The case for government

[CallMeIshmael]

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You realize that that's basically the status quo, right? The government has, um, a monopoly on road provision. They own all the roads!

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I saw boro make the same argument. Do you not see the difference between a government owning all the roads and a person owning all the roads?


Now, whether or not you are happy with how any particular government conducts business, they are a not-for-profit organization (with some of them being VERY not-for-profit).

If a single person owned all roads in an area, it is in their interest to drive up all the prices since they want to make as much as possible. Since the government is non-profit, it is not in their interest to charge more than is necessary to complete the task.



Also, about education. I know you guys are for privately funded schooling. I assume that means that schools will be developed, and people will pay to attend them, yes? If so, how are the children of the pooer partents going to get educated?

Also, Ill bring this up again: air pollution. Without a governing body, what prevents companies from excessively polluting?

[Andrew Karpinski]

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Are you seriously arguing that, throughout history, "people as a whole" have been better off with armies than without them? Are you some sort of hero warrior cultist or just kidding?

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I'm not sure if you're a hippy or what's going on here, but you need armies. You need armies because if you don't have armies other people kill you, and that's a bad thing. Sure it would be better if we didn't have armies but the other guys don't leave us with that option.

[Borodog]

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Now, whether or not you are happy with how any particular government conducts business, they are a not-for-profit organization . . .

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That has to be the funniest thing I've read all day.

[..........]

Ishmael,

As you can see it's pretty easy to dismantle AC theory, and you are doing an excellent job of it. But I'll just warn you ahead of time; it will slowly begin to drive you insane. There is something missing from the ACers' circuitry. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it's scary.

[tomdemaine]

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Wait... what are the current theories as to how a society without a government will produce roads or an army?

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2+2 politics forum, converting the unbelievers one by one [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[haarley]

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If a single person owned all roads in an area, it is in their interest to drive up all the prices since they want to make as much as possible. Since the government is non-profit, it is not in their interest to charge more than is necessary to complete the task.


[/ QUOTE ] Private business faces competition. Government does not. When the my shop was built it was at the end of the street. The black top that makes up my parking lot is of about equal size to the black top the county had to lay to finish the road. A private company did the parking lot. The county finished the road. Private company finished in two days. The county finished in two weeks. There isn't much incentive for government to work efficeintly or cost effective at all.

[tolbiny]

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[ QUOTE ]
Are you seriously arguing that, throughout history, "people as a whole" have been better off with armies than without them? Are you some sort of hero warrior cultist or just kidding?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure if you're a hippy or what's going on here, but you need armies. You need armies because if you don't have armies other people kill you, and that's a bad thing. Sure it would be better if we didn't have armies but the other guys don't leave us with that option.

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I'm not sure if you have thought this through or not, but can you tell me the last time having an army stopped a determined invasion? It didn't help Iraq, South Vietnam, Kuwait, France, Poland, ect. During the Iran/Iraq war the only thing that stopped Iraq's initial attack according to most historians is basically incompetence. There is apparently no reason for Saddam to halt his attack a few weeks in and give Iran a chance to import arms from the US and organize a defense.
What is stopping the US from invading Canada? Certainly not the massive Canadian military.

[Copernicus]

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CMI,
roads

Armies probably wouldn't be produced in an AC society, mainly because they aren't much good at creating anything but death and destruction, goods not in high demand. That's not to say money wouldn't be spent on defense, necessarily.

On monopolies and mergers... any monopoly that forms in the absence of government intervention can't be hurting consumers...because the only way to get a monopoly in such a situation is to offer the highest quality product at the lowest possible price. So there's no reason to stop such a thing, as it is counterproductive. The same holds with mergers.

Criminal defense will be a lot cheaper in the absence of government-enforced supply restrictions, i.e. the bar.

Court system will probably work primarily through private arbitration. Arbitrators will compete on reliability and quality decisions. People/companies known to ignore the decisions of reputable arbitrators will go out of business because no one will deal with them. Such a system already exist when dealing with international companies...even without one overarching court system they still manage to resolve disputes. Dispute resolution is a service like anything else and can be provided by the free market.

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Thats the only way monopolies form? What about proprietary information and capital requirements in investment intensive industries?

Eg. AT&Ts (near) monopoly grew primarily out of the capital requirements for stringing wires all over the world, and would have been broken without government intervention by satellite and cellular technologies which were more efficient than duplicating the wired infrastructure.

Simplistic, yes, but not as simplistic as the claim that that monopolies only grow out of quality/price comparisons.

[Peeda]

Iran vs. Iraq, Britain during WWII (But the navy/air force more than the army), Russia in WWII, any country during WWI. Probably a dozen other cases. Armies are sometimes a necessary evil and ideally aren't needed, but things don't always work out so well.

[tolbiny]

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Iran vs. Iraq, Britain during WWII (But the navy/air force more than the army), Russia in WWII, any country during WWI. Probably a dozen other cases. Armies are sometimes a necessary evil and ideally aren't needed, but things don't always work out so well.

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Iran V Iraq i already discussed a little- Iran's army did almost nothing for weeks and it was Iraq suddenly halting their advance that led to the drawn out war, not Irans defenses.
Russia in WW2? No- there army was totally destroyed, they lost 20million soliders and 20 million civilians, and what was it that stopped the German invasion? A nasty winter and over extended supply lines, and peasants with virtually no training and poor equipment dying by the millions in Stalingrad.
England in WW2 was in horrible shape when Germany declared war on the russians, and their biggest asset in defense was the Channel.
France had one of the largest militarys in the world pre WW1 and WW2, and they did a piss poor job defending that country.
WW1- "over the top one more time boys"- soliders sent out to charge machine gun nests with bold action rifles and bayonets?
The governments involvement in war is horribly inefficient, and rarely works once war breaks out, it most situations the standing army at the begining of the war was totally ineffective, there are almost no cases of a government providing "good" national defense.

EDIT: i should say that Isreal is a glaring exception to the general rule.