Just as the GOP helped Nader make the balot in certain <a href=“http://www.freep.com/news/politics/nnader16_20040716.htm”>un-named states</a>, I feel the Democratic party should do its part in supporting America’s second favorite silly-looking unlikely presidentail hopeful: <a href=“http://www.badnarik.org”>Michael Badnarik</a>. Who is Michael Badnarik, you might ask. Or you might not. I don’t care either way.
Michael Badnarik has all these <a href=“http://www.badnarik.org/Issues/”>issues</a>, like giving people guns and shit. But, I mean, he’s Libertarian. If you’re a college student living in a co-op or a dorm or a house or a not-a-cardboard-box, you should vote for him. He also has a great line in the San Fransisco Chronicle: “It’s kind of a self-inflicted problem we have – Libertarians are very independent. We are so independent we don’t even join our own party.”
But becuase all of his ideas are either boring or overstated, or already addressed by better spoken and better looking people than himself, or given to him by Ayn Rand, I’m going to finish this post by commenting on an email I just received from Homer Stark.
I mean, shit, Homer’s offering me “Mexeridleia,” “Xaponax,” and “Cshipbalis h!” After the drug store at the corner of the street closed down, I was wondering where I would find my Cshipbalis h–I thought I was going to have to choose between eating and drugs and eating drugs, like those commercials say. Now that I know that these melods are 70b% (the b is for “more,” I assume) lesose than regopular pricoce… I have no damn clue what that means! I wouldn’t want to hassle with a silly docteror, especially when it comes to my own health! I live in a secluded part of the world (Kentucky, Ann Arbor), so when I found out that they depolilyery any-wheire inas thes worield, I was genuinely excited. My favorite line from the email came right at the end, however: “Easy? You belt it is.”
I do believe that is what Trot means when he forecasts hot, hot doom for his entire family.
And of course the police should be privatized as well. Look at Mr. Bennet– he pays his police bill, and no one bothers him. Now look at Mr. Facington– he refused to pay his bill, and last month his wife got shot five times in the face! He asked the police to help, and he even offered them money, but apparently the culprit was too crafty for them, and they found no clues.
You speak of such things as if they aren’t already occuring, and the rich and powerful don’t already get preferential treatment from law enforcement.
With privatization, the controlling interest would rest with the people, and they would pay whoever was most efficient to do the task (something which has been done in Indianapolis since the early 90’s). Competition has done wonders in all other areas, forcing the eventual “civic contract-winning” group to be efficient or pass into history. “Shop around” for the fire department, and if they slack off, kick their ass in the civic congress by arresting them for direliction of duty (or contract as the case may be).
As much as I don’t want to admit it, I’m with Squall on this one. Aaron, you’re wrong and it stems from the fact that you have almost no (read: absolutely no) knowledge of economics or the United States political system.
The police (also the fire department) are already pretty much useless to anyone who isn’t wealthy enough that they could afford private police protection anyway. Not to mention that contracts with a police force would never be individual, but rather would exist on a community basis - city by city, state by state, whatever. It would look a lot like phone companies currently do, so you would just have a bill to pay, which is what you seem to anticipate. On the other hand, you fail to appreciate that the only people with adequate police protection at this moment are people who could, without having to deal with taxes, afford it anyway. Inasmuch as you yourself are going to be a teacher, you will most certainly make enough money to afford such services. Poor people are always screwed and there isn’t anything you can do about that - except try to make them not poor, which HISTORY shows has always been done best when economic freedom has been largest.
You also ignore the fact that very few Americans are members of unions, which undercuts your claim that you would somehow lose your job because of that. You also ignore the fact that teachers need certification and, presumably, Nigerian slaves couldn’t get that - or they’d already be teachers, since teachers don’t make minimum wage and there’s clearly room to move downward on salary. I can see why you’re worried, though, in that it’s already remarkably easy for total imbeciles to become certified teachers, so maybe Nigerian slaves actually could get certified. In which case I suggest you find a profession that doesn’t blow.
And, just because I think you’re absurd, do you honestly think that somehow the moment you don’t have fire department protection, your house is going to catch on fire and you’re going to die? This goes equally for KBV’s contention that not paying a police bill would get your wife shot. How? You think the fire department and the police stand outside your house putting out fires and staving off criminal attempts on your life all day? I imagine that’s not what actually happens. Fire departments and police are a lot like insurance, in that almost no one needs them.
All of this, of course, is only an economic argument. I haven’t bothered with anything like personal freedom because I know you don’t care about that. I’ve argued with you before and I’ve been told “At least people don’e starve in the Tennessee Valley any more!” Because, as we all know, as long as people have enough to eat, their freedom is unimportant. That’s where Soviet Russia got it wrong. They took away freedom AND bread. But the twin losses certainly weren’t related, right?
SJX is also right. Voting doesn’t matter and it requires either a total lack of knowledge of economics (see above) or self-delusion for a person to convince himself otherwise. Since I’m marginally well-educated, I go with self-delusion.
Of course not. Who said criminals were involved at all? A privatized police force, like any business, enjoys when people have incentive to pay for their product or service. Incentive can be created by shooting non-payers in the face.
I would have read that post, but I assume it was all about how I am wrong. Which I probably am. But since I was being lighthearted to begin with just to get at Squall, I’m going to spend the time that I would have used up reading that post, and I’m going to masturbate furiously.
Yessir.
[edit:]
Actually, one thing: stop with the TVA. Nobody’s freedom was taken away. Dams were built. Everybody loves dams. End of story.
You are forgetting that such an organization would be paid to begin with by the elected people’s government. If they were to start becoming an extortionist mob, simply hire another group to judge them for their crimes.
But you bring up a good point. Monopolization is a dangerous weapon when used in the wrong hands (just like dictatorship, incidentally…they can be benevolent, but not generally often). Thus, thought should be given to introducing multiple security forces being paid in accordance to the efficiency rating each receive (something on the order of a market share of the region in question, but not). They can then choose how to better serve or fail to serve and have matters go to hell for them. If they become gangsters, another suddenly has the right to blow them away and solve the people’s problem…an idea not too new, being extensively used for the past 6,000 years by numerous militaries, but as effective as always.
On the whole, however, the problem is not in using either capitalistic systems or bureaucratic to cut down on crime or any civic problem. The problem is the nature of the people. A lot of them prefer to be pathetic sheep about getting real results, either in politics or their personal lives…or they don’t want to have to work with people they simply don’t like (i.e., talk with them in some cases…see Trotsky’s recent material for further insight into this disease). This is laziness, pure and simple. With a significant percentage of any group being like that, a plutocracy always forms by near scientific law…some work harder, they get richer, and they have more power because of it. In many ways, it actually sounds like quite fair a system, until the elites actively try to take control of the way newcomers reach that status…to make it Their Club of the Rich, joined like a mixture of both fraternity and sorority (and indeed has been called that at times, and divided along equal lines). Like certain ancient empires of old, the rich are the ones paying for the entertainment bread&circuses to keep the populace below them entertained, and thus out of their deep concern when regarded as a group (as they come to be when they riot in the streets of Seattle against such things as international trade, or riot in L.A. when given the chance for celebration [opportunity] over their basketball team’s NBA triumph). Individuals who hold such brilliant talent in increasing their lot are thus isolated, and forced to obey the whims of the Controlling Interests of the nation in order to be “allowed in,” receive the kind of preferential treatment condusive to ever-increased success, and so forth (see fraternal-sororital order of the powerful above). In all, it smacks of the situation where unions of the workers (people, here) were once needed in the late 19th century…but in our modern world of entertainment-induced drooling and stares, the lack of willingness to carry through what must be done by group-effort.
Point of this whole thing: Capitalistic ways of dealing with it would eventually get as fucked up as the bureaucratic ones now are. There can be even brilliant, semi-perfect logistical ideas, but some people will screw it up eventually by wanting to be better than everyone around them, or not being competent with their own things and direction in their affairs while others do so. Therefore, the problem would lie not in one party having more subsistence and power than another, but creating a system wherein the ability for either to begin “conquering” more or losing what they have, based on their personal accountability, is protected.
Lastly, for this purpose, I am beginning to advocate actual conspiracy against the “order of things” by the rare intelligent people of this planet, to take the reins back from the vicious cliques who dominate it. A Clique of the Just…one I’d actually join.
WRONG! When the government owns the means of production, that is always always ALWAYS a restriction of freedom. And it’s usually a rather severe one. You know who can compete with the state if the state doesn’t wish to be competed with? The answer is no one. Monopoly power is almost always bad - in the sense that it distorts the market and really screws the poor people who so-called “liberals” like yourself like to pretend you care about once in a while. When that monopoly power is placed in the hands of the state, it becomes infinitely more dangerous and disgusting.
For someone who thinks the Patriot Act threatens your freedom even if it’s never used against you, you have a really strange idea of how freedom works when it doesn’t involve downloading porn in a library, showing it to children, and then dancing around a burning American flag. Of course, you’re also a member of the so-called middle class, so you don’t really have much conception of how much money is dragged out of people who have worked all their lives to make that money, just to be spent on overpriced and incredibly inefficient public works projects in the middle of nowhere. When you’re fifty-five years old and you’ve spent your life as a teacher working your knuckles to the bone and you finally make $100,000, and the state says you owe them 35% of that money, you’ll probably appreciate economic freedom more.
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