Uhh - charter schools also fail in the public market if they don't produce. They are less expensive to run, more efficient, and they serve everyone.

And, since you must use the US infrastructure - police, firefighters, parks, roads, highways, libraries, etc, why do complain about paying your share?

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And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." --George W. Bush, Jan. 29, 2007

I've never dropped my bottle of water. However, I have dropped other plastic containers and they fell to the ground. Are you saying it is unreasonable for me to assume that the plastic bottle of water will also fall to the ground if I drop it? Do you think that anything that has not been done before, can never be done? There was a first time that a man was sent into space. And a first time man landed on the moon. But somehow, you think it is impossible for the free market to take over schooling, just as it has taken over the automobile industry among other things, just because it hasn't happened before?

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

Public schools, such as the high schools which charge students no money, cannot automatically go out of business due to lack of business since they don't receive income in the first place. For some examples of shitty public schools, see inner city schools.

Furthermore, I would prefer to pay for a private police force, private fire fighters, private roads/highways, private libraries, etc... Some problems with public police forces includes the fact that they often just ticket people for victimless crimes to raise money for the state. Parks? What if I don't visit parks?

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

Funny how we humans keep going backwards. Police forces used to be private - they weren't that successful. Firefighting organisations were originally private, funded by insurance companies, they used to rock up to a fire, realise that the building wasn't insured with their sponsor company so would go back to the station again. If police are ticketing people for victimless crimes to raise money for the state then you have a problem with the legislature not the police. Privatisation is okay for the optional commodities and services but it fails spectacularly when it comes to natural monopolies. Sometimes you have to question your own ideology to get a good outcome.

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"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

If the firefighting organizations were funded by insurance companies alone, then what were they doing putting out fires in buildings that were not insurance company offices?

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

I didn't explain that too clearly. Buildings that were insured would put a plate on the wall of the building advising which insurance company they were insured with. If a building was on fire and the private firefighting service saw that the building was insured with a company other than the one that sponsored the service, they would leave the building to the occupants, neighbours, passers-by. Now I've known about that since I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have had a well-read father who had a passionate interest in history and I well remember him telling me about this. But here's a contemporary expert's view:

IRMI - The World's First Insurance Company

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"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

Right. If the insurance company sponsored the service, it would be up to the insurance company what the service did. Likewise, when the people get tired of it, they will pay for their own firefighting squads. So, if those squads prove to be inactive or incompetent, they will simply be fired.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

My point was that the stupidity of privatised firefighting efforts gave way to a muncipal fire service. That was why I made the point in the first place. It failed. It didn't work. Firefighting was made the role of a municipal service because it was realised that it was far more beneficial to the municipality not to have huge sections burning down on a weekly basis. In other words, firefighting is a natural monopoly and so it should not be privatised. Natural monopolies should not be privatised for a range of reasons.

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"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

agreed.

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No individual can plan his own existence in their view.

So the state planners must arrogate to themselves the right to manipulate any sector of the economic system if the good of “society” or the “general welfare” is paramount.

Ipso- if the rights of the individual get in the way, the rights of the individual must be sublimated.

The Road to Serfdom
FA Hayek (interpretation)


Mortgage Backed Security survivor

That's like saying that the private automobile industry doesn't work because some guy in a different state didn't get a new car after someone ELSE purchased it for himself. The insurance company was the sole customer of that specific firefighting group, so why should that firefighting group be expected to put other fires out? If you hire a TV repairman to come to your house and fix your TV, he is going to look at the address and make sure it's your house before he fixes any TVs, just like the firefighting company you mentioned. The private TV repairing industry isn't a failure because the TV repairman didn't randomly repair all the TVs in the State, even though he was paid to repair just one TV (your TV).Why would it be less efficient to produce this from two firms? And why do you feel that one firm will never be able to monopolize certain areas? Firefighting doesn't require any rare resource. You just need a place to keep the trucks, the firefighting trucks and a few workers, depending on the size of the town/city.

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

You'll have to enlarge on your auto industry analogy because I don't see the relevance.

As for the other points, you're repeating yourself. I've dealt with the points you made about private firefighting and insurance companies. Repeating yourself doesn't make it right.

As for the tv one, again the analogy doesn't address my point. If my tv blows up I can use the Yellow Pages to pick someone to come and fix it. I like that. If I had only one tv repair service I know several things. 1. I would be waiting a long time for the tv to be repaired. 2. I would be paying through the nose for the repairs. 3. The service would be shoddy. But of course you're making my point. The tv repair business isn't a natural monopoly, it's entirely and properly open to competition between private providers and I'm really glad it is. But you're applying an analysis of chalk and comparing it with the study of cheese.

Simple economics. Why waste resources? Why have two firefighting organisations when to do so would create huge inefficiencies and lower effectiveness? Adam Smith would piss himself laughing at that, if he weren't dead. Sometimes a natural monopoly has to be recognised and allowed to operate as a natural monopoly. Ideology can't be allowed to trump common sense. That's the mind set of Stalinism. When ideology tramples reality we have a problem. Have a look at this and you'll see what I'm getting at - Trofim Lysenko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've just re-read the thread title. Irony at its finest.

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"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

What don't you understand? You said that the private firefighting teams were a failure because they only put out fires for the people who paid them. That is basically how every private business works. If I hire a security guard, he will only protect my business/home. He won't protect the entire city, so why do you expect the private firefighting team, which you said was funded by an insurance company, to do services for people who do not pay them?You can say that about pretty much any privatized industry. Why waste money competing when you can have the government run everything?

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If a neocon whines about big government wealth redistribution, just ask him what he thinks about the portion of that big government that sends aid to Israel.

And you missed my point. I'll stick to this example since it's proving to be very useful. Fires don't respect property rights or commercial agreements. Fires need to be stopped as soon as practicable. The experience (and this was in London, UK by the way) was that having privatised firefighting units that would only respond to and fight fires that occurred in buildings which were insured by the particular company that employed the firefighters meant that fires spread and did considerable damage (not to mention the threat to life). It was considered that since privatised firefighting units were ineffective in stopping the damage to property caused by fires that the municipality that faced burning down because of this inefficient and ineffective approach to firefighting that firefighting should be the task of the municipality. In that way all property owners and citizens of the municipality would be given the same level of protection and response.

Your system is entirely both inefficient and ineffective and here's why.

Let's say I'm a property owner. In my municipality there are ten insurance companies. Each of those insurance companies has a firefighting unit which will turn out and fight fires for the clients of the insurance company. I have some choices. I can simply ignore the possibility that my property could burn to the ground and not buy insurance and therefore firefighting services from any of the insurance companies. I would suggest that wouldn't be prudent.
I could buy one insurance company's policy and the associated firefighting services and then hope that there were sufficient firefighting resources hired by that company to attend to my needs to have a fire put out in my building. I'd really have to hope the cheapskate bastards, trying to minimise profit, wouldn't have insufficient firefighting resources so that if there were two fires in the municipality (one being on my property) that I lost out when the firefighters tossed the coin to decide who was going to have their fire put out.

Or I could get a policy with all ten companies and spend money needlessly.

Inefficient, ineffective. Treating the provision of firefighting services as a natural monopoly is far better for the whole of the municipality. The cost of providing top notch firefighting services is spread over all taxpayers.

Do you agree?


The government should run some things - natural monopolies for example, but not everything. And that's the real debate. The two extremes, that the government should run everything or private industry should run everything, are unachievable in real life. Some things should be open to competition and some shouldn't. Ideologues from both extreme positions are simply having an intellectual wank.

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"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

Wow- fallacies galore! Gravity is a natural law - capitolism is an economic system - and Henry Ford was never a member of the govt. Combine all three and you have to have the weakest argument I've seen yet. Because of the predictability of gravity, I should assume that public education is not needed - even though the govt is the only force that has succeeded in reaching the moon. Oh, yeah - something about cars, too.

You must be soe proud of yourself - feel free to send me whatever you're smoking. I could use a few days off flying

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And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." --George W. Bush, Jan. 29, 2007

Do you use the infrastructure? Or not? Is the fact that infrastructure exists a component of your successful life - and keep in mind that the fresh fish and tomatoes get truked on a lot of roads. Would rather is hardly germaine! Don't feel I should pay my share - prefer to dump it on others to pay, and pretend I'm not just sucking the public teat along with everyone else is a lot closer.

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And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." --George W. Bush, Jan. 29, 2007