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I see this all the time when mentioning getting rid of the income tax. "Hope your house isn't burning down, there will be no firemen to come help you." or the idea that you would have a huge pile of garbage because your tax paid garbage service would not show up.

Outside of the fact that the income tax pays for the federal government and fire stations, garbage service, etc is paid through property taxes, I still get disturbed by this.

Why do people believe that a fire station can only be run by tax dollars?

I lived in a county once, the population was a few hundred thousand people, that had a private fire department.

When I moved into my house I was mailed a letter with the private fire company's rates. I had the choice of paying $20 per month for full coverage, or there were fees for services. $50 minimum for a service call for small things such as a small kitchen fire or such and a maximum of $2,000 for a full house fire which it said that my homeowners insurance should be able to pay.

I have also had private garbage service at most places I have lived. I now pay $10 per month for garbage pick up. They come out 2 times a week and do a good job. If they did not do a good job I would just call another company.

My electricity is private. My water company is private. My sewage company is private. My current fire company is public. They used to be private but the county wanted to take over all fire services in the county so they snatched them up via eminent domain.

My property taxes are very low. I pay about $1,500 per year on a house valued around $200k.

Fixed that for you.


 :-X

True. I am not a big fan of government created monopolies.

With private roads they could run several separate systems under the roads to people's houses and charge each company rent for it. Thus allowing competition.

I am actually going to run for commissioner of my local water company just to keep them honest.

Though in Texas I did live in a few places that I could choose my electricity provider. I ended up choosing the windmill power company at one location.

Worked out well because the other company had to burn gasoline when the capacity was maxed out which cost extra money for electricity at those times. And that was when gas was around $5 per gallon. The flat rate was higher than the other for the windmill company but it turned out to save me a lot of money.

Choice...aint it grand?

I dunno it's almost like people would pay for the services they desire or something.

Privative everything.  I want to see 2 IPO's in my lifetime: the USMC and the CIA.

don't get short imagining another taxation system based on bitcoin...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45839.msg550903#msg550903

The logic assumes that the fire service can be provided cheaply and that each house has one owner.  And in rural areas, thats true.  

But in an urban area where buildings are higher and have multiple occupants, it simply won't work.  Even with a monopoly its hard to pay for a decent fire service with the kit to handle fire in a multi-story building.  And in an apartment block, if 1 person out of the 100 or so apartments has paid for the fire service, the other 99 get their fires put out for free as you can't save just one part of one floor of a building.  

So you'd end up with 1 or 2% of people paying for the service.  And since its very expensive, unless they pay millions, even they wouldn't get the service.  You need to make it compulsory for all people in the block just to make the system available to even one person in the block.

Taxes are a pretty difficult cat to put back in the bag, so it's kind of a moot point.  However, note that the Government could just print their own money and spend it.  In the end, that's pretty much what they are doing, anyhow, with the taxes.  And this would make April much more pleasant.

hint: natural monopolies such as water, power and gas are generally better run by the government since they're marginally more accountable than a corporation doing it (see: turned out the 6 largest british gas providers were in collusion with eachother to put up gas prices by 30% for the sake of earning more money).

As for fire services and suchlike I'd rather have the government running the fire service as a non-profit than have a company using it to get all the money they can. It's that sorta attitude that leads to a load of firemen standing outside your house going "awfully flammable building this. could go up like a bonfire with just one dropped cigerette butt, know what I'm saying?"

without taxes if people wanted something they'd just do it themselves or pay someone to do it- I know people where I live don't want trash all over the place, maybe I'd make a living keeping it clean. Need for taxes is an illusion to keep people in line, people aren't stupid and ignorant enough to let the world go to shit just because 'the man' isn't taking out their trash. A fireman that won't work just because there's no paycheck is no fireman at all, just a walking meat sack of 'want' for the things that paycheck gets him.

The logic assumes that the fire service can be provided cheaply and that each house has one owner.  And in rural areas, thats true. 

But in an urban area where buildings are higher and have multiple occupants, it simply won't work.  Even with a monopoly its hard to pay for a decent fire service with the kit to handle fire in a multi-story building.  And in an apartment block, if 1 person out of the 100 or so apartments has paid for the fire service, the other 99 get their fires put out for free as you can't save just one part of one floor of a building. 

So you'd end up with 1 or 2% of people paying for the service.  A firetruck with a pumper that can be used for an apartment block will cost about $400,000.  Almost all fires require two pumpers.  So that 1 or 2% need to find huge amounts of money. 

It won't happen.  You need to make it compulsory for all people in the block just to make the system available to even one person in the block.

This is why fire services are generally mandatory. Paying a flat fee per fire doesn't work (because the fire service can't guarantee it's income for a year and hence stay solvent enough to actualy put out fires). Fires effect everyone, at essentially random, at that.

The apartment buildings would come with fire service because the guy that owns the building doesn't want his property to burn down. In the case of condominiums it would be the same result but for different reason. Nobody would want to own a condominium without fire protection therefore anyone that buys it will have to agree to pay for it so the rest of the units could be sold.


You wouldn't pay a flat fee. You'd pay a monthly or yearly fee.

... don't forget medical services and education, the two most important public services i will not want private in a bitcoin future

a just and more convenient tax system is possible with bitcoin, it's very transparent to begin with...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45839.msg550903#msg550903

Where I live I paid my own education and health, and I do not regret it.

I only wish I do not had to pay taxes for services I did not used...

...you, me and all the people on this forum, though i would like a common fund to pay the teachers and the doctors, it has many more advantages than having those two services private and i could give some good examples with persons that are too sick to work and need medical care and education to be able making a contribution to the society in the future. We are people, we want and have to help each other, "divide et impera" just could not fit in if we want to survive as specie. Thanks Satoshi, wherever you are now, and thanks to you guys for opening your eyes  :D

For services that are expensive to provide, even when you have taxation its hard to make adequate provision.  If you make it voluntary, you end up with inadequate provision even for those who agree to pay. 

I heard about someone who tried to call another garbage company after calling to complain to the one she already had. The same guy answered the phone.

Here in Brazil the most popular way to steal money is open a garbage service...

Two mayors that seemly wanted to whistleblower that, got killed. (Toninho - PT, mayor of Campinas, killed in september 10 2001, and the mayor from Santo André, also from PT)

The city where I live, has the biggest municipal debt of the country, and most of it was done hiring garbage services... the current mayor is being investigated for stealing money with garbage services during his previous rule (during the 80s)

@Hawker, taxes will not be voluntary, would be like a fixed income tax agreed beforehand by all. The miners for the gov pools would do a public service and be taxed directly, and the rest will have registered bitcoin address as social security numbers paying their taxes at the exchanges or sending the money directly to that address, having the ability to check on Social Sec. website whatever the sum they have to pay every year.
They will do it happily to have their kids in school and be attended in public hospitals if they ever get sick, have their houses protected in case of fire, their garbage taken care of, protected by the police, etc. I know i would and use block explorer too view where my taxes go.

I love your idealism.  But people pay for stuff they are forced to pay for.  Yes a percentage of the population does financial planning and gets the right insurance policies and so on.  But there are lots of people who live on their credit limits and pay for stuff as it arises if they can pay at all.

BTW, all mining will be done in a year or two so that particular implementation detail needs rethinking.

glad you do, don't forget bitcoin is, if i'm allowed to say, deflationary so people will be more keen to hoard than to invest into worthless things. People that will choose to live on credit money are sentenced to fail in such a system and i guarantee you that if you require a tax check-up, instant in such a system, to allow a person use any public service they will pay in the end. But not forcing them to do so leaves the possibility to contract private services too. Democracy at it's best.

I don't really understand the mining part, it will exist as long as bitcoin does or the other way around if you want.

Once we reach 21 million bitcoin, all mining stops. 

heh, you wish, too bad we can't predict future though, what i understood from a few Satoshi's posts was that incentive for the miners would balance from fees, i already saw some blocks with fees > 1btc, don't forget the total amount of coins will be mined in +140 years too .
Just think what the fees would be in a million transaction block  :D , that is not possible atm but i think the protocol doesn't restrict it

I don't think you understand.  Bitcoin is finite.  Once it reaches about 21 million, all mining ceases.

It's a matter of semantics. The fact is Bitcoin will require computing power in order to function no matter if all the Bitcoins will be claimed. People will still run Bitcoin miners in the far future but to only collect fees. This can be still considered mining but only to facilitate transactions.

I don't think they will be generating more than 22 million bitcoin though?  So it won't really be mining - just payment processing.  Or have I misunderstood?

Transaction fees have never consisted of only newly minted coins.

Why must the government run the non-profit?

Here is the fire department I used to have:
http://www.columbiacountyga.gov/index.aspx?page=4065

Elwar as I said earlier, that works fine if you have a rural county.  In a city with blocks of housing and expensive fire trucks, it won't be practical.  You have to be able to enforce payment by everyone or else no-one gets an adequate service.

Expensive fire trucks? So the Martinez fire department has cheap fire trucks?

As for city housing of high rises, do they not have association fees? Every condo I have ever checked into has had those. I would assume that those fees could include fire prevention. With so many customers in such a small area you could get a lot of money from each building. Plenty for "expensive fire trucks".

Or if it is just a building rental with tenants, it would be the building owner who pays the fees.

My fees were $20 per month. With a building with 1000 condos that would be $20,000 per month going to the fire department. Plenty for any fire they may need to put out in that building.

Your logic assumes that the fire service can be provided cheaply and that each house has one owner.  And in rural areas, thats true. In urban areas where you have 100s of buildings connected to one another it isn't.

But in an urban area where buildings are higher and have multiple occupants, it simply won't work.  Even with a monopoly its hard to pay for a decent fire service with the kit to handle fire in a multi-story building.  And in an apartment block, if 1 person out of the 100 or so apartments has paid for the fire service, the other 99 get their fires put out for free as you can't save just one part of one floor of a building.

So you'd end up with 1 or 2% of people paying for the service.  A firetruck with a pumper that can be used for an apartment block will cost about $400,000.  Almost all fires require two pumpers.  So that 1 or 2% need to find huge amounts of money.

It won't happen.  You need to make it compulsory for all people in the block just to make the system available to even one person in the block.

There are other blockchains to mine.

Not at all. And it is not a theory, it is a real thing in the real world. It does not have to be cheap, it has to be what property owners are willing to pay. Each house can have multiple owners, it does not matter.


Are you completely ignoring the answer to this question that has been posted at least three times in this thread? Do not most buildings with separate owners pay association fees? Is the door man paid only by a few people? Is the upkeep of the building done by taxpayer money or through some sort of building fee? The fire fee can be paid in this exact same way.

Someone would have to go out of their way as a building owner to not pay for fire service. The fire department even offers to charge you for the service call if you do not pay a monthly fee, which is covered under most insurance plans. And the private fire company was able to cut home insurance plan costs by 75%.

So on a street with 100 terraced houses, every other one agree to pay.  The ones in between get free cover.  And the fire brigade, which finds it hard to afford kit with 100% of the population paying, is forced to do without kit because only 50% pay.

What part of this do you not understand?  Some things are very expensive to do right and fire services are one of them.

There will never be more than 21 million as you stated earlier, but it's an asymptotic approach and will take more than just a couple years.  We have another 10 or 15 years before we even get close.  There will always be some mining because of the incentive of the last few bitcoins and the transaction costs (along as bitcoins still have value and don't completely crash).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.png

I don't know what part of the USA do you live but over here there's "no tax paid" garbage service. Along with free fire service, they should be allowed to loot! :) I mean it's already covered in insurance rite? If they don't get it, it's just gonna burn.

This might help solve the free rider problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract)

It requires that all agree to enter a binding agreement before starting.  The people who prefer to get the service for free won't do that.  So even before you start, you are left with the problem.

A possible solution for new developments would be that the house comes with a ground rent to the fire provider but there is no way to apply that to existing cities.  But then I suppose it would be harder to sell the houses so that won't be done either.

Thanks for the link though.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem describes what I was trying to get at with the selfish home-owner very concisely.

The fire-suppression provider can withdraw all of his services and demand that any closely connected buildings agree to an assurance contract before further service is rendered. If there aren't enough contributors to satisfy his contract, nobody gets service. Of course, some will leave, others will risk it. Or maybe, just maybe, the owner of the building might chip in because he wants to keep his units rented/leased and add that cost to his bottom line or pass it on to his clientele. The free market will prevail eventually even when the aforementioned objects are already in play. Have a little faith.

And there you have it.  People will be forced to choose between abandoning the property they paid for or paying extra to support the free riders. 

That isn't freedom - it's exploitation.

 try not to think at it in such a drastic way. How would you feel i take your newspaper every morning leaving you nothing after you pay a year subscription, bad i guess. I will try getting free water from my other neighbor and some internet too. What would you and all other neighbors do when is all found out ? Kick my sorry ass out of the community ? And i will be free to think you we're trying to exploit me and pay for all those services, yeah

@FredericBastiat thanks for the link

You can't kick someone out of their property if they are not breaking some obligation.  I'm surprised you'd even think such a thing desirable - surely the idea of ownership is that you can do what the hell you want within the law.

@Hawker i guess every person living in a society (community or group) has rights and obligations. I have the obligation to pay the community fee if i want to use the pool, my trash taken care of by the janitor, etc. I'm free to sell my property and leave if the rules are unacceptable to me  :)

They can't kick me out legally but if a majority is not happy with my actions they can make me leave in the end.

OK its not clear where you stand.  If taxes are needed to fund a fire service, do you think its OK to tax property owners?

Taxes aren't needed to fund a fire service. Your point is moot.

@Hawker depends, it all resumes too not hurting or disturbing another fellow human, if i have a house in property in the middle of the dessert who cares if i'm not paying for a fire service, that would not be the case in an apartment block. I think you get what i mean

As discussed earlier, in rural areas that's true.  But in urban areas, the fire trucks with pumpers cost over $400,000 and you need full time professional firemen.  For safety reasons, there are always 2 trucks at each fire.  So you need $800,000 plus the cost of buying a firestation and the cost of training staff and then you need an ongoing budget for wages.

In most towns, that kind of money means that there will only be one provider.  And the question then is, if taxes are needed to fund that fire service, do you think its OK to tax property owners?

You mean that you'd like to live in a rural area where its easy to run a fire service and there is no need for taxes to support it.  But, for urban areas, if taxes are needed to fund a fire service, do you think its OK to tax property owners?

Those prices are inflated due to the horrible inefficiency of our fire departments with the guaranteed wages and excess benefits. They aren't accurate of what market prices with profit-incentive would be.

With respect, they cost the same in Ireland and England; pumps are amazing pieces of technology.  Our salary costs are a fraction of yours though.

You still have not answered the question.  If the taxes are needed to fund that fire service, do you think its OK to tax property owners?

It's not a sane question. It's like asking if we should wear gas masks if flying unicorns are shitting an unknown substance from above.

The fact is when there is a consumer desire that must be met, it will be met by whatever means. People aren't going to go "Nope, what we have right now isn't feasible. Let's throw in the towel and give up on life." What they actually do is innovate and find a more efficient solution. There will be effective fire departments without government. There isn't a natural law saying we can't make cheaper, better fire pumps.

@Hawker yes, i think it's ok, in urban areas would be necessary

You say "The fact is when there is a consumer desire that must be met, it will be met by whatever means" but there a million of so Somali consumers who beg to differ.

I admire your faith in the magic of the market whereby things that cost $400,000 will mysteriously cost less just because we don't have taxes to pay for them.  But I think you will agree that expecting people to die in fires while they wait for this magic to work would be unreasonable.

You are asserting that "It will just work" and based on that refuse to consider the real world.  What can I possibly say to you?  

Yes it is necessary.

So what to we say to people that think the fact that they are forced to pay these taxes is an intolerable infringement of their liberty?

It works everyday. Look at the computer you are using, the food you eat and the products you use everyday. The majority of all you major needs and luxuries are met by a constant flux of innovation. Nobody has to be forced to pay for these things to make them possible.  You desired these things and the market made them available to you affordably. What makes it improbable that the same force that makes these products possible will not apply to a fire service? What makes it entirely different?

It's not faith. It's reality. It only comes into question when you suffer through a normalcy bias since the government has been providing the questioned service for the only time period you have known.

Also, Somalia is under constant pressure by an overbearing first-world force called the UN. It is enslaved and not free.

haha, who says that ? depends on taxes though, we pay lots of taxes that i'm sure are used to fund wars and secret ops out there. Blockexplorer for taxes, now ! I have nothing against healthcare, education, public transportation, and few others like the ones you seem to be a part of, fire departments, they save our lives every day and provide very useful services indeed.

Lol at blaming the Somali famine on the UN.  But we digress.

The problem with your logic is that it isn't based on reality.  Government stepped in to provide fire service because the voluntary ones could not cope.  2 reasons for this jump out:

1. There is a free market in pumps.  The notion that somehow the price of pumps, which are used all over the world in many industries, would fall just because fire brigades can't afford them is simply wrong.  That is not how markets work.  

2. We have already discussed the free loader problem whereby if one house in a terrace pays for cover, the house next door has got cover for free.  Tax is the way chosen to pay for the service to get around the free loader problem.  

Government stepped in to provide fire service because the voluntary ones could not cope.

PROVE IT!

There is not a free market in pumps because government services have no incentive to be efficient. They are willing to bid inflated prices for them. If a fire service had to sustain without a deficit and with value for all its supporters, bids would be substantially lower and thus the price decreasing.

The free loader problem is not an issue. As long as the fire station is sustaining, nobody is taking a loss. If they voluntarily help houses for free, there is no coercion. Fire services that are charitable will probably use it as a marketing tactic anyways.

Wrong.  Governments are a tiny percentage of the pump market.

A percentage nonetheless and still very capable of  distorting the market. This isn't even counting the regulations and patents that affect the price as well through government-enabled monopolies.

Back in the real world, the price of pumps is related to what people will pay.

I've asked you a simple question several times.  If the taxes are needed to fund the fire service, do you think its OK to tax property owners?  You refuse to answer because you don't like the answer.

Yes and the government pays distorted prices because they have no incentive to make profit nor run efficiently.

Your question doesn't have an answer. It's an irrational question. The truth is we don't need to force people to pay for things. Slavery is not a rational option.

Then it would just be a deed restriction of the condo complex, and you are just back to where you are now with one fire suppression company that holds a monopoly on the condo block that you live in.  So you have lost nothing, and if the condo association ever gets sideways with that suppression company, they can vote to amend that clause to another company.

Fire suppression & trash collection are the easy one's for libertarians.  Public safety and road maintaince are the hard ones.  As for the issue about power companies holding monopolies, that's fixable also and some areas actually do have power company choices.  Same for cable tv providers.  It's possible, it's just not allowed in some locales.  After all, do you only have one choice in your Internet services, even if you choose to use a government monopoly such as the phone company to provide it?  I know that I have numerous choices for Internet services, it's just that the monopoly supported companies tend to have cheaper rates because the network was largely already paid for long before the broadband Internet boom.

atm we don't really know how a real life bitcoin will solve, or not, these problems we have forever, transparency is a big step forward  ;)

Really?  You have over 800 forum posts and still don't understand how bitcoin's encentives work?

Correct.  I thought it would never reach 22 million.

Was I wrong?

What's completely idiotic is asking people to literally formulate a business plan in a theoretical free-market environment when the amount of factors is ridiculously infinite. It's a question answered on principle not through proposed systems. The fact is that most desires of today are most effectively met by market principles. It's highly improbable for them not to apply to the ones the government has a monopoly on. I don't even want to imagine what would happen if the government declared a monopoly on soap.

"YOU WANT ALL OF US TO STINK! DERP HERPIN DERP!"

As I have told you several times, pumps are not a government product.  Governments are one customer among many and its a global market.  The manufacturers are private companies and if they could make the pumps at a price point to reach more customers, they would.  Thats how markets work.  

You are arguing that since some of their customers are paying with tax dollars, the entire market is distorted.  That is not how markets work.

The question is perfectly rational. Fire service must be paid for and even with 100% of people paying, its expensive.  If less than 100% pay, you may not have a service.


If free loading is possible, then no-one will pay.  Why would they? If no-one pays, there is no fire service.

seems to me that you trolling Hawker...  ???

Yes, that is how markets work. If you have a man who stole millions of dollars and wants a shit-load of cookies, do you think he's going to feel a loss if he overpays by a huge margin? Hell no. He didn't earn the money and he can always steal some more.

You don't understand how markets work especially concerning when somebody is willing to make liberal and excessive bids with no concern for loss.

To answer your last question, there is a thing called a contract within a community. I could address that with tons of theoretical solutions. The fact is just because you can't imagine a solution doesn't make it impossible.

If we were discussing intergalactic space travel, is it truly accurate to say its impossible because we can't overcome current obstacles? It's inane, this logic.

It seems to me you need to do a little research.

In some way, publicly funded fire stations do have a form of competition, even in urban areas.  The technology of automated fire suppression that just about every insurance company in America now requires of commercial or industrial new construction.  It makes their insurance premiums much lower to have these systems, and this is because fire companies are less necessary and over time are reduced across urban areas, for a modern fire company can 'cover' a larger area effectively and the fires that do occur are much reduced in magnitute on average.  Most commercially manufactured furniture are 'fire resistant' as compared to a couple of decades ago for similar reasons, because insurance companies demanded same.  Homeowners are still free to have a private furniture maker, such as an old Amish carpenter, to make their couch; but importers cannot import a couch that doesn't meet the UL standards for fire resistance.

And before you ask, UL is a private testing company, funded by the insurance companies themselves.  The building code just requires that manufactured (and imported) products be 'listed' by such a testing company, and the import regs make an end run around the code that much more difficult, so you could buy any random new couch and set a lit cigerette upon the cushion and it's significantly less likely (i.e. not impossible) for it to catch the whole couch (and thus the house) on fire than the fabrics that were available for couches just two decades ago.

Fire departments are desperately short of money so don't try to say that the global market for pumps is distorted by fire departments.  Most US cities are struggling to afford any new kit from what I read.

If you have a solution to the free loader problem, let me know.  So far, you haven't.

Fire departments are desperate for money because they do, in fact, overspend and have overspent. They overspend for labor and everything else because, again, there is no incentive to be profitable. You have yet to refute this.

I don't need to give you a solution. Innovations aren't free nor do they come on a whim. Just because you can't imagine it doesn't make it impossible. You have no argument in this regard.

I know that British fire services operate on below median wages and have the same cost issues.  Don't assume that because the US has messed up its city finances that the rest of the world is the same.  That refutes your whole argument that the global market for pumps is distorted by American fire departments.  

If you are proposing replacing the existing fire services, you do need to give a solution to the free rider problem.  Its great that you have ideals but unless you can demonstrate that your idea works, you can't ask people to risk being burnt to death for it.  The onus is on you to show you have something better.

The solution to the free rider problem is that of homeowners' insurance.  No mortgage officer in their right mind is going to approve a home mortgage without homeowners' insurance, and no insurance company is going to approve a policy that doesn't require that fire protection is paid and current.  So if your mortgage is paid off, and you live between two homes on a suburban cul-de-sac, and you choose to drop your fire protection fee (and thus your homeowners' insurance policy, for even if you pay them, they will refuse to pay out if you have an event) and a fire starts in your house, your outta luck.  But your neighbors are protected from your negligence via their own homeowners' insurance policies and their fire protection fees.  The fire company could show up to protect the other homes from your blaze, and charge you anything on the spot to put your home out, or simply let it burn while dousing your neighbors.  Do this once, and the free rider problem disappears.

Honestly, my experience of running a residents company is that some people won't pay unless you take them to the courtroom steps.  Just because someone across town was forced to pay at the last moment, many others will think "I will wait until I have a fire and then pay" and the whole service suffers from not having the income stream that allows it to purchase kit.

Did you have an argument to refute my 'mortgage & homeowners insurance' response to the "free rider problem"?  Or are you just musing about the difficulties that some people will impose upon a bill collector?

The difficulties for the bill collector will be the issue for those with mortgages.  Its the cash owners that you'll find harder to deal with.

You are projecting your experiences with an anticilliry institution (a residents company) to that of a protection service with a real, and significant, natural consequence for failure to pay.  Avoiding paying the homeowners' association membership fee is free interest, if there is little or no risk of adverse consequences for delay.  Large corporations do this kind of thing all of the time.  It's why they still wait to the following Friday to pay for last week's wages despite owning computerized payment systems that could literally pay you daily for today's wages.  They don't delay with payments to their own insurance companies.  Certainly some homeowners would forget or delay, but it would likely be high on the priority list for anyone who actually owned property.

As for the free rider thing....perhaps you missed the part where I received a letter in the mail that said "pay $20" per month or pay per service.

So if your house is on fire but you did not pay your monthly fee they will put the fire out. Then you get a bill for $2,000 which is covered by insurance.

Sure, you could say that that is not very free because they force you to pay even if you do not want it.

As for your example of a bunch of houses next to each other.

There was recently a news article about someone who did not pay for the fire service. This is what happened:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/

"No Pay, No Spray"

personally, I would have allowed the guy to promise to make the $2,000 payment if he really wanted it put out...but a fire company can let a house burn...

And just a personal FYI...if your house is on fire beyond just a simple kitchen fire...let it burn to the ground. The cost to clean up and fix your house is more than just clearing out some rubble and starting from scratch. And you get the full amount of insurance if it is completely destroyed.

One problem with that is that if you do that then it might be the case that nobody will pay until their house is on fire and there won't be any money to maintain the service. It's kind of like the problem with health insurance. If you allow people with pre-existing conditions to join then nobody will join until they are sick.

A fire company would probably charge a large fine for putting out a fire on a house that wasn't covered.

It doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay if nobody can afford to maintain trucks and trained labor in the interim.

If that actually happens, I am sure businesses, at the absolute least, will maintain a fire company. It's not something people will live without.

Or so you conveniently speculate because it fits your paradigm. Do you know how trucks are built? Let's take something much simpler, such as a tow truck. These are sold to private companies. How does the business model of truck building work? Do you know? I do.

Um have you ever travelled?  There are lots of towns that need decent fire services all over the world but don't have it as they can't afford it.

At first there will be several companies competing each other, but eventually they will be merged/bought by super captalists and then capital will take over the operation, finally end up in the bank's control

And, if the banks did not do a good job, you have no other choice

You mean like how there's only one pizza delivery company? One email company? One search engine company? One almost-anything-company?

What I said is correct, so I am going to assume you are talking to paraipanakos. Otherwise you need to put forth proof to show that I am wrong.

I was quoting you as he felt I was trolling when I said that there would not be 22 million Bitcoin ever.   

Sure I do, start a co-op with my neighbors.  If their service sucks, someone is going to come along and eat their lunch.

BTW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting "Modern development" has some non-speculation-based stuff about for-profit firefighters.

It's the same reason we end up with the idea of artificially capping the supply of taxi-cabs.  IMO the problem isn't that nobody wants to do these jobs or that there is no money to be made in it, which results in municipal socialization of these services.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

Economists love to shrug off market inefficiencies as mere "frictions," and there is nothing wrong with that analogy except that it may suggest that these inefficiencies are small.  Just as there is a coefficient of friction, beyond which, "frictive" forces equilibriate with "non-frictive" forces and cause motion to cease, under the right circumstances these economic "frictions" may prevent the wonderful, happy free market from realizing its beautiful inner-wholesomeness, and make us all miserable by equilibriating with market forces expected to deliver improvements to utility.

If market fundamentalists want to be taken seriously, they need to get a handle on this fact.  Most of them are, to continue the analogy, trying to sell us perpetual-motion machines that won't work.  In my opinion this is setting mankind way back, because the benefits of real economic freedom -- the hard, actually-works kind that won't magically bestow it's benefits on us without some hard decisions and difficult sacrifices -- are nowhere to be seen.  Instead, most economies are allowed by their constituents to be largely run by a lot of crazy ass motherfuckers that give economic freedom a bad name.

IMO this is why almost everybody thinks economic freedom is the most horrible thing imaginable and should be avoided at all costs.  That's a dangerous idea for an increasingly democratic world.

Wow, seems like a rip-off.

Here in Toronto, our fire services cost us about $12/month fully paid for by taxes. The free market does not always provide the most efficient solution, notably in areas of "natural monopoly", like fire services, roads, etc.

2010 fire services budget $359 million
Population of Toronto 2.5 million (2006)

Sources:

http://www.toronto.ca/fire/annual_report/pdf/tfs_2010_annual_report.pdf
http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-591/details/Page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=3520005&Geo2=PR&Code2=35&Data=Count&SearchText=Toronto&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&Custom=

Toronto is a big city, with a completely differnet market dynamic.  You can't even know how much cheaper a mature & competitive private fire protection market could be.  You can't know if it might be $8 monthy for a home.  I'd bet that the relative costs of fire protection in NYC are vanishingly small.  It's a city of concrete and steel.  Toronto is pretty much likewise, is it not?

A simple Google search shows plenty of suburbs in Toronto.

You're absolutely right that I can't know what the costs would be if there were a competitive market for fire protection would be. We can however take an educated guess that costs would be higher. This is due to the nature of fire services. An ideal fire service would have evenly distributed, well-equipped stations in order to respond to an emergency situation in as short a time as possible with the best possible equipment and staff. In a competitive market we would end up with a situation where we would either a) have multiple providers, each with fewer stations b) have multiple providers with an equivalent distribution of stations, but with less equipment and/or staff at each location c) one large provider with a de-facto monopoly on providing fire services throughout the city with even distribution of well-equipped stations.

The result:

a,b) we have good choice of provider, but there is not one provider that is as well-equipped or quick to respond as the public option. This situation occurs because unlike other markets, there is a finite demand for fire protection.
c) we have a good provider, but due to the fiduciary requirement of maximizing profit for owners/shareholders, we pay more than the public option. This can happen because the company has a de-facto monopoly and can charge more as they know they are the only good option. A company in this position can also use its cash for lobbying to make competitor entry into the market harder. This happens all the time in certain markets right now.

This is what I meant by the "natural monopoly" statement in my previous post. The same also holds true for other markets where a natural monopoly exists (mainly due to geographic constraints), for example the road system, sewers, water supply, last-mile copper/fibre/cable systems as well. Lots of other examples exist.

I for one would choose the public option. I would however be open to the idea of a third-party fire service if they were operated as a non-profit the same as the public option is. Another, less-desirable option would be to allow c) but only if it were highly regulated in order to prevent people from getting gouged. In the last case, it would be difficult to determine "fair" profits from a regulatory standpoint as well as being open to corruption.

BTW, Toronto is about 2/3 single family dwellings and small (<5 storey) apartments, as are many cities. http://www.toronto.ca/planning/pdf/housing_rental.pdf

Out of the 2.5 million, how many of them are adult tax payers?  Just curious.  The math gets a little worse if we assume that not everyone pays taxes, either because they are not adults or because they are too poor.

Obviously not since my fire station gave me an option when I moved in.

Pay $20 per month OR pay $2,000 to put out a fire when it happens.

I opted to chance it and not pay the monthly fee.

And the private fire station is still going strong with top ratings.

And...everyone is forced to pay for fire service. Some people may not want the monthly option as I did not.

For garbage service, I saw one guy who had his own garbage company. He bought a truck that could hold 6 garbage cans in the back. He would go out in the morning, pick up the full garbage can and drop off an empty. Then go drop the garbage off at the dump.

Even if he only did 6 houses per day, that is 180 houses a month times $10 each per month...$1,800 per month income just for owning a truck and making a garbage run every day. $2,600 per month if he makes two trips a day.

A corporation could buy him out. Then the next guy would go out and buy a truck and do the same thing...

One of the reasons companies take over other businesses is that you get an economy of scale that prevents newcomers.  So in your scenario, unless the company can get an economy of scale to drop the price to a point that prevents newcomers, they won't do a takeover.

There is a never-ending flow of entrepreneurs who wish to go into business for themselves, even if it means sinking their own money into it and losing it all.

The biggest thing that helps big business and hurts small business is government stepping in and helping the big business by putting restrictions which the big established companies can suck up while the small companies cannot get past. As well as subsidies and favors for those big businesses.

This happened informally in my city after a major windstorm tore through the area.  The debris was so extensive, and the city otherwise too busy with power and life safety, that the garbage wasn't getting picked up.  mostly because the garbage men have two routes each day, one before and one after lunch.  But if the truck gets full, they abandon the end of the route.  Apparently my street was near the end of that route, and garbage was getting out of hand, but the city said that they would cover the drop-off fees for city residents and then a couple of guys came buy and said that they would take all I had piled up (over three weeks) for $15.  I said "deal", and paid them cash.  They just took the bags of trash and tossed them into the bed of an old ford pickup along with what looked like half my street.

Yes, it's quite true that not all are "taxpayers", the fire service fees are based on property taxes, not income taxes, so the math does get a little worse on a per person basis. Of course, the fire service does more than just emergency house fire response as well: general 911 emergency call response, vehicle accidents, inspections, etc. The simplified numbers I showed above also do not take into account property taxes levied on businesses within the city.

FYI, residential property taxes in Toronto are just under 0.8% per annum, making a close comparison with the OP's taxes. $200k ~= $1600 annually.

It seems like the real debate is not public/private, but more rural/urban. In rural settings it may make more sense for private services, as the OP suggests. If one's house burns down in the countryside, it will not have the same impact on the community due to greater distances between dwellings. In urban/suburban settings the community needs to put out all fires or run the risk of burning the entire community down.

I would also argue that there is not a natural monopoly situation in rural settings because no one - private or public - can achieve the same kinds of economies of scale, and so the issue of monopoly is moot.

Naturally we all discuss issues from our own viewpoint and assume that solutions that work for us will work for others. In this case it's easy to see that the world is not so black and white, but more grey.

You might be right about urban areas becoming a natural monopoly situation, regardless of direct support via city government.  And, generally speaking, libs don't have a problem with natural monopolies so long as they do not become artificial ones.  If a single fire protection company gains a natural monopoly on a given cityscape, so long as no one starts getting it in their heads that, when that monopoly situation changes, said single fire protection company is 'too big to fail' then so be it. 

You are still left with the free rider problem unless there is some way to compel property owners to pay. 

There is no free rider problem.  That has already been addressed in this very thread.  Do you have memory issues, Hawker?  Doubtless you are a boomer, IMHO, due to your use of language; are you now having trouble remembering where you left your keys, too?  Why did you go into that room, anyway?

And this is what we have come to expect from our "moderators".

Thanks for the previously civil conversation.

How was I uncivil?  Hawker has a history of ignoring the solutions presented to him, I was just being jovial about it.  I'm guessing he is at least as old as I, and I'll admit that I've walked into a room and then stopped and asked myself, "Why did I come in here?"  It's simply the process of life, and it would somewhat explain his propensity to ignore certain posts.

Then again, maybe he simply has half the libs on 'ignore'.

I have a history of pointing out that if you want to change society, its best start with actual improvements.  Your fix to the free rider is to pretend it doesn't matter.  When a firetruck with a pump costs $400k and you need 2 at each fire, the free riders will make the entire service unaffordable.

See - logical and sensible correction of your fallacy - and all done without flaming people.

I don't wish to change society.  I wish to change government.  If you believe that a pair of $400K firetrucks is the only way to provide for fire protection, or even if it is that taxation is the only way to pay for it, then you suffer from a terminal lack of imagination.  There is nothing that I can say that is going to help you to reevaluate your premises, because first you would have to accept that at least one of them is wrong.

If if you really thought that I was flaming you, first I apologize, for I was just playing around; and second, now I'm certain your are a Boomer.

Its not a question of imagination.  Firemen risk their lives if they don't have the right set-up.  Trucks with pumps cost $400k.  That's the real world.  Any proposal you make that changes the real world needs to accommodate reality.

Off topic, I am not a boomer.  And no need to apologise - I know you youngsters are always kidding about :P

So do high tension linemen, but their job isn't paid for by taxes.  Who's job is more dangerous on average, a NYC cop or a NYC cabbie?  Risk is part of life, I ask, so what?


Is a new truck a requirement?  Is a pumper truck at all?  Obviously not, since firemen have been around pretty much since the Roman age.  Can a company of volunteer firemen without a brand new pumper truck compete against a fully outfitted company?  Probably not, but again so what?  Should they not have a right to try?  And besides, a $400K pumper truck is actually a pretty small venture capital business plan.  The greater cost of currently employed fire suppresssion plans is the real estate and the labor costs.  If your local town has only one firehouse, it's almost certainly already paid for and the firemen are local volunteers.  Do you think that a few of those volunteers could start a private company, should the city stop providing funds, with the help and fees of the town's wealthiest?  Or even just to cover the businesses and banks on Main Street.  Again, a terminal lack of imagination.


Any proposal that I make is irrelevent.  As is your view of reality, or what consitutes such accommodation. 

I posted earlier that a non tax based fire service is fine in rural areas.  The trucks with pumps aren't needed there.

Urban areas with tall buildings are different; they have not been around since Roman times and you need the powerful pumps.  Since the costs of this kit and of fire station buildings and staff is high, it makes sense that everyone is obligated to make a contribution. Wherever people look at this, they come up with a system where every property owner must contribute.  It may be some not state based mechanism like the town deeds but you need something.

Really?  What if only 99% of homeowners participated, whould the system fail for lack of funding?  What if only 95%?  At was point is an urban "free rider" problem really a problem?  What if that free rider has a fire, is the fire company obligated to put the fire out, because both his neighbors paid the fees?  Or simply obligated to keep his neighbors' homes wet while his burns to the ground?  What happens to that free rider then?  Everyone has a purpose in this great world.  For some, that purpose is to serve as a warning to others.

That will vary by the size of the town.  Some will struggle to get even 2 pumpers and they will need close to 100% if you have individual houses paying fire protection fees.

However, the bigger point is that its simpler to do this as part of taxation.  There is no reason to create a new administration system for billing a fire service fee, a refuse service fee, a road service fee, a town parks fee when one tax covers all and is levied democratically.

If the best argument for maintaining the status quo is simplicity at the cost of consumer choice; then well, I guess your pragmatism trumps our principle (*cough*).  However, that problem has long been solved.  It's called the 'free market' and it is that big grey animal in the middle of the room you keep ignoring.  You can't even argue that private fire protection has never been attempted, it has and does fine.  You just don't notice because it's successful.

What cities with a decent number of skyscrapers have optional fire service cover?  As in you can opt out of paying for it?

Simple private market solution.  Mortgage holders currently require homeowners insurance.  Homeowners insurance likely will put in a clause nullifying fire losses without a fire contract.  Mortgage company will foreclose for default of mortgage OR MORE LIKELY purchase fire insurance tack on penalty and charge mortagee.

Given that roughly 70% of homes have some mortgage on them 70% of households would have fire protection.  My understanding in areas that have private fire protection the number is actually higher than that.   How many people cancel their homeowners insurance after they pay off their mortgage.  Yeah some idiots do (and you see them on the news crying they lost everything) but most don't.  Fire protection would likely be similar. 

Hell I bet many homeowners insurance companies would simply wholesale drop people if they don't have adequate fireprotection.


Very few things NEED to be socialized; military is one.

If the fire service can be provided with 90% of people paying and if there is only 1 provider that will work. 

If 100% participation is required due to the city size, then it needs to be compulsory insurance.

If there are 2 or more providers but there is not enough revenue to provide 2 trucks with pumpers for each service, then a local monopoly will be needed.

But in the ideal case, I can see that idea working just fine.  As moonshadow said, the 10% can be forced to pay after they have a fire.

I didn't make that argument.  I said that the guy who tries to get by cheap without any protection and his house burns down (and his homeowners' insurance policy drops him because he is an idiot, what kind of guy would keep his homeowners and not his fire protection anyway?) would serve as a warning to others in the area to the great risk that they would be taking by cutting liabilites in this area.

No, if military was a decentralized service provided solely by the voluntary desires of the people, the world be a much more peaceful place.

Socialized military just promotes an unaccountable monopoly on force which is our problem in the first place.

Meh.  Having actually served the level of sophistication of modern weapon systems is not handled by decentralized militiamen.  Any such army would be swept aside.  It takes literrally a lifetime to become an expect in a field and some casual volenteers would by completely outmatched by trained soldiers. 

Of course that doesn't even deal with systems like nuclear weapons ICBM, ballistic submarines, etc which are simply not decentralizable.   Our military should simply be much much much much smaller.  Like 1/20th of current size but composed of lifelong veterans and using the latest technological advancements. 

Of course I have a feeling you will call me a socialist for being a realist but we will just have to agree to disagree.

Nobody said anything about casual volunteers. We're talking about private military forces.

Oh sweet love of God.  I worked w/ Blackwater in Iraq.  I trusted them less than I did the Iraqis.  Hell a bunch of them should be shot in the head for what they did over there (I am not talking about crimes against humanity I am talking about treason against the United States).  If Blackwater had access to nuclear weapons they likely would be sold to our enemies right now.    Lets not even get started on the fraud, waste, and abuse involved in these for profit companies in Iraq. 

Fuck to the no.  The Constitution doesn't say anything about handing keys to the kingdom over to private fucking armies. Yeah I know the Constitution is old and quaint but despite how often it is abused some of us still believe in it.  Private armies are an enemy of the Constitution and should be dealt with harshly.  I hope I am dead before this country gets royally fucked by the concept of privatized defense because it will be the final nail in the coffin of our grand experiment.  Time to rip of the Constitution and start over. 

The free market is great for a lot of thing, probably almost all things but when people try to make it do everything it is like a square peg into a round hole.

http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2306265&spid=

At least this city has found a way to undercut the market rate for fire protection services, they are doing the same thing that the Roman Empire did, they use slaves!

You're talking about government contractors, not a free market army. Blackwater is yet another example of our government being incompetent at regulating private businesses.


Good then. Bind yourself to it. I'll pass.


That's probably because you don't understand what a free market is. A government regulated market is exactly not that.

Actually, it does.  Private merc contracts were called "Letters of Marque" in the day, and that exact language is used in the Constitution.


Actually, the opposite is true.  Thomas Jefferson, among others, regarded standing armies as a continous threat to the republic.  Militias were, and are, privately organized military units by definition, whose membership do not answer to any direct chain of command.  The US Army and Marine Corps are not, in point of fact, continously commissioned institutions from their founding dates.  Both were dispanded for a few years following the Revolution, in part, because the Articles of Confederation did not provide any collective funding for a national military.  We didn't even have a Navy, in the modern sense anyway.  John Paul Jones is credited with being the first Naval commander during the Revolution, but at the time he was more like a merc in the modern context.


Sorry, but as I have already noted, mercs have been a part of the US defense forces since the beginning.  You were born (censored).


This is a valid argument, but the debate between private and public defense forces is a question of stragedies that the POTUS has always had the constitutional right to decide.  The fact that almost all of them has strongly favored a professional & government 'regulated' military does not alter that fact.

BTW, please watch your language.

I disagree.  The modern weapons systems are geared towards the destruction of other capital weapons of war, and thus other nation-states.  They serve little tactial value against groups of motivated militiamen who have little or no loyalty to any particular nation-state, lines on a map or strategic plot of land.  Afganistan, holding the well-earned reputation of being the place where empires invade to die, should be a case in point.  There have been almost as many US military personelle in that country as there are armed adult males of the local civilian population, and we still can't get a handle on the situation.  Such modern weapons systems would hold nearly zero tactical value for a privately defended city-state, except perhaps for the deterent effect of WMD's


Would that be a bad thing?

Modern weapons are also quite effective at extermination too.  We haven't "won" in Afghanistan because we have a mandate to limit civilian deaths.  If the goal is too simply occupy and anhilate the populace the war could be won much easier.  Tactical nuclear weapons against cities, killing field, exterminating the populace by the millions w/ chemical weapons, search and destroy.  Essentially kill every single human who isn't "us".  No worrying about "enemy" if they aren't us then they should be dead.  Then occupy the land for its natural resources and geo-strategic value.

Israel could end the Palistinian conflict overnight if they were willing to commit wholesale genocide.  Not saying they should but pretending modern weapons aren't effective at extermination just because they aren't used for that is silly.  Palistinians have militias, they have small arms and if Israel one day decided to exterminate them there is absolutely nothing they could do to slow them down.  Hell their airforce could exterminate 90%+ of the populace with minimal risk from the air.


Exactly and what if some future adversaries goal is to simply exterminate you and take your land.  Privitive weapon systems and militias would be no match for precision high yield weaponry and an adversary willing to just wipe you out.  Not just soldiers but you, your wife, your kids, everyone.

The Japanese tried this in WWII.  The occupation of mainland China for to secure space for future expansion of Japanese citizenry, part of a expanded Imperial Empire.  Only one problem; there were Chinese there.  Over the course of the war Imperial troops exterminated Chinese civilians by the tens of millions.  It wasn't considered a moral problem because the Japanese (as much as they would like to whitewash history) considered the Chinese sub-human.  Now they exterminated at least 20 million Chinese civilians and that was with circa 1940s weaponry.  Imperial troops didn't keep very good records (unlike the Nazi) so some historians believe it may be as many as 35 million Chinese citizens exterminated.  Had the Japanese possessed modern weaponry, extensive biological/chemical agents or tactical nuclear devices there may not be much of a Chinese race left today.

In a world of growing scarce natural resources the United States is a huge prize.  Thousands upon thousands of arce of high yield famland, bllions of gallons of fresh water, largest coal deposits on the planet, uranium, steel, aluminum, high tech industries, etc.

The idea that some future war will only involve force on force is naive.  What IF the goal of the enemy is simply to exterminate you in order to take your land, water, natural resources and ensure the survival of their citizens.  Many times in human history humans have been capable of considering the "other" to be subhuman and justify extermination.  It could (likely won't but could) happen again.

Are you willing to gamble not just your life but all future generation that won't happen and that primitve outdated militias will be able to withstand an enemy force willing to exterminate you for their own survival.  Not a war of conquest but a war of survival.  Do you want the underhand in that war?

Not sure what you are asking.  I am state our military should be much much smaller.  It would make foreign wars of conquest far more difficult to achieve.  I don't believe we should abandon high tech weaponry though, resort to poorly equipped militias, or privatize our national defense.

His scenario isn't realistic. Most houses have two trash cans (sometimes three, if separating yard waste, recyclables and general trash). Also, homeowners expect weekly pick ups, not monthly. Assume two cans per household, weekly pickups, and you get 30 dump trips a week with a truck that has a capacity of six cans, which is six dump trips per day. Dumps charge a dumping fee (that's six fees per day), and fuel costs (at $4 a gallon) would not cut it. Furthermore, there is registration, commercial insurance, vehicle depreciation, tires, brakes, and repairs. At the very least, an upgrade to a twelve foot stakebed truck would allow 30 cans per load (double stacked) and operation of said truck would cost about $75 to $150 a day to operate, depending on mileage. Note that this does not include dump fees.

Anybody would do an audit, and realize economies of scale are necessary, hence the use of 60,000 pound GVW garbage compaction trucks.

I can't argue against that point.  Still doesn't explain how our world is better off with huge nation-state militaries versus locally funded and concerned militias.


Sure, but I didn't claim that future was will only involve force on force.  I simply stated that is the primary design of those pricey weapons systems.  If they don't have such targets, then they don't justify their pricetags. 


Yes.  I am, as a point in fact, willing to take the risk that free men will be unwilling to contribute to a collective defense if the alternative choice is that I must trust that commanders of nation-state, taxpayer funded militaries will continue to not simply take over by coup.  Must I point out the historical fact is that during the course of the last century, more people were killed (unnaturally) by the agents of their own governments than by all other (unnatural) causes?


If you believe that real militias in America are, generally speaking, either poorly equipt or poorly trained you are sorely mistaken.  Sure, they don't have predator drones (yet, look at diydrones.com) but if you were to compare the self-funded gear of a real militia unit versus the "made by the lowest bidder" gear of a comparable light infantry unit of the US Army, the militia is likely to have both better quality gear and a more diverse set of gear, because they bought it themselves and many can afford much more than is ever issued to a infantryman.  As for training, at least half of real militias are comprised of military veterans.  The public image of such things is not reality, the militia units that actually exist are well organized and disciplined; and not remotely similar to the crazy survivalist/white supremist/Neo-Nazi BS that pervades the entertainment industry.

Small local militias will disappear when in combat with proper armies backed by foreign states.  So if you don't have a nation state military with control over the territory of your nation state, your terroty becomes a warfield.  Each battle will reduce the number of militias by at least one and eventually only one military force will be left.  You can call that remaining force the government as they own you.

I totally quote you.

While I don't like a monopoly on force, I kind of see your point. Nation-states would probably collectively force their citizens to contribute to WMDs and other similar mass extinction superiorly efficient (one to many) types of weapons. They, in fact, already do this of course.

Would a society of libertarians be cooperative enough to work together and match in a tit-for-tat, a struggle for mutually assured destruction game-play that other nation-states engage in?

The real question is: would libertarian societies be able to survive in a sea of collective-force nation-states using competitive enforcement agencies, if their lands were significantly rich enough in resources (a worthwhile target)? Or would a libertarian society be able to match force for force, weapon for weapon, combine militias and armies in a united manner to effectively defend against a nation-state's invading army all without violating their charter?

That's your opinion.  I'm sure that we can both present historical examples of small local militias either running in abject fear or standing their ground, both before and after the US Revolutionary War.  Again, I've served.  I doubt that you have.  You speak as one who has book knowledge of the military, not direct experience.  And many, if not most, of the kind of person that considers himself a 'militiaman" is the same kind of person that volunteers for military service during an active national conflict.  My eight year old son has no irises, (acute bioccular anaridia, can't adjust to light at all, wears self-tinting eyeglasses to compensate) and can barely see his targets in full sun, but could thread an eye socket with his 22lr bolt action from across the backyard in moonlight.  It's entirely different when your targets are shooting back at you, though, and there is really no way to judge that until it were to occur.  No military plan of action ever survives contact with the enemy.

Logically, if there is a dispute that results in 2 militias fighting, the dispute ends when the battle is over and 1 militia is destroyed.

So there is only 1 militia left where there was 2.

If you have 200 militias in a society, that means that after a while, there will be just one left.  Of course there will be alliances, betrayals, etc but eventually, only one will prevail.

You draw some amazing conclusions. You wouldn't happen to have a crystal ball would you? Do you read palms too? I need some advice about my future.

Feel free to correct me.  My understanding, which is only based on shootouts between the IRA and the British Army, is that at the end of the battle, only one side survives.

Perhaps you have examples of battles where both sides win?

I remember reading somewhere about battles that some European city states would fight.  Often they were more like chess matches were the armies would try to outmaneuver each other and gain some strategic advantage and when one believed themselves to be in a losing position they would surrender or call for negotiations.  The loss of life was often nil or very minimal and conflicts were resolved without extermination of the enemy or even occupation of the opposing city.  I'll try to find the source I read about this so you don't accuse me of making it up.  :)

Edit:  It was in "The myth of national defense: essays on the theory and history of security" by Hans Hermann Hoppe.  He was talking about the Italian city states. Ultimately, though, the Italian city states are no longer around so I suppose you could still argue your point.  It's all about the time scale you look at things in.

Its a very relevant example.  But my concern is about the idea of independent courts and independent police forces.

For example, lets take an inheritance dispute over a house.  Court 1 gives the property to Jimmy and court 2 gives it to Johnny.  Each refuses to accept the other's court and each retains a police force.

At some point, the two police forces are going to have to fight it out.  If either backs down, they will lose all their customers as who wants a police force that runs away from danger?

After the fight, Johnny or Jimmy will have the house.  And there will be only 1 police force left of the 2 that "competed" as the other will be a list of dead and wounded.

Given how many legal disputes a civil society generates every single day, even if you start with 100 police forces, after 100 days you will be down to 1 or 2 and within a year you are down to 1.  And the guy who owns that police force and that court is effectively in control.  A dictator has been created.

This is a real possibility.  But it could work out differently as well.  What if the two courts agree to submit their dispute (and abide by the ruling) to a third court?  This might be a pre-existing agreement or one they decide upon once they realize the only other alternative is war.  It certainly would be a cheaper alternative than fighting it out with the other court as war is expensive.  Or the court with the smaller police force might decide to submit to the larger force, but would compensate the victim who loses his property with the market equivalent + whatever inconvenience/emotional damage amount.  In that case they would still have their police force and might still keep their reputation as a just and able court.

It's hard to say how a situation like this would actually work out, and there will almost certainly be some situations where the case will work out as you anticipate: with war and one court and police force being eliminated.  However, it is just as likely that many (if not more) cases will work out as I've described with peaceful outcomes that leave both courts and police forces intact. Peaceful solutions tend to be less expensive and better for business than non-peaceful ones.

Also, if there is a market for arbitration and protection, any courts and police forces destroyed would likely be replaced by others as entrepreneurs enter the field seeking profits believing they can do better than the previous competition.  I see no reason to believe that there will be a fixed number, X, of courts and they will slowly bleed out to leave just one.  Why wouldn't new courts spring up to meet demand?

Finally, I'm not sure that all or even most of the civil disputes would end up in two different courts.  At least some of these disputes would end up in a single court.  For example, Hawker and Script have a dispute about the boundary between their avocado farms.  We might demand to go to different courts we might agree to go to the same court and abide by its ruling.  If we feel that the court has decided fairly in the past (and the courts that are most fair will be the ones still around) we might be likely to agree to abide by its ruling up front.  Furthermore, I don't think that all conflicts have to end with one side winning and one side losing.  Often disputes can be handled in a way that allows both parties some some measure of justice.  Personally, I think negotiating one on one will often end up in better results (as Coase demonstrated) but realize that everyone will have that mindset.

Anyway, that's my long ramble.  Feel free to point out things you think are unrealistic or inconsistent.  I'm still thinking through the idea of private courts and how/if they would work out.  I just don't think it's quite as simple a picture as you paint it where you start with a fixed number of courts and all conflicts end in one court being annihilated. 

(P.S. Sorry for the late response.  I'm not on this forum very much these days....too much going on in 'real' life.  ;) )

The courts are in competition.  No-one in their right minds will go pay a court a fee to make a decision only for the court to say "We will let someone else decide since it would be expensive for us to tell you what the law is."

We don't have a single large mining pool, despite strong incentives to consolitate. Why can't police forces and courts follow the same trends, with no one wanting to give a single entity 50%+ of control?

A mining pool can't be removed by force.  A court system that is in competition with another force will either destroy it or be irrelevant.  If its irrelevant, it will go out of business.  So the logic of the market is that there will be a monopoly.

Unless people see more than 50% control as a threat and chose to go with competitors.
(Mining pools can't use their proceeds to buy DDOS attacks against competitors?)

Sorry, but this is pure assertion.  If two courts have a pre-existing arrangement to go to a third one for arbitration when they don't agree why wouldn't someone still pay to take their case to one of the first two courts?  The question is: Will it be more beneficial for you to have your court fight another court, in which case you may lose your property anyway as well as possibly your life, or have the case settled peacefully by a third court?  Neither option is a foregone conclusion.  There will almost certainly be instances of both, and to me, it seems likely that there will be many more of the latter case.

We are talking about competing courts which means different legal rules.  For example, if a will is disputed, one court may use the evidence of beneficiaries to judge if there was undue influence and another may bar the evidence of beneficiaries.  So a will that one court holds valid will be held invalid in another. 

Now, if the two courts have a pre-existing arrangement to go to a third one for arbitration when they don't agree, why does either of them exist?  People will go straight to the third court system and pay the fee there.  There can't be a market for courts that make legal decisions that even the court itself doesn't regard as valid law!

I think in your example, the court that the deceased chose to enter their will with will have the final say, and if any dispute does arise, both parties will have to agree on a court before proceeding. Yes, even if it's directly the third arbitrage one. Though I can't see two competing lines of law emerging. Just like today, some court will eventually settle the difference between then, and others will simply adopt it.

The whole concept is of ideas like Sharia law, Common Law, Roman Law and so on competing sine there won't be a legislature and there won't be any official body with law making authority.

And as a matter of law, in any system, if the argument is that the deceased was improperly influenced then it likely doesn't matter where they entered their will.

Can you think of an example where one person wants to take it to a sharia court, the other wants to take it to common law court, neither can agree on a court, and someone's rights get infringedon due to lack of court decision?

Courts will always give a decision.  The issue is that it won't be the same decision.

If a court can't stay consistent, no one will trust it, nor use it.

Exactly!  So if you have multiple competing courts to begin with, after a few conflicts where the one with the ability to enforce its decisions wins, it will end up being a monopoly.  The head of its enforcement agency will be an effective dictator.

The generally accepted law will be a monopoly. If there's a court that's a monopoly, and it starts being inconsistent with its decisions in order to manipulate outcomes for its own benefit, people won't trust it and won't use it. Two people having a dispute can easily go to their elder to help them decide the issue in front of a jury of their neighbors, based onestablished law they already trust. There's really no barrier to entry when it comes to setting up a court, besides trust, and that's already established in local communities.

Yeah, that. Monopolies exist when barriers to entry are high. Completely forgot about that. Courts dfon't have those.

If you have created a situation where one private company owns the courts and the police, anyone who tries to set up against them has to face the likelihood of being killed in a legal dispute.

Being killed is a fairly high barrier to entry, don't you agree?

Considering most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other, I don't see why bloodshed would be involved. How would they prevent the two parties from going to their own arbitrator/judge, or even be aware of a dispute in the first place?

You are avoiding the point.  Of course people who have no need for the court won't use it.  Why would they? But people who do have disputes that require litigation will end up with a monopoly provider and that provider will become an unelected government. 

Where did you get "people who have no need for the court" from  "most disputes are about how much the one who screwed up needs to pay the other" ? What do you think people use courts for???

From "arbitrator/judge, or even be aware of a dispute in the first place?" - that sounds like a dispute that can be resolved without litigation doesn't it?

Arbitrator or judge being involved is litigation. If you are reffering to breaking laws, without a central government there wouldn't be any laws to break, and protection of property by private security would be a separate issue

Arbitration means no litigation.

Property, domestic violence, divorce, child care, contract, probate, the list of things that laws need to address is long.  My point is that if there is a free market in courts with each court able to make its own rules, there will end up being only 1 court as the rest get eliminated dispute by dispute.  And when that one is left,it will have all the powers of a government.

Not necessarily all the powers of a government, as this was not the case for British common law, which was developed as case law over generations without much interaction or support from the British crown.  However, I do see your point.  You assume that any consolidation of judicial (or perhaps otherwise) power will eventually become indistingishable from a deliberate government structure, so we might as well keep the devil we know, right?  This is a rational point, but not necessarily a correct one.  The ongoing consolidation of such powers assumes that the public does nothing to contradict it, for which we have a real example of a society that actively avoids majority concentrations of power despite the very real advantages to consolidation of power.  Namely the Bitcoin pools, which are not permitted to exceed (or even dramaticly approach) a 50% total network hashrate.  Users don't attack the pools to prevent it (well, most don't) they either switch pools or drop into solo mining to prevent individual pools from hitting that mark.

Actually the common law only existed in the Royal courts.  The Crown/State was and remains actively involved.

Bitcoin pools can co-exist.  Competing systems of law cannot - one will end up being the supreme law.

Actually, your history is bullshit.  British common law was not developed by the crown nor the courts established by the crown.  The crown didn't give it any credence at all up almost until the Magna Carta, which itself was law developed against the will of the crown.  And there is plenty of existing examples of competing systems of law that coexist.  One such example is the International Business Court, which had (has?) zero government backing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Medieval_English_common_law

Feel free to point to the period in history where the common law was not the king's law. 

Well, wikipedia isn't the end all, but it's right there in the section that you linked to, in the preamble...

"The term "common law" originally derives from the reign of Henry II of England, in the 1150s and 1160s. The "common law" was the law that emerged as "common" throughout the realm (as distinct from the various legal codes that preceded it, such as Mercian law, the Danelaw and the law of Wessex)[29] as the king's judges followed each other's decisions to create a unified common law throughout England. The doctrine of precedent developed during the 12th and 13th centuries,[30] as the collective judicial decisions that were based in tradition, custom and precedent.[31]

And there is this...

"In 1154, Henry II became the first Plantagenet king. Among many achievements, Henry institutionalized common law by creating a unified system of law "common" to the country through incorporating and elevating local custom to the national, ending local control and peculiarities,"

Granted Henry II gets much credit for acting as a unifying force, but Common law was derived from local customary laws that developed independently of the crown, due mostly to a vacuum of judges in the preceding couple centuries.  At most, however, he established the intent to unify the law, he didn't do it.  There were judges that existed before Henry II, that had no backing whatever from the crown.  It is from these local judges that common law received it's base.

I've not the time nor inclination to educate you, so if you really would like to enlighten yourself, I suggest you start with Whatever Happened to Justice by Rich Maybury and The Path of the Law

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Moonshadow - read your own post.  "...the king's judges..." <- that gives a hint of royal involvement doesn't it?

The second quoted section says you're wrong. Also, USA follows common law, and we don't have kings or royals (well, except me, but my title is meaningless here)

You have a real problem with observational evidence, don't you?  Are you a defense lawyer?

You have a problem reading.  The common law only existed in Royal courts.  The court it was created in was called the King's Bench. 

ExistED or exist? It still exists...

He is talking about medieval history as proof that law can exist without a state. 

No, I'm talking about how courts can exist without explicit state support, and can coexist with it.  Your incomplete knowledge of history notwithstanding, there are a couple dozen other examples of the same in human history.  The history of the tweleve tribes of Israel is another well documented case.  The history of the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy is another well documented case.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Government)  Neither of these actual historical examples consisted of a government (or even a definable state) as we would define one today.

(Iroquois political and diplomatic decisions are made on the local level, and are based on assessments of community consensus. A central government that develops policy and implements it for the people at large is not the Iroquois model of government.)

Yet both had semi-formal courts with judges, appointed by no one at all, unless you consider the Book of Judges to be authoritative in understanding and recording the will of God.  They came to exist, because people had real disputes, and in the absence of a formal resolution (and considering combat is not in the best interests of either party) would agree to seek out a third party trusted by both parties.  This is what is now known as arbitration and is a major part of what courts actually do for "society" or the "free market".  There is a natural human desire for "justice", and it can be seen in children not even old enough to talk.  If you feel that you have been wronged by your sibling, what do you do first?  Do you tell mommy, hit your sibling & take back your toy, or try to argue that you have been wronged?  Surely some will do each of these things, but both running to tell mommy and arguing with your sibling are examples that humans are born with an innate sense of property right, for if we were not then every dispute over a toy would invariablely lead to a fight.  It's this sense of, shall we call it "natural law", that leads a three year old to complain that the other kid took the toy out of his hands, as there is a natural expectation that everyone else should understand the basic law as well, even if they can't express it as such.  Neither courts, nor governments, make this stuff up.  At best, they discover it and encode it into their statutes.  But statutes that don't make sense to the common man are not laws, but simply the deliberate and discriminate use of force to favor one group of citizens over another.

I do believe I have mentioned the newly forming international law and arbitrage system, that is being created to shtat multinagiona corporations can settle disputes when the litigated actions did not take place in any specific country? Those laws and courts are existing outside of states and state laws, and are being created entirely voluntarily by businesses and corporations themselves. This is also why i've said before that trying to prove how a libertarian system is bad is pointless, since we are slowly moving to it on a global scale anyway, so might as well spend your time trying to figure out how it works and how to live with it.

From what I see, multinationals sue in normal courts.  Check out apple and samsung.

They are suing in a court of the country that issued the pattent, since that is a dispute. Had the issue been defective hardware from Samsung, or Apple not honoring a contract to pay for Samsung's hardware, Apple would've wanted to settle this is US court, Samsumng in Korean court, and both would likely end up settling in international court.
I'm not making this international court thing up. It's a real issue that businesses are trying to solve.

A court requires the ability to issue a summons so that if one party to the dispute is refusing to show up, he can be forcibly brought to court.  I don't think you are thinking of courts but of arbitration venues.

No it doesn't :P If Apple and Samsung are doing business, it would be mutually beneficial for them to continue to do business, so both have an incentive to get the issue settled. Summons is usually needed for things like tort (intentional or unintentional harm). And if Apple or Samsung doesn't show up, there's not much the other party can do other than to never do business with them again.

So Peter cheats Paul in a business deal.  Peter sues Paul to get his money back.  Paul refuses to attend court.  And Peter is told "And if Paul Apple or Samsung doesn't show up, there's not much the other party can do other than to never do business with them again."

That's an interesting twist on justice.

First of all, businesses are not stupid enough to cheat other businesses. If you cheat someone, no other business will ever deal with you, and you might as well close shop. If the issue is that Peter promised working gadgets to Paul by a certain date, and the gadgets came in a week late with a lot of them broken, after which Paul decided not to pay Peter, then either Paul can walk away from the settlement, and risk others not wanting to deal with him out of fear he won't pay them either, or they can both come together for a mutually agreed upon decision, such as Paul will pay Peter for the gadgets, and will older another full batch, but will pay 1/3rd the price for the new batch. Both companies get what they want in that case.

People cheat on contracts all the time and they do just fine.  That's why litigation is needed.

You're projecting.  What business are you in, again?

Software and property.  I regularly have had people settle cases as we wait outside the judges' chambers.  And I'm sure you know that most people have the same experience. Litigation is a peaceful alternative to having to physically force people to pay up.

Ah, you are a lawyer, then.

A copyright lawyer, no less.  No wonder you refuse to listen.  It's impossible to get a educated person to see the truth when his income is dependent upon him not seeing it.

:|

Where the hell do you live? Even corrupt cesspools like mafia ridden Russia, Bulgaria, and southern Italy, and lawless places like Somalia value contracts highly and have severe penalties for breaking them.

Oh... Why did they settle if they knew the judge would likely give them the same judgement/settlement? Or are all your cases usually the type where the person settling would otherwise get severe punishments?

In the property world there is a long tradition of people refusing to pay until they are on the court steps.  The logic is that while you are suing, the bank may be threatening to foreclose on you so the guy being sued has the leverage to get a better deal from you than he originally agreed to.