Making Privitization Better

[GoodCallYouWin]

One of the key oppositions to decreasing the size of government is buildings and land the government owns. Every building the government sells off equates to firing all the beaurocrats inside it. Every acre of land not in public hands can be profitably developed, for the greater wealth of the nation.

Rather than simply selling these resources off to the highest bidder, which in a free market would mean at least occasional transfer of these buildings to foreign owners, what about giving them back to the people who paid for them : the tax payers. Any tax payer who has paid x level of tax would get shares in the building that are privatized. They are now the owners, collectively, and can do with the buildings / land whatever they want.

[Borodog]

I'm pretty sure someone like Lysander Spooner probably came up with this idea like 170 years ago. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] Rothbard talks about it in several works, including for example The Ethics of Liberty.

[Phil153]

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Any tax payer who has paid x level of tax would get shares in the building that are privatized. They are now the owners, collectively, and can do with the buildings / land whatever they want.

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And when the problems of ownership become sufficiently complex, how do they decide what to do with them? By choosing representatives with a vote? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Richard Tanner]

Aren't there like uhhh 200-300 million taxpayers, even if you set the levels pretty high you're still talking tens of thousands of shares on one building, that's not very useful, especially if we're just talking land/structure shares.

Cody

[GoodCallYouWin]

A company would probably buy up the shares eventually but who is to say what they do. They'll be shareholders, just like shareholders of anything else.

[Kaj]

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Every acre of land not in public hands can be profitably developed, for the greater wealth of the nation.

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That's what is scary.

[GoodCallYouWin]

"
That's what is scary.
"

Ultimately, it will lead to being able to sustain a much larger population, so not doing this accounts the slaughter of hunderds of millions of people.

[MrMon]

[ QUOTE ]
One of the key oppositions to decreasing the size of government is buildings and land the government owns. Every building the government sells off equates to firing all the beaurocrats inside it. Every acre of land not in public hands can be profitably developed, for the greater wealth of the nation.

Rather than simply selling these resources off to the highest bidder, which in a free market would mean at least occasional transfer of these buildings to foreign owners, what about giving them back to the people who paid for them : the tax payers. Any tax payer who has paid x level of tax would get shares in the building that are privatized. They are now the owners, collectively, and can do with the buildings / land whatever they want.

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Nice idea in theory, see Eastern Europe and the former USSR on exactly how not to do this very idea.

[plzleenowhammy]

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"
That's what is scary.
"

Ultimately, it will lead to being able to sustain a much larger population, so not doing this accounts the slaughter of hunderds of millions of people.

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That's pushing it a little bit don't you think?

[plzleenowhammy]

Would people even want these old, outdated gov't buildings? Within 1 hour of an-cap all of the buildings will be made of platinum and/or tasty marshmallows and be many times stronger and tastier than current buildings.. It'd be like having shares of a company that makes vcr's or something.