The Surveilance State

[Skipjack]

It could be a double edged sword we could use to reduce the government. Government justifies it existence by providing services that could not be provided by private industry. I.e it would be too cumbersome to charge for road use if all the city streets were private with owner changing every cross section. Imagine all the fee collection check points... It is cheaper and better solution to collect taxes so the government builds and maintains roads.. until you can have a GPS device that can track and collect fees for road usage.

I do aggree with you to some extent here. I think that private corporations (with very few exceptions) by their nature do not have the wellfare of the other citizens in mind, but to maximize profit. The two are in most cases mutually exclusive.
That said, nobody prevents the government from using the free market and private companies for taking care of these roads. The problem is that the way these projects are assigned are not always completely understandable for the general public and often, the abuse happens on that level. By making the selection and payment process more clear to the public, one can avoid these issues however. E.g. the COTS and commercial crew competition and fixed cost way of using private companies for space access, versus the old cost plus single provider way of doing things for the SLS.

[pbelter]

I think that private corporations (with very few exceptions) by their nature do not have the wellfare of the other citizens in mind, but to maximize profit. The two are in most cases mutually exclusive.

I don't think profit and public good are mutually exclusive. Free market makes ensures they are aligned. When I go to buy a car the car manufacturer makes a profit and I have a means of transportation. Both sides benefit.

Transportation and roads are services like any other. So far they are government run because this arrangement was most efficient but this is no longer the case.
Government is an interesting type of institution. Like any other organization it has a natural tendency to grow but unlike all other institutions it does not have to compete for money for its growth based on the quality of the services it provides. Instead it uses its power to coerce people to pay for those services trough taxation regardless of the usage and of the quality of the service provided. It often abuses it powers making one group of citizens paying for services provided to another. When one must turn profits of one's labor to pay for goods and services for other people it meets the definition of slavery.
To avoid it it is better to keep the government out of providing any service that can be provided on contractual basis by consenting individuals.

Historically there have been many attempts to limit potential for government abuse by incorporating checks and balances, but with no healthy competition it is a question of time before those fail safes fail. In US they failed during FDR presidency.

There has been one interesting experiment in medieval Iceland where they had a non territorial principle of government. There were several competing governments on the island and if somebody did not like the service level provided by their government they could quit it and to a competitor without the need to move.

I am hoping that technologies like Polywell, 3D printing maybe LENR will allow us one day to be self sufficient to the point where we can still live comfortably and at the same time go on strike refusing to make any income that can be taxed...
I am on a lookout for a technology that would allow making food using only electricity. When you have unlimited energy, unlimited food and can print any object you need, including your house using a 3D printer few people will need any government for any other reason than to make sure they will not get assaulted and that there is a power to enforce any deals they may choose to make with a third party. And this is what the government was originally for.

[Betruger]

Absolutely. Sooner or later we must start to plan for and implement our own perestroika. Post scarcity is coming, sooner or later.

[Diogenes]

It could be a double edged sword we could use to reduce the government. Government justifies it existence by providing services that could not be provided by private industry. I.e it would be too cumbersome to charge for road use if all the city streets were private with owner changing every cross section. Imagine all the fee collection check points... It is cheaper and better solution to collect taxes so the government builds and maintains roads.. until you can have a GPS device that can track and collect fees for road usage.

I do aggree with you to some extent here. I think that private corporations (with very few exceptions) by their nature do not have the wellfare of the other citizens in mind, but to maximize profit. The two are in most cases mutually exclusive.

One need only look around at the vast array of consumables produced by these profit seeking corporations to realize the above sentences constitutes a form of incredible naivete. It was by chance that I happened to look at this message, and thereby once again give one of your postings an opportunity to impress me, (lately I have been ignoring anything which says "skipjack") and once again you have... just not in a positive way. Back to ignoring you.

[hanelyp]

There has been one interesting experiment in medieval Iceland where they had a non territorial principle of government. There were several competing governments on the island and if somebody did not like the service level provided by their government they could quit it and to a competitor without the need to move.

How would that work? If you had a grievance with your neighbor, would your government or theirs hear the case? If your government decided they owed you compensation and theirs disagreed, then what?

[palladin9479]

I think that private corporations (with very few exceptions) by their nature do not have the wellfare of the other citizens in mind, but to maximize profit. The two are in most cases mutually exclusive.

Not so much mutually exclusive as the private corporation has no incentive for public good and all the incentive for maximized profit. Accomplishing public good is a side effect or afterthought obtained while maximizing profit. It's partially the governments job to ensure private industry doesn't do intentional public harm (safe food / products / ect..). In a sense the government acts as a balance weight against corporate greed (maximizing profits with no effort towards public good). Of course governments being obtuse, obese and clumsy entities by nature tend to add layers upon layers of red tape and efficiency into private industry.

Ultimately you need a balance between the two, private corporations without regulation would seek to create monopoly's that limit competition and thus allow them to maximize profits while producing unsafe products. Too much regulation stifles creation & invention and thus bloats the efficiency of private industry. Private Corporations are not bad things, though they should never be trusted to look out for anything other then their own bottom line.

[pbelter]

How would that work? If you had a grievance with your neighbor, would your government or theirs hear the case? If your government decided they owed you compensation and theirs disagreed, then what?

I don't know that much about it, but I imagine it would work the same way as if you lived in an US border town and had a grievance with a Canadian citizen today. On top of that the strong competition between the governments ensured that they were just. People would switch from a government that was perceived as unjust in assessing the penalty to the one seen as fair. This would limit situations where the governments disagreed. The other government had to keep in mind that if they are seen as unjust they may loose you as a potential customer plus all the other people who see their opinion as unjust.

I found an interesting article of how it worked here. They had a very interesting concept of justice. The law was not about punishment but was centered around compensation for a crime. If nobody could demand compensation for damage, then there was no crime. There was no concept of self inflicted crimes as drug abuse. Compensation was not necessarily monetary. If somebody got killed and the murderer was convicted it gave the family, community or any other party that brought in the lawsuit the right to hunt down the killer. This right could be but didn't have to be exercised. But the execution of the law could be also outsourced.

People who were too poor to go into litigation could sell their right to damage to a party that could pursue the litigation and stood to profit from it. It was all about free market. The system ultimately failed when 5 families gained monopoly that led to limited competition between the governments, that ultimately let to a revolt against them.