From: Terry Donaghe (tdonaghe@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Dec 11 1998 - 06:20:14 MST
---Darin Sunley <umsunley@cc.umanitoba.ca> wrote:
>
> I've always felt that the proper role of government is to provide
services that:
>
> A) can be provided by the government at a lower cost then anybody
else can, owing to economies of scale
>
Usually, governments will not allow citizens to discover if there are
any services it can provide better than anyone else. Governments set
up monopolies of services (defense, justice, etc.) and defend those
monopolies with the threat of violent force.
I posit that there are NO services the government can provide at a
lost cost that would be provided in the free market.
> or
>
> B) services that it would be inapproiate or impossible for private
citizens to provide.
>
I further posit that there are no services "inappropriate or
impossible" for the private market to provide. Please list examples.
> Viewed this way, the citizen's relationship to the government is no
more coercive then then a citizens relationship to another citizen who
is providing a service, and taxes are simply a bill for services
rendered. The "violence" associated with non-payment of taxes is no
more reprehensible then "violence" associated with non-payment of any
other bill.
>
Wrong! Citizens voluntarily enter into business transactions with the
free market. Citizens are coerced (violently) into paying taxes to
the government. We each have a choice of who we do business with, but
we have no choice about yielding our income to the government.
Businesses generally don't maintain police and military forces for the
purposes of collecting money from debtors. Businesses can simply
refuse to do further business with such people and can warn other
businesses about said debtor's poor credit.
The government on the other hand MUST use violence to force wage
earners to give up money. Otherwise governments would receive no
funds. This seems to me to be a perfect argument for getting rid of
government.
> The only hole in this, of course, is the lack of ability in most
countries for a citizen to "opt out" of government services. My
brother feels that allowing opting out would be a bad idea. I think I
agree, at least for certain category B services that are both very
important and whose utility decreases as the amount of buy-in decreases.
>
> P.S. I seem to have missed the introduction of this "PPA" concept.
Could someone enlighten me?
>
> Comments?
>
==
----------------------
Terry Donaghe: terry@donaghe.com
Individual, Anarcho-Capitalist, Environmentalist, Transhumanist, Mensan
The Millennium Bookshelf: <http://www.donaghe.com/mbookshelf.htm>
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