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@leoj707
I find "monopoly vs. free market choice (individual liberty)" a much more precise paradigm than "public vs. private." For example, is the state of North Korea a public institution or a private fief of the Kim family? When a government creates a monopoly in water service, the difference between a bunch of "capitalist pigs" screwing the people vs. a bunch of "bureaucratic aparachik swines" screwing the people is only a matter of time; i.e the screwing is inevitable. What makes a free market place work is competition: i.e. the other side of the same coin called "individual liberty." When the consumer enjoys individual liberty, the service providers have to compete for the individual's patronage.
Whenever the government grants monopoly to any institution, be it a "private" corporation or a government department, it makes little difference: both are "too important to fail" . . . when in reality if they were not monopolies/oligopolies, consumers would long have chosen better run alternatives.
side note:
Try FedEX if UPS doesn't work for you. While I use USPS often, I have no illusions about USPS being a taxpayer sponsored carrier service. Frankly, I think it should be divided into multiple competing service providers; such a split-up would certainly be more justified than splitting up AT&T or Standard Oil.
my internet hero, some guy called royls up in Canada, has an awesome record left on usenet engaging all comers on the LVT issue. Hundreds and hundreds of arguments on dozens of threads, both on usenet and on old message boards. I really learned a lot following his arguments, and ALL of his interlocutors soon wheeled out the envy line and other BS like it. Here's an example of his argumentation style:
any help on finding these discussions on usenet?
Â¥
2011 Jul 16, 4:00am
he's on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LandCafe/
but the discussions there are internecine squabbles and not that interesting.
When he gets involved with those defending the current system, he goes to town:
http://www.politicalforum.com/political-opinions-beliefs/96545-income-distribution-226.html
for an example.
Here's him on usenet:
marcus
2011 Jul 16, 5:18am
I see why that guy is your hero, with such quotes as these:
Yes, the real genius of institutionalized evil is that first it makes
its victims adapt themselves to it in sheer self-defense. Then it
gradually makes them dependent on it for unearned benefits. Finally,
it recruits them as its stoutest defenders.
or
I don't think you have to worry about the rich becoming insufficiently
privileged in your lifetime, nor in the lifetimes of your children or
grandchildren. You would be much better advised to worry about the
possibility of societal collapse resulting from the already excessive
and still increasing privileges of the rich. It's not like they
haven't already destroyed dozens of great civilizations, you know.
or
Nonsense. They just subsidize the loud but safely stupid types who
can be counted on to drown out the real voices for change.
Â¥
2011 Jul 16, 5:39am
The bigger the troll, the more he tears into the evil of their argument:
Once upon a time, some hungry people were walking in the forest
looking for food. One of them spotted a tree laden with ripe fruit,
ran over to it, and, following an evil, moronic notion of what it
means for a natural resource to be "free to anyone," claimed ownership
of it for himself alone.
When the others walked up and began reaching to pick the low-hanging
fruit, he stopped them by violent, aggressive coercion, invoking the
alleged principle of "first possession" and demanding that if they
picked any fruit from "his" tree, they must give him half their
harvest as rent. The others, being reasonable, just, and peaceable
people, proceeded to pick all the fruit they wanted. They declined to
acquiesce to the aspiring parasite's extortion demands, and when he
attempted to assert his property "rights" in the tree by initiating
more violent, aggressive coercion against them, they regretfully
killed him in self-defense. They all lived happily ever afterward in
liberty, justice, and prosperity, knowing that they had done the right
thing by eradicating the vicious, greed-besotted, Satanic evil they
had unknowingly been harboring in their midst.
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Georgism is usually defeated politically by the idea that the government would be your landlord forever, and could raise your land-tax at will.
(For those who don't know, Georgism is the idea that there should be no income tax or sales tax at all, only a single tax on land values and no tax on improvements.)
But let's say that the land-tax is determined at the time of purchase, and can be raised at most 2% per year. This is the way California's Prop 13 works.
So now we would have the fairness and economic benefits of Georgism combined with the tax stability of Prop 13.
Would such as system be politically possible? Would it raise enough revenue to cover the cost of government?
#georgism