Privatize It

Post Reply New Topic

Republicans in general and libertarians in particular love "marked-based solutions." How would you privatize all of the many functions of government—federal, state, and local? I am referring here to anarcho-capitalism.

Among the things to be privatized are:

• National defense/military
• Policing
• Criminal courts
• Civil courts
• Road, rail, airport, and other infrastructure maintenance and construction
• Radio spectrum
• Public easements for things like utilities
• Hospitals and all medical care
• The postal service
• Disability and unemployment insurance
• Scientific and military research
• Regulation of food safety and purity
• Environmental regulations
• Registration of property title, copyright, patents, etc.
• Money

Then people who don't have much money or any way out of that trap will be even more screwed than they already are.

But then people might get pissed off and do something about it which would be good.

Most of the things on that list are at least in part contracted out to private industry, some more than others.

One of the biggest points of contention between right and left is what the role of government should be.

If this is a real curiosity, my advice is just to read through David Friedman's book The Machinery of Freedom.

http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

It's rather extreme to ask that a full treatise on all of these issues be put on the web. In any case, some of these things already include many private elements, some of these things have already been privatized in the past, some of these things are not really fully solved, and finally, some of these things involve a lot of complexity just talking about them entirely, and finally, some functions are just rejected as necessary or plausible. Friedman's book is probably a better source than anything else on the topic, and his idea is simply to privatize the creation of laws and order and to maintain the peace through various arbitration companies that make legal decisions on the basis of what is legally plausible within the poly-centric legal context, what promotes the interests of their clients, and what maintains the overall order.

The biggest problem with private entities is they often can't be held accountable to the public through market forces alone. Owners of infrastructure effectively become dictatorial monopolies with no accountability. This is especially true when you have a disconnect/conflict of interest within a private enterprise between the owners and financial managers and the developers, researchers, and engineers who do the actual work.

And the fact that corporations are legally defined as individual people does not help.

In my opinion contracting is not the same thing as privatization at all.
it is actually much worse that socialization because it is public money being funneled to private interest.
the fact you can "buy" a multi- million dollar contract with a few thousand in campaign donation make
graft and bribery the smartest thing you can do with you money.

again in my humble opinion we should socialize all things that government should be concerned with.
My list has Health, reasonable defense, education and the common good (no contractors all in house) and stay the hell out of everything else.

That piece of legal insanity really must go.

ruveyn

That piece of "legal insanity" lies at the core of corporate law. It is the basis on which corporations have the legal capacity to own property, to form contracts and to sue or be sued.

No entity that is not a legal person can enter into a contract--a business structured as a sole proprietorship enters into contracts in the person of its proprietor, who is personally liable for the performance of that contract. A partnership must bind all of its partners as parties to its contracts, and each is jointly and severally liable for the performance of those contracts.

If a corporation was not a legal person, it could not be compelled to honour its contracts.

Now, that does not mean that corporations should have the same rights as a natural person--but it's important to recognize that if we throw the baby out with the bathwater, we destroy the mechanism in which almost all of modern investment takes place.

I think Ruveyn understands that as do I.
But there is a certain people myself included that are not gunna cry when this particular world system is concluded.

I agree, but I think the main problem is corporations cannot possibly be held accountable to the degree individual human beings can.

No tears will be shed over here.

It really has changed significantly. We used to grant temporary corporate charters. Corporations were fully accountable to the legislature and when their specific purpose had been fulfilled, they were dissolved. If their was fraud or abuse of the charter, the corporation was dissolved. Corporations were explicitly prohibited from making political contributions and from influencing law-making.

Now, politics are primarily influenced by corporations and they are directly involved in the law-making. This is quite problematic.

Nazi Germany did privatization Fascist Italy did to because Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power. I for one like that idea but many americans would be against it

Yes that is very problematic, and it is what I try and tell people all the time........but everyone just wants to rant about how 'its all obamas fault.' or before he was president 'its all bushes fault.' and so on. But who is paying these people in our government? the role of corporations is not to influence law making...yet what we have is corporations directly influenceing it.

I don't like it because I would prefer not to get shot, and guess what happens to people who oppose facism in a facist system...so that is why I don't like the idea.

There is absolutely nothing in corporate personality that permits corporations to be exempt from scrutiny, or that requires corporations to be permitted to act politically.

It is perfectly possible to prohibit corporations from making political contributions (we do it in Canada, just as we prohibit them from unions), without displacing the concept of corporate personality. You might require a constitutional amendment to accomplish the same end in the United States, but it is, nonetheless, possible.

Why throw out a model with hundreds of years of success behind it simply because you have failed to control its excesses?