From: Matthew James Gering <mgering@ecosystems.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 07:22:56 +0800
To: "Cypherpunks (E-mail)" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>
Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
Message-ID: <5F152E6E8E6FD21195DF00104B2425AD02B269@yarrowbay.chaffeyhomes.com>
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Jim Choate wrote:
> What happens when you have somebody on a fixed or small income. 
> Is your position that the paultry sum they can raise will be 
> taken seriously in regards compensating either the insurance 
> company or the fire dept.?

What if they are on a fixed or small income and need food? Medical care?
Etc. Should be make food retail and medical services both tax-supported
government-mandated monopolies to accommodate those people who do not
produce enough that they need a free lunch provided by someone more
productive?

It is the same argument used to continue our massive failure of a public
educational system. 

There is no valid reason to intertwine "welfare" with the service, and there
are many reasons not to -- e.g. it treats items as commodity services that
should not be (esp. education), it creates false "rights" (e.g. right to
education), it creates a coercive monopoly immune to market competition, and
since people don't have to *evaluate* the service for spending decisions,
they tend to *value* it less if at all.

With welfare completely divorced from services, you can get a clear sight of
the real cost (negative value) of the socialistic support system, and also
of the productive output (positive value) of the service produced and those
willing and able to consume it.

> > willing to pay the local fire department a fee to stand 
> > ready to come and put out fires for me.
> 
> You do it already, it's called taxes.

No, he said *willing*.

> No, without taxes funding a civic police department with 

If you claim that a service won't exist without public tax funding, then you
are essentially claiming that people do not value that service enough to
privately pay for it. So we should instead force them to pay for it?

> connections to other police agencies around the country 
> you're hope of finding the perp is nil.

And these connections won't exist if they are private entities?

Perhaps they will have less chance if the agencies are bound to the same
limitations as individuals in regards to privacy and liberty, but that is a
good thing.

> Oh, yeah. You and a couple of your beer buddies have like a 
> real hope in hell of matching the capabilities of a real 
> police homicide or rape investigation. Get fucking real.

But that is not to say a private organization would not have matching
capabilities. You cannot look at current PI's for the same reason as you
cannot look at private education as what would exist in absence of the
publicly mandated one. Lack of suitable competition is due to
government-created monopolistic conditions.

	Matt