do you really think that there's a difference in a monopoly of one provider vs. a few number of indistinguishable providers? Look at the telecom industry in Canada.
No they don't, they have a strong stake in ensuring continued profits. You're assuming that this insurance is like the service industry (which itself doesn't inherently rely on being the best at service, but that is where a fair proportion of earned money comes from). It's not. Thi will set up a system of patronage, where the richest around can afford to fund the specific groups thy want, capable of leaning on them at will. The money involved is not as cost-prohibitive for services rendered as you're claiming it is. As long as a specific company is making money, they can do whatever they want, including undercutting opposition and creating their own monopoly in a smaller area. It's like robber barons all over again.Checks and balances are not at all absent in an anarcho-capitalist system. As I already pointed out, people who don't like the policing agency they subscribe to can end their subscriptions in a moment's notice. I'm not really seeing how rich people would oppress poor people in different manners that they currently do. Courts and law enforcement agencies have a strong stake in being fair, otherwise no one will buy their services.
At this point, I should mention that quantity of customers are not as much of a balance as quality of customers/patrons. Look at the current insurance systems in place, identify their problems then apply them to security. In Ontario, for example, car insurance is the highest in the country and also mandatory. The difference between insurance providers has nothing to do with the quality of the product they offer so much as the rate at which they provide it. The actual consumer has no power over these unwieldly behemoths, except saving hundreds of dollars switching between them. If anyone who is experienced with the health insurance industry in America wants to throw something in here (as the difference between a provincially/state mandated insurance vs. elective insurance), I know this idea will look even worse.
To be conspiracy theorist about this, if a wealthy enuogh group of people, or a local company (who would have even more of a stake in security and more money to throw around than individual consumers such as yourself), want to buy out the watchdog agency, it wouldn't be impossible. There's enough difficulties in regulating businesses that are currently operating - look at the track record of the FDA, as an example. Citing idealism over profiteering as the driving force behind any business (which is what you'd turn policing into) is fucking absurd. What happens, then, when the few, wealthy organizations with huge monetary backing start making rules that the other groups cannot enforce?Why wouldn't there be checks and balances on policing agencies? People clearly have an interest in obtaining efficient, fair, and non-aggressive services (a police agency that goes around getting involved in fights it doesn't have to would see a spike in its liabilities without any corresponding spike in profits)--so is it really so hard to believe that they'd form consumer reporting and watchdog agencies for police forces?
What policies are you talking about that need to be changed? Most of the problems that stem from this are people who are going against current regulations and setting up their own system of law under the name of policing. The youtube videos that get posted aren't against the institution, they're against specfic wrongdoers who operate against the policies involved, but under the name of the institution. To top it off, there is even less incentive in a supposed free-market policing to be 'fair' and 'just' (let's not forget, for example, what people are trying to pull in Wisconsin - redefining what is 'public interest') than there is in the current sustem. Switching systems won't work because there's only going to be the few who are deep in the pockets of their benefactors keeping charge, not the wealth of mom-and-pop policing systems that you can switch between at willAs it is, right now, you can act as a police watchdog, and while you might get videos on YouTube and stuff, you can't really force the police to change their policies. It's enough of a nightmare to try to get a cop fired--whereas in an an-cap system, all you have to do is to convince other folks to walk out on that agency and seek defense elsewhere.
this is a stupid example. 1) it would not be a single rich person, it would be an organization of people with money. Second, they wouldn't target people like drug dealers, they would target people who threaten the power they've already established and they would go after budding competition before it can threaten the power they can already establish. What fucking motivation would one rich person have to go against drug dealers?Let's suppose that one rich person tries to oppress poor people living around him, by paying police forces to go after drug users, just for example.
which is why security agencies like blackwater have nobody doing work for them.Will, firstly, he'd be blowing tons of money doing so, because no police agency would think about doing something like that, simply because it would be too dangerous.
the question is one that would pit the effective value of the assets of one group against the other one. A cartel or corporation will have a broader range of people to hire and far more money to hire them than a smaller group of drug dealers in an isolated area, which is what you're making this example sound like.Drug users would defend themselves on their own, or collectively, with violence, and the risks of using force against drug use would rise.
did you completely ignore history in school or what?I think it's pretty silly to believe that all of the rich people in the world are going to gang up on all of the poor people in the world.
It's the incentive to acquire as much as possible for as little effort/cost as possible. Stealing is almost always has the best cost-benefit ratio, so it becomes a risk-reward question instead. If there's little risk of them being caught (especially because they own one or more companies in a given area), what's to stop them?Rich people don't necessarily get along with one another, and they're certainly competing with one another half the time.
From where does the incentive to steal instead of produce come?
no. You're applying your own morals and values to a broad spectrum of people who clearly do not have the same, and so view the whole risk/reward in a completely different light. It doesn't matter so much what the actual risk/reward of a scenario is so much as what groups of people think it is.People clearly have an incentive to not steal, as they might get caught, or injured in the process.
you're talking about making massive institutional changes to see a small effect on a group of people that have little real influence on the world. We're not talking about small-time robbers and the occasional gang, we're talking about institutional corruption at a national level that would provide a significantly worse service than the current standard already in place. you really need to consider implications and consequences beyond your own back yard when you're talking about making changes like this.Career robbers would have an extremely difficult time purchasing legal mch less actual defensive services, as everyone would be shooting at them or attempting to seek legal vengeance on them.
Do most people need to steal in order to cause problems? Or just the ones who have all the money, a la Behr-Stearns, Lehman Brothers etc.?Do most people in the US today steal rather than produce? Certainly not, but we fund a massive global empire, don't we?
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