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Then how will they make money? Obviously they will have to charge businesses to use their roads.
D'oh!
Ok, I'm good with that. Find an island and set it up. Let us know what happens. But I am betting on human nature. No rules means the biggest and baddest will make the rules.
Hmmm... So you are telling me that collecting taxes is robbery. Actually, I have used that analogy myself, pointing out that government is the middle man in a Robin Hood style transfer of wealth. But what about contributing to common infrastructure and defense? A bunch of loosely knit communities could not stand up against the Chinese or Russian armies. In fact I think a band of terrorists could take over if they did it one community at a time.
You don't see any use for a common defense?
In that scenario you are also free to be beaten, robbed, enslaved and/or killed because there is nothing to stop the bad guys, both foreign and domestic, from doing so.
Unless the bad guys come at you with more guns and people. Or simply burn you out of your cover so they can pick you off at their leisure.
At least not until they get hungry. I have to admire your faith in human nature. Unfortunately for me I've seen way too much to ever be wide eyed again. I worked Katrina. That mild hint at how things will be if there is a collapse of infrastructure was both educational and scary.
Let me recommend some reading material for you. These two books will give you some idea of what will really happy when government checks out.
http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765356864
http://www.amazon.com/One-Year-After-Matherson-Novel/dp/0765376709
This series of five books by James Wesley Rawles gives us an idea of what happens if the monetary system collapses and brings about your world of no government, no rules.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00YSTGRKG/ref=dp_st_156975599X
The comparison is like apples and handgrenades. In fact, someone is paying for the access to the internet that gets you to Google. Whether or not that is a public access point provided by your local government, Starbucks or some one that left a WiFi connection open, if you aren't paying for it, someone else is. Google is paid for by the advertisers that place ads with them and the marketing companies they sell data to.
A road requires the price of materials and labor to put it down. That is usually measured in thousands of dollars per foot. There there are the maintenance costs. Snow removal, striping replacement, repairs and eventual replacement. Without tolls how is a private entity going to pay for all that?
Privatize infrastructure. Privatize military. Fortune 500 companies could do awfully well managing that... Oooooh I am shaking just thinking about the efficiency that Walmart, ExxonMobil, and Chevron would make the "United States Armed Forces". Especially considering that I consent to giving them my cash money.
Not an argument. E=mc2 is also 'just an assertion.'
And if they have more guns?
And if people would rather focus on work and raising children?
Yeah, which is why ISIS exists.
I'm all for infrastructure being maintained by the private sector for profit, but we need a central authority to manage land and public infrastructure. Your system would work well if land was infinite, perhaps.
Regulation and basic oversight would also be grand too, thanks.
Yes, because that would work just swimmingly. Selling of our national defense to private entities.
True freedom is having your entire city bought out by oligopolistic corporations and having to constantly fear for the safety of your friends and family. 👍
I was just pointing out that Sociopia wasn't making an argument...
Private military... and NMP. However this is easily managed because you can have parents/family/local community split up roles between security, work, and raising children.
Most of the people in the Islamic State are desperate to be apart of something and the high-ups in the IS have taken advantage of that. The vast majority of the people in IS are being mislead and truly believe they're doing the right thing. So let's not make it out like every member of the IS is the devil. Besides, the US Military isn't exactly doing good stuff in the Middle East either. I believe one of the key reasons the USFG is struggling there is because we don't really change the circumstances of the people in the Middle East, hell we may even make it worse.
Because we disagree at such a fundamental level, I don't believe this specific piece is worth debating.
The interests of private entities are with their customers, they want the $$$ and the only way they get that is if they have a customer base, henceforth they have a motivation to protect. Rather than the USFG, who is just in it for the power.
I prefer my society being ran by "oligopolistic corporations" than the USFG. Right now I live in fear for the safety of my friends and family because the USFG is in charge. At least corporations have a profit incentive to do things...
corporations on a road can pay per car, so the road can be maintained, and the average consumer doesn't pay a penny. The road could also use advertisements, etc to afford it.
Well there has to be some sort of incentive for people to build and maintain the road. As for google, their revenue comes from advertisement, which is why we don't have to pay a fee, but road advertisements aren't as profitable compared to fees. But the people in charge are also capable of doing both in order to maximize profits in collaboration with big business. Give big businesses special discounts, and charge businesses for advertising on that road = large profits for the road building company.
So you don't see a problem with having someone in charge of the military that does not answer directly to the leadership of the nation?
Where did you get that information about the "consumer" not paying a penny?
Here's the fact. In the United States the federal government collects 18.4 cents a gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents a gallon for diesel fuel. So every time the average motorist fuels up the family car, they pay $2.20 in federal taxes. In addition to that motorists also pay somewhere between 12.5 cents a gallon in Alaska to 51.6 cents a gallon in Pennsylvania. Then we got trucks. The trucks in our fleet have apportioned plates. That means we have to record the mileage driven in every state, Canadian province and the District of Columbia. Every quarter we report that mileage to our home state by filling out a form and sending a check to cover the quarterly mileage driven. The amount of the check is based on the maximum gross weight and how many miles are driven that quarter. We have straight trucks grossed at 33,000 pounds. That quarterly check runs an average of $600 a quarter per truck.
All those fuel taxes and mileage based taxes are on top of license fees, title fees, etc. So when a state like South Carolina starts talking about converting a taxpayer built and supported road like I-95 into a toll road, I start to vibrate in the visible range with anger. We, the taxpayers already paid for that highway.
I think you might want to check your sources a little more carefully.
This was a theoretical point about if the USFG no longer built the roads, and companies did, how they could be payed for. I know that in current day the consumer already pays rediculous amounts of taxes to drive.
Ok, got it.
I was stating a fact.
Who decides how these miltaries are allowed to conduct? Who settles dispute between them? This would be a bit tricky without an all-encompassing law and centralised judicial system, don't you agree?
Doesn't matter. My point is that people can be bad. Your notion that people will just get along is false.
No. The interests of private entities is with profit. Profit is not necessarily contingent on their customers nor the wider society in general.
"Creating a class of people for the purpose of defense and enforcement of law and order is necessary to free up the labour of the common man so that he is more productive and happy because he must not be preoccupied with his own protection, especially in a high-population area." is not a fact...
It doesn't matter who decides, we let the businesses work out their issues.
People CAN be bad, but it will not exceed the amount to where me, my family, or my local community can not protect itself.
Because businesses interest is profit, they are going to defend their customer base. Of course they aren't going to go out and fight the Islamic State, but that's a whole separate debate to have.
Sorry for lack of quotes. Mobile is acting up.
A noble cause. Catastrophic execution.
Personally, I hate drugs and everything they do, but the government has no right to control what someone puts in their own body.
Xyanth and Sociopia
I think Drugs should be marketed so that our nation can further diversify its economy and turn a profit, but it must be under strict regulation by the government so that they will not get into the hands of children. Adults can choose to damage their bodies and ruin their lives, or use them for medical purposes as humans should be able to do what they want with their bodies.
Right up to the point that people run out of food and/or water. Been there, seen that, they called if Katrina. And that was not a total failure of infrastructure. Supplies were coming in from the outside. Imagine a nationwide or continent wide crash of the electrical grid.
It is a failed war. We learned nothing from prohibition.
I didn't build my house on flood-able land.
It is.
It's not about businesses. It's about people wanting to keep their families safe.
Oh really? Even when a few corporations have bought out the entire infrastructure of your city and own the police force, military and law? Or when thugs and dindus have made feeling safe on the streets all but a mere dream?
I am not saying they should go fight ISIS. I'm saying that this will allowing corporate entities to own public infrastructure and establish private militaries is a bad idea. They will inevitably establish dominance over geographical areas through ownership and/or military might, allowing them to create monopolies and establish militaristic proto-states. God knows what they will use those militaries to do with 'their' private property.
There is a reason people say anarcho-capitalism will lead to feudalism.
Its my fault for being reliable on anyone...
I would love it if businesses took control of the infrastructure. If you don't like that then you should buy your own infrastructure. I would much rather trust businesses with the military because the government has proven to be miserable and oppressive.
Milton Friedman advocated for a minimum guaranteed income. He speaks eloquently about it in a number of places. I don't fully support the idea, but it's had me thinking. It is certainly a better option than the makeshift an inequitable systems that are currently in place, but that's not saying much.
Capitalism and Libertarianism don't advocate dog-eat-dog survival. They argue that a managed system is worse for everyone than a free system. It's not that we don't want things to be equitable, it's that centralized institutions ALWAYS make things worse than they would be otherwise. It's about finding the balance of "how much incompetent interference is necessary to maintaining a civil society" versus "what are we better off without." The exact line on that is always debatable.
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