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Thread: Alternative Solutions to Government Ran Services

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    Default Alternative Solutions to Government Ran Services

    Government services are funded by taxes and thus tend to have an advantage (if not outright monopoly) to free market solutions, even if there would be more optimal solutions available. So I've been thinking about lots of alternative solutions to things typically ran by government that humans could come up with in the absence of government and I want to challenge you to do the same in this thread.

    This thread isn't about debating whether libertarianism is optimal for society but for discussing alternatives that the free market could provide. If you want to debate about libertarianism with me, I'll be happy to let you present your case for state's superiority in another thread.

    Feel free to modify or build upon the ideas that are represented, but to shoot them down bluntly is just not constructive, fun nor creative.
    “I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden

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    Decadent Charlatan Aquagraph's Avatar
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    Roads

    -A certain faction controlling a certain section of the road could electronically register a driver in the beginning of the section and at the end of the section. First timers would have to drive aside to set up an account and could give out something that the sensors at the electronic booths could pick up. These signals might become standardized in order not to have to register to every road like this. Below I will represent good uses for this solution.

    -The payment could drastically increase if that section is passed too fast which would decrease speeding. If somebody constantly would drive too fast, it would restrict their access in the future. It could be programmed to charge more if there is too much delay as long as it doesn't suffer from traffic often. Then again I'm sure there might be ways to adjust the price of slowness to traffic via automated traffic calculating surveillance. With traffic calculation it could also adjust the prices during high traffic times so that the traffic would disperse more effectively thus improving the driving experience.

    -If a road would be controlled by residents nearby, they could give significant discounts to themselves. As a possible bonus, since it's likely your children or your neighbour's children are playing there, there might even be more incentives to drive more safely. This might be good for tight-knit family-oriented communities.

    -With enough studying the driving patterns that lead to safety issues, the surveillance monitoring might be able to pick up unsteady driving of individuals and charge them more or restrict access. If this could be determined accurately, it would decrease reckless driving that happens with drunken or inexperienced drivers. If this is effective, it will let judge people by their ability, not by external symptoms that often strongly correlate with that ability, such as drunkenness. Therefore a man who can hold his liquor better than the guy next to him could drive without penalization even if he had two glasses instead of one while recklessly sleepy drivers would be penalized for endangering the traffic. This alone might very well not be enough to ensure safety.

    -Societies could develop and inform about symbols in the street signs that quickly tell which kind of contracts you will be bound for entering into a road, just like Creative Commons works. For the sake of fairness, an opportunity to turn around could be provided. How this fairness is controlled might be something that is up to dispute resolution organizations to decide.

    -Traffic jams that happen in highway accidents could be untangled with a crane-equipping service vehicle that could maybe specialize in driving on the unpaved terrain next to the road. As highways tend to be long these vehicles could have several checkpoints to pick up their detachable cranes from so that they could travel light as a crane platform. It might be able to do this with a specialized helicopter. I'm really unsure about the cost-efficiency of these solutions, but maybe you could improve on this idea?

    -Environmentally friendly communities could also register vehicles on their roads by the amount of pollution or noise they create. Then again, as pollution is a harm on the surroundings, this might be a job for the dispute resolving agencies.

    -If a private faction doesn't want to sell land for a company building a road, that company could improve their offer to that faction by offering a contract that gives a portion of the road's income on that section of the road. The contract could involve an increased payment to the original owner of the land if there is a lot of polluting or noisy traffic if the the feature mentioned above is implemented.

    -Residents owning a nearby road could also regulate what stores get access. If it's a conservative community, they might want to deny an entrance to a liquor stores, bars, gun stores, gay discoes or other things they don't want near their homes. Of course the more they restrict, the less jobs there will be nearby and the more homogenous the residents will be.

    -If an owner identifying car registration is implemented, they could deny the access to vehicles owned by criminals made public by the watchdog agencies.

    -Many of these solutions might be decided to be implemented democratically or vote-per-stock-share basis depending on the contracts that apply to the situation at hand.
    “I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden

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    Easy one. What you're looking for is in Africa. Africa, Africa! God shed his grace on thee. In Paris, it is over...

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    Glorious Member mu4's Avatar
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    I think the main thing about the useful roads is that they have freedom of movement for all individuals, highly restricted roads have little to no utility. Roads without predictable regulation and fees are also highly suspect and lack utility. Al-through some roads are used mostly by the community in question, community control is in effect a form of government control. The solution you propose has a lot of technology which in effect penalize the user every time they enter or exit the road, this is imo very inefficient. The key to a road's utility is it's freedom of use and relative lack of restrictions on access for individuals and commerce. Any sort of access denial or restriction mechanism that is allowed to be implemented is generally a bad thing, tolls are imo one of the worst road features as are toll based lanes on the highway.

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    Hkkmr, the road specialist.

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    @hkkmr, the very point of this thread is to suggest free market solutions. What would be yours based on your preferences for roads?
    “I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden

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    Glorious Member mu4's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aquagraph View Post
    @hkkmr, the very point of this thread is to suggest free market solutions. What would be yours based on your preferences for roads?
    I don't think a market solution is possible for road regulation and my preference for roads is relatively unfettered public access. You can have private roads tho, just on private property.

    Speed limits and road use rules can still apply, but open and public access is what matters. If you want to involve the market in building the roads or maintaining the roads that's fine, just hire people from companies, but the roads themselves should be regulated by the public and whatever public organization evolves within the communities. I don't think you can apply market rules to public policy, they don't really work in that domain. Wherever there is an issue where public policy considerations are necessary, it cannot be dealt with by only private interests without petty despotic-ism.

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    i like guacamole but thats not the fucking point of the thread

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    .
    Last edited by Ainfigur; 03-20-2014 at 08:27 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aquagraph View Post
    This thread isn't about debating whether libertarianism is optimal for society but for discussing alternatives that the free market could provide. If you want to debate about libertarianism with me, I'll be happy to let you present your case for state's superiority in another thread.

    Feel free to modify or build upon the ideas that are represented, but to shoot them down bluntly is just not constructive, fun nor creative.
    ^^ ahem

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    Quote Originally Posted by lungs View Post
    ^^ ahem


    but it's so silly.

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    i've always been curious what libertarians envision when they imagine a world where the free market runs everything, so this is a lot more interesting to me than having a 38275th thread where people wave their political opinions around. you can make yet another thread for that if you want. its kinda egotistical and selfish to just come in here and change the subject saying that the original topic isn't good enough

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    I skimmed through quickly without reading, so I apologize. A discussion on the practicality of these ideas was inevitable though.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aquagraph View Post
    Roads
    ...
    most if not all of these sound like community-based consensus-oriented solutions. effectively making them socialist undertakings.

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    I'm very disappointed by the lack of creativity in this thread. Seriously. I didn't write the roads post for long but I was in no loss of ideas although I don't know jackshit about roads. Although I specified that this isn't about debating whether it would work, people still come here rudely and defensively point out flaws of libertarianism.

    You are free to believe that it doesn't work as well but imagine that the government would be an impossibility in the region you live, what would you suggest as a solution?
    Surely people wouldn't just stay in their houses because there were no public roads.
    “I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aquagraph View Post
    I'm very disappointed by the lack of creativity in this thread. Seriously. I didn't write the roads post for long but I was in no loss of ideas although I don't know jackshit about roads. Although I specified that this isn't about debating whether it would work, people still come here rudely and defensively point out flaws of libertarianism.

    You are free to believe that it doesn't work as well but imagine that the government would be an impossibility in the region you live, what would you suggest as a solution?
    Surely people wouldn't just stay in their houses because there were no public roads.
    people won't stay in their houses, they'll change the intensity of their road use. the case you have to make is that private roads would be less expensive to use than public roads for the economy as a whole to grow faster.

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    Glorious Member mu4's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by lungs View Post
    ^^ ahem
    I'm not debating libertarian-ism, I am more or less a libertarian, but a left-one, I'm simply point out that free market solutions to "roads" exists and that basically involve private business building roads or private roads. And that public roads by nature of being public need to be public and not private. As long as public interest exist in a domain, you can't have a purely private solution without some level of despotic-ism. I have provided a solution and it has market elements, it's not a ideological fantasy one either.

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    Silly thread is silly.

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    Quote Originally Posted by xerx View Post
    people won't stay in their houses, they'll change the intensity of their road use. the case you have to make is that private roads would be less expensive to use than public roads for the economy as a whole to grow faster.
    AND THAT CASE IS NOT TO BE DISCUSSED IN THIS THREAD

    Click here to go to the less cluttered version for this thread.

    Click here to present your case for the superiority of the state.
    “I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden

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    Quote Originally Posted by Aquagraph View Post
    You are free to believe that it doesn't work as well but imagine that the government would be an impossibility in the region you live, what would you suggest as a solution?
    Surely people wouldn't just stay in their houses because there were no public roads.
    As I said before as long as public interest is in the domain of road use which it is, any sort of private only solution is little more than petty despotic-ism. People wouldn't stay in their house but people who live in the property of others with no rights to the roads are generally called slaves or false imprisoned in today's society. Freedom of movement, as in free as in beer, is tantamount to any sort of libertarian society. Roads should be free period for individuals within a community regardless if they can pay or not, and the stake holders(government or business) should pay whatever cost it takes to maintain it, and it should be relatively unregulated. It should be paid by people who can afford to pay for it and free to all individuals who are unable to pay because a free society cannot severely restrict the movement of its individuals, libertarian or otherwise.

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