To compare public/private infreastructure services.

1- So, if private services are voluntary and not 'forced by threat of violence"- I could drive along a private tollway, and not pay the toll, and they won't do anything- is that correct?

2- How exactly do you 'refuse their services' other than become a hermit? What happens if there is a fire and you need the privately-owned fire department?

3- No competition possible due to monopolies- you can't simply pick and chose which roads you use depending on where you live and where you need to go, nor your plumbing and phone lines, unless resources were wasted on duplicating (the latter two, not the roads). The roads would turn to chaos as motorists would fight over more 'economical' paths instead of take the most efficient route, and thus become less efficient and less safe. Safety measures like speed limits and speed cameras are more potential to profit from. We instantly have a less-efficient, more cluttered and wasteful system.

4- Motive for profits and investing drives up the price for consumers- motivation to cut costs to less PROFITABLE services shuts remote, physically-disabled and others who need the infrastructure (and others who need these people to reach them)

5- Personalized tolling places more intense cost of burdens for workers to get to work- drastically sabotaging businesses that were unlucky enough to be separated from its workforce by a greedy infrastructure holder.

Against a public system
1- automatic public subsidy = immediate access without fumbling for change, bidding, or billing procedures = faster roads and less waiting in line for other services.
2- automatic assistance by emergency services
3- infrastructure only covers what is actually neededed by consumers, instead of convenience of company pushing for it.
4- only running costs reduce price, and more people recieve benefits of service.
5- minimal costs spread out amongst population, increases work,travel and business real-estate prospects.

Now, as of now the government does indeed call shots and can impose profits out of infrastructure- which takes us back to Direct-Democracy, so public property is actually PUBLIC, not government.

democracy isnt all its cracked up to be
but democracy must consider all the facts

dictator-ship's on the other hand
are about select advantage..exclusive franchise or private acces

and that makes dictatorships worse

here is a thought
revealing whats behind just one dictatorship
http://links.org.au/node/2179

and about how far a demonautocracy will go
to keep their man in his oppresive powers

Israel provides henchmen for Gaddafi
By: Ethan Allen
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/167814.html
Israeli arms distribution company Global CST has reportedly, under the authorization of Tel Aviv, provided Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi with African mercenaries to clamp down on anti-government protesters.

Egyptian sources have revealed that the Israeli company has so far provided Gaddafi's regime with 50,000 African mercenaries to attack the civilian anti-government protesters in Libya.

The arms company was previously convicted in an African country over illegal deals, News-Israel website reported.

but
look at whats in the media
[owned and controlled by 'special intrests']

Huckabee: Pay no attention to Israel's hiring of mercenaries (with your money) to slap down the Libya freedom movement.

It is really far more important
to bash unwed Natalie Portman for having a baby!
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/natalie-portman-slammed-wedlock-pregnancy-20110304-040133-011.html

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/03/05/dr-ashraf-ezzat-will-america-make-the-right-choice-in-libya/

but back to demonic autocracies
or how demonmockery really works

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=14178

http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2011/03/israel-intervenes-in-libyafor-gaddafi.html

mercenaries to Gaddafi from the Israeli officials in advance.

Sources say Global CST had obtained the permission for providing the mercenaries to Gaddafi from the Israeli officials in advance.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/03/03/gordon-duff-israel-intervenes-in-libya-for-gaddafi/

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2011/03/britain-cherry-picks-which-war-criminals-to-prosecute-and-where-to-impose-no-fly-zones/

http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2011/03/the-beacon-that-is-israel-self-serving-by-delay-and-denial/

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2011/03/william-cook-the-beacon-that-is-israel-self-serving-by-delay-and-denial/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/business/global/04sovereign.html?src=busln

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_562.html

http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2011/03/virtually-unknown-in-west-libyas-water.html

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2011/03/israel%e2%80%99s-hidden-faces-a-long-day%e2%80%99s-night-for-us-all/

Oneundergod,

No, democracy is not all it's cracked up to be, but it sure beats whatever comes second.

Yes, it is the host to many evils, terrible crimes committed in its name, especially by capitalism and above all by the US, but it still beats whatever comes second.

Dictatorships over 30 years (Mugabe) ? 32 years (Mubarak) ? 40 years (Omar Bongo) ? 42 years (Ghaddafi) ? 52 years (the Castro dynasty) ? For life (Malawi, Zaire, etc.) ?

Dictatorships of one party for 62 years (China) ? Of one party and one family for nearly seventy years (North Korea) ?

Dictatorships of no government, elections or public service (Afghanistan under the Taliban) ?

Monarchies ?

Yeah, imperfect and ramshackle maybe, but give me democracies, or countries striving to implement democratic reforms and equal rights, any day.

Hazza
The issue is voluntary versus coerced relations, rather than private versus public.

If the discussion were between, say, two government departments, it would be fine to “automatically assume” the justification of government. But here, where the very issue is whether the assumption is justified, you can’t just assume it, you need to prove it.

Four problems with your argument:
1. your distinction between private and public is a distinction without a difference
2. you assume that government represents the people more or better than the people represent themselves
3. you assume government is more *physically productive* than private providers
4. you still haven’t shown why the use of force is ethically or practically superior to voluntary relations in any event.

‘The public’ is just, in other words, ‘the people’.

*All* services to the public are ultimately services to people as individuals. On the other hand, all official providers benefit in their capacity as private individuals.

There is no sense in which private property or services benefit only individuals in an atomic sense, nor can government arrogate to itself the credit of social life. The very issue is whether coerced relations are anti-social, and voluntary provision would be better for society both ethically and pragmatically. To assume what is in issue is circular argument, which is unfalsifiable, which is irrational.

For example supermarkets are public places providing services to the public, and the want of food is arguably more important than the want of broadband or art galleries or scientific research.

Yet that does not justify a supermarket
a) claiming a monopoly of initiating force over the people in a given area
b) excluding competition at gunpoint
c) forcing its subject to pay whether they want its services or not
d) offering only a trolley of mixed goods selected by the supermarket, on which everyone votes en bloc once in three years, and then everyone gets the same groceries for the next three years, whether they want them or not
e) with impunity, replacing the caviar with shi/t soup – no rules against fraud or misrepresentation for this mob.

f) rigging it so that richer people can force poorer people to pay for their groceries, or vice versa
g) paying its own employees above the market rate for its “services”.

The fact that a service benefits people, no more justifies the assumption that it should be provided by government, than the fact that sex benefits people, justifies the assumption that rape should be legalized.

The need to justify coerced provision in the first place, precedes any question of asserting the goodness of a “system” that is a “mix” or “balance” of voluntary and coerced relations.

So much for the ethics of governmental provision, but there is also the issue, implied throughout your response, that government is more *physically productive* than private providers.

Now since this is an issue, that means you’ve got to prove government is more physically productive it is, and I’ve got to prove it’s not, fair enough?

I prove it’s not as follows.

The problem facing any service provider is how to use scarce resources so as to satisfy the most urgent human wants. In voluntary relations, the entrepreneur combines factors of production which he buys earlier in time, into a final product which he sells later in time. If the final product sells for more than the factors of production cost, he makes a profit. If it sells for less, he makes a loss.

Thus profit arises from *removing the maladjustment* between where the factors of production are, and where the masses want them to be. The greater the maladjustment removed, the greater the profit. Loss arises because the service provider has wasted the resources, in other words, diverted them to uses which satisfy human wants *less* than could have been satisfied by their alternative uses.

On the other hand the whole purpose of governmental provision of services is to *displace* the operations of profit and loss. Absent these, bureaucracy has only rules and regulations to go by. Now the functions of the entrepreneur are done by using the instruments of profit and loss.

*How* is a bureaucracy to perform these functions? Since, absent the incentive to avoid loss, each bureaucrat could provide a “Rolls-Royce” service and empty the treasury, he must be subject to a budget, and to rules and regulations. Obeying these, *how* is the bureaucrat to be *more* physically productive than a capitalist? How is he to know how to avoid loss and how to satisfy the most urgent wants?

*How*? NSW Premier Kristina Kenneally recently cut fares on trains in her electorate. Like that? By pork-barrelling at election time?

*How*? By doing deals between vocal minorities in marginal seats?

Even in a theoretically perfect representative democracy – (say secure online one-person-one-vote on every proposed law) - *how* are the polled masses to know how to be *more* productive than private providers, without knowledge of the particular facts, and without the possibility of rational economising?

That’s what you have to prove. You haven’t started yet.

Government doesn’t get the money to pay for a loss-making operation from a moonbeam. It gets it by taking it from the people. To compare apples with apples, it can only do this by *not* satisfying the other most urgent wants of the people which that money could have been used for.

Thus the coercive sector is not and cannot be more physically productive than the voluntary sector.

To answer your questions:
2., 4. 5. and Against a public system 1 3, 4 and 5

These questions all assume that government is more physically productive than private providers, and that profit self-evidently proves the misallocation of resources. This assumption is wrong. I have just disproved it, and no-one has proved it.

1. No. Private property doesn’t mean you get to use other people’s property for free. We’re talking about *voluntary* society, not *pacifist* society. You’re still allowed to use force to defend your person or property. It’s the *initiation of aggression* that’s the problem, which just happens to be the foundation of all government, that’s the point.