to maintain it at all - mayhaps even dig deep holes or erect barriers to impede traffic.
Bicyclists, given bicycle-only lanes and greenways in this city (Minneapolis), still go out of their way to impede vehicular traffic upon occasion. It’s almost a religion to them, and some of them are, likely, landowners.
In an anarchy, who would have the right to force them to allow traffic on their property at all? It’s either their property, or it’s not. With new road construction, this isn’t much of an issue. With existing urban roads, I can see this being something of a problem.
Actually, there is some validity to each side of that debate, too - though I know which side I prefer, I understand that not everyone’s going to agree with me on that one, either. But let’s keep this to roads for now, okay? I’m having a hard time keeping up as it is.
Danno, overworked and remarkably underpaid here.
Well, you said
Maybe I misunderstood but I took that as an endorsement of so called ‘miniarchism’.
If there’s no monopoly in security there can be no monopoly in economic activities, as a general rule.
Last time I tried this quote it had no effect, but I think maybe you can appreciate it.
So…the real world can change. To dismiss things as utopian is not a sound argument.
I admit that the urban roads problem is not that easy, but on the other hand I don’t see how government can solve it either. Roads can be privately owned, but if that means that the road owner gets to decide who can move freely within a city then it’s a solution I don’t like.
Maybe urban roads need to be a common of sorts, but that doesn’t mean that government is needed for road building or maintenance…or anything.
The same way I’ll prevent a large meteor from destroying my home. Frankly, the large meteor is considerably more likely - I live in liberal, statist turf - almost every campaign poster around here says ‘Obama’, and several say ‘Franken’. It’s almost bad enough to outweigh the benefits of living here - but only almost.
If my local community did transform itself into a private enterprise, I’d largely welcome the transition - but those roads would make me very nervous until I saw how they worked out.
Danno, just getting an idea for a lively topic of discussion…
So what the hell are you arguing with us about? You’d welcome private roads, but you don’t want them?
Not in the least. Nobody would be happier than I if I saw evidence that privately-owned roads would not become more of a problem in an urban setting than government “owned” roads are. If I see convincing evidence that a free market would outperform a government in that (and a few other) functions, I’ll be glad to change my nametag from “minimal-government libertarian” to “anarchist”.
I just haven’t seen that evidence yet. Sorry if that annoys you.
Danno, who hasn’t been this maligned or misrepresented since he argued with Liberal Democrats.
That evidence cannot exist before there is established a free market in roads, I hope you realize.
Indeed, what he’s asking is equivelant to asking somebody to describe how the internet would work a hundred years ago.
It’s simple, you either favour coercion as a means to provide roads or you don’t. No matter what your reasons, you do and as a result you favour socialized roads.
I lost my post so instead of retyping it all I’ll just answer this since I have things to do.
That’s all part of well established common law doctrine. It goes into that in The Ethics of Liberty where legal arbitrators are the finders of existing law and not the makers of new law. The common customary policy (law) is that you can’t deny someone previously established access to their property.
Anarchy isn’t the absense of law as in commonly thought.
If you can somehow come up with a plan for a non-coercive coercively funded road monopoly then we can talk about specifics.
Hmm - I never promised to live within any label. To be honest, I must admit that I’m only guessing at the actual definitions of those labels myself - I’ve never bothered to look 'em up. I only look stuff like that up if I think it’s relevant to the discussion at hand, and self-labeling has never been all that much fun.
In local, personal security, I can’t see why competition would not be a marked improvement over what we’re force-fed now. Large-area, national security is another topic for another time - I haven’t studied the topic well enough to be convinced in either direction.
Alcoa ran one for a while, until the local security monopoly forced them to support their competitors. It can be done, by massively outperforming any competition - but it’s not easy or common.
Point taken. I do like to think that I’m addressing an actual, practical difficulty rather than dismissing an idea out of hand because, without proof, I simply consider it utopian.
I suspect that a Piper Cub would have changed Lord Kelvin’s mind fairly quickly. I’m entirely open to the idea that someone is going to float a plane past me here, and give me reason to change my mind. It is beginning to become discouraging, though.
That is, in effect, what we have now - the road owner gets to decide, and those decisions are not always just (or even rational). In the state I live in, one can have one’s driving “privileges” revoked for failing to pay one’s court-ordered child support.
It is, however, not managed so poorly as to be unworkable - most people get around in a livably efficient, effective way. As I’ve said before, if I can be shown a means by which the free market would reliably improve upon that, I’ll cheerfully become a proponent of that means.
An organization that maintains and regulates such a commons, without competition, is different from a government? How?
Danno, ever hopeful