What's a 'crime' ?

Police: Private security is cheaper and more effective than government police. There was a thread in here a couple days ago with one example.

The problem with privatized security and law enforcement is two fold:

One, Affordability. What happens to people who cannot afford security on their own? Are they just out of luck when it comes to people aggressive against their property? You say that private security is cheaper and more effective than government police, but I doubt that's the case.

The private security I see are either mall cops, who are barely trained and barely make more than minimum wages and don't scare or enforce anything, or Blackwater ex-military mercenaries, who are extremely well trained but cost many times more than the wages for a police officer.

The second point is about which law is enforced. If you've got multiple policing firms in an area, they might have different crimes they will investigate and apprehend people for. Some might not have an IT protection service and not consider it "illegal" to go after folks.

Firemen: Most fire fighters are volunteers.

  1. Most firefighters are volunteers, but the actual equipment is mostly paid for through taxation or sometimes donations.
  2. I agree there should be fewer firefighters because of better building construction. Since we do have so many regulations on how buildings should be built, it does make sense to decrease the numbers of firefighters because there are fewer fires now than in years past because buildings are required to be up to code.
  3. A municipal fire fighting program helps protect private property. Ultimately, fires can spread quickly between people's properties. While a bunch of private fire fighting brigades sounds great, imagine if a house were on fire and every other house on the block hired different fire fighters? The amount of chaos would cause more damage. And if a homeowner didn't have fire fighting coverage, their property would be a danger to everyone else on the block.

Roads: France has a lot of private highways.

Private roads between cities make some sense, so long as they don't depend on eminent domain to buy people's property, but they ultimately fall under a natural monopoly classification because normally people can only have one road that goes to their house.

I understand Walter Block's argument that denying people access to their own property is a violation of rights, but it isn't a realistic argument because there is other precedent that would allow people to deny access to property if a service is not paid.

Air Traffic Control: Similar to roads.

A better example would be Canada where air traffic control is privatized, so that makes sense to be private as long as the airlines agree on which service to use (and even then it would likely have to be a monopoly in order to ensure there aren't competing claims on airspace).

It is a flat-out denial of private property. Throwing someone out of their home because they're old, running low on money, and can't afford some extortion is callous criminality.

I assume you feel the same way about condo associations and home owners associations too?

The problem with this interpretation of private property (with respect to property taxes) is that you ignore that you didn't create the land under which your property exists (that existed for billions of years) and without the state or another agency to register and enforce property rights then anyone could just take your property without any hesitation. So if you didn't create it, and you need someone to preserve your property rights, how can you argue that property taxation is the opposite of property rights?

/r/Libertarian Thread