It should, by now, be perfectly clear that a range of views is to be found amongst libertarians.
To make things interesting, I will give my (anarchist) response.
1. Would there be some form of police force or organization that provides general security to people in society free of charge? Say someone breaks into your home, does help come or do you have to have some paid bodyguard or something?
Not in general. Some neighbourhoods may well include police protection as one of the services they provide to all residents, paid for via something like homeowner association dues. In general, however, people would purchase protection services.
The model I like has virtually every person buy a "crime insurance" policy. Such policy would both compensate you for any damage caused by another person's criminal activity (perhaps subject to a deductible), and pay for the damage that you have caused through your criminal (or negligent) actions.
If you are found guilty, you may have to pay the insurance company.
In the unlikely event that you are an uninsured crime victim, you can still sell your right for restitution to a company. How much you'll get will now depend on how likely it is for the company (or its agents) to (1) identify your assailant, (2) find and apprehend them, (3) prove their guilt, and (4) extract restitution from them.
Before judging such system, keep in mind that for many people today, police protection is either non-existent or virtually so. I live in the country, and it will probably take the police 15-20 minutes to answer my call, by which time most of the damage will have already been created.
In a libertarian society, people are also much more likely to be armed (no unreasonable gun control laws), making crime a much more dangerous occupation.
2. What if a starving/destitute/sick individual shows up on your doorstep and you and everyone else is unwilling to care for this individual, what happens to them?
What if a staving/destitute/sick individual fails to qualify for government assistance? When comparing an anarchy to a democracy, you can't simply
assume that the government services you want will be provided without similarly assuming that charitable services you believe in will also be provided. After all, democratic governments help the destitute because there is broad popular support for such help. With broad popular support, why assume that dedicated charitable organisations won't be amply funded to meet the (much reduced) needs?
3. If a company, through negligence, produces a product that severely harms or kills a person, is the libertarian response simply "well, shop somewhere else then"?
The most likely answer is that a severely harmful product has been sold through fraud. After all, very few people would
knowingly purchase a defective or severely dangerous product.
If it is fraud, the buyer has recourse to sue the company.
4. Do libertarians think large scale projects that are typically undertaken by the state such as railways would exist in a libertarian society? Do we all just drive ourselves wherever it is we need to go, and isn't that hugely inefficient and more damaging to the environment than mass public transit?
Private railways existed well before government went into the public transportation infrastructure business. If a public transportation project is economically-viable, it can be built with private funding. If it isn't, it shouldn't be built in the first place.
5. How would education be set up? Strictly private schools? Home schooling? If it is not profitable for a private school to open in, say, a poor neighbourhood, are those people just SOL, and wouldn't that lead to highly uneven opportunities between rich and poor?
In a libertarian anarchy, all schooling would be private (though home schooling will obviously still be an option). I wouldn't worry about the issue of poor neighbourhoods. In India, you can find private schools (for-profit, fully tuition-funded) in the poorest slums and villages. In general, the cost of private schools can be very low. Try the following calculation: the primary cost item for education is teacher wages. Take a $40,000/year teacher, let him teach 20 students in a class, and the per-student annual cost is $2,000, affordable by virtually any American family (recall that taxes would go down as well).
It is easy to envision even cheaper schooling options, perhaps relying more on technology vs. frontal teaching.
Finally, since the public clearly supports providing financial aid to poor families to help with their children's education, there is no reason not to expect charitable organisations helping poor families with their children's education.
With regard to the "no state" libertarian and the question of security, would an individual or group, having contracted out a private security force, be likely to extend that service to those who haven't paid for it? What I mean is, would there be some mechanism that would provide a basic level of security for all individuals? If one chooses not to/is unable to hire private security and is threatened with violence, is any individual or group obligated to intervene on that person's behalf?
In today's society, most of the protection people get from police is based on deterrence rather than active protection. Deterrence is effective if the likelihood of capture, combined with the severity of punishment, is enough to deter the prospective criminal.
If an uninsured person is a victim of a crime, they can still get some restitution by selling their tort rights. Having purchased the rights, an insurance company will have an interest in professionally pursuing the criminal. Thus all crime is deterred, even under a purely private system of enforcement.
Another point to keep in mind is that personal protection is actually very cheap. The per-capita police budget is perhaps $200/year, but most of that cost goes towards enforcing drug laws which will be inapplicable in a libertarian society. A descent protection policy could cost as little as $100/year/person - hardly a hardship.
Certainly it did, but there were many who fell through the cracks and simply died of starvation or other causes.
And some do today. Historic societies were much poorer than is our own. We can much more easily aid those in danger of dying from starvation. In fact, this is a non-issue. The only places in the world in which people actually die of starvation are those subject to a civil war or other malevolent violent action, typically by governments (or those aspiring to become one).
More generally, we are discussing forms of governance rather than specific public policies. A-priori, there is no guarantee that a democratic government will maintain the welfare state. Such maintenance doesn't automatically come with governments or even democratic governments.
Rather, democratic governments tend to care for their own citizens because society wants to. And if society wants to, it can do so even without government.
What if you live in a town where there is one company that owns the rivers and lakes that are the town's water source, and that company chose to cut back on how much they sanitize the water due to it being too expensive. Lets say hypothetically, this less sanitized water carried a pathogen that caused widespread illness and even death. Now you don't have the opportunity to shop somewhere else because you're either too sick and/or dead. That would suck.
What if you live in a town where municipal government provides water to the people, and that the municipal government chose to cut back on how much they sanitize the water due to it being unpopular by the majority of Christian Scientists living in the town. Lets say hypothetically, this less sanitized water carried a pathogen that caused widespread illness and even death. Now you don't have the opportunity to shop somewhere else because you're either too sick and/or dead. That would suck.
So being captive of a single monopoly provider of an essential product like water has the potential of sucking.
Now ask yourself, under which system are you more likely to face a monopoly provider? With government, the likelihood is almost 100%. With private providers, the likelihood is very small. An unpopular monopoly provider creates strong incentives for competitors to come in.
Isn't it true that when you commodify something, you thereby remove it from the realm of democratic accountability? And isn't this potentially very dangerous when it comes to things that are vital to human life like air, food, and water?
I am not sure I understand what you mean by that. But as stated above, a private market in vital goods is far superior to a government monopoly in those same goods. Food is an excellent example. While we routinely encounter water shortages (water is provided by government), we virtually never face food shortages (food is provided by a competitive private sector).
What if there is no corporation able to mobilize the massive amount of capital and resources needed to undertake a huge project such as the Chinese governments expansion of public transport which helped boost their economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_ ... speed_rail).
Why wouldn't there by one, if the project is economically viable? Because the private sector includes many different entrepreneurs examining various opportunities, the probability that an economically-viable project will be undertaken by the private sector is very high, while the probability that an non-viable project will be taken is correspondingly low.
With governments, on the other hand, there is no assessment of economic viability. Rather, a project will proceed if it is politically-viable, i.e. popular and/or enjoys support of politically-powerful people.
Most of the world's children are without a computer and internet access. So, in the absence of public or private schools, how would they be educated?
As noted above, low-cost private schools are very common in some very poor areas. There is no reason to expect less schooling options under a private regime than under a government one.
Further, quality of education in government schools is often very low. Just because government built a school and children attend it doesn't necessarily mean that those children are actually being educated.
So some libertarians oppose unions, or just public sector unions? If libertarianism is about freedom, is limiting the freedom of individuals to organize inconsistent with libertarian principles?
Libertarians only oppose unions to the extent that the unions use aggression (initiate force), either directly (as used to be the case) or through government (as is often the case now).
Workers are obviously free to organize. But by the same token, employers are free not to employ organized workers. Freedom goes both ways.
What if no credit agency is willing to give this asshole of an individual any credit? He dies then, right?
What if no government agency is willing to give this asshole any support? He dies then, right?
Once again, the likelihood that at least one private organisation will help a person is much greater than that a monolithic government bureaucracy will.
Private charity and altruism is hardly a drop in the bucket in terms of addressing our society's social and economic problems. Yeah, I think it is very likely that no one will decide to voluntarily care for the well-being of this hypothetical destitute stranger.
Government welfare programs have for generations acted to suppress private charity. After all, why bother give to the poor if you know that your tax money is used to support those poor (probably at a more generous level than you would want to)?
In addition, government welfare programs have the (unintended) effect of promoting poverty. After all, if you are paid not to work, you are much less likely to try hard to find employment (perhaps taking a pay-cut or even moving to a different city).
For both reasons, as well as the general expectation that a libertarian society will be much wealthier, the gap between social needs and resources required to meet those needs will be much narrower than it is today.
Beal wrote:I'm curious. This is a bit of an open-ended question, but let me ask you: how much is a human life worth? A thousand dollars? A million? A billion?
The quick answer is "to whom"? Clearly, a human life is worth different amounts to different people.
Free men are not equal and equal men are not free.
Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.
- By Fasces
- By Dr House
- By JohnRawls