The Limits of Libertarianism - or - How Small can the Government Get?
After that post on how the political parties were structured, I got to wondering about what sorts of philosophies would end up in those empty corners. That, in turn, let me to libertarianism and I got to wondering exactly how far someone could realistically take that logic train.
In business school, we have a tremendous amount of faith in the market, and it seems to work pretty darn well for filling people's needs and finding opportunities to improve, allocating resources, and other such things. Also, a bit of thought shows us that in a government controlled welfare society, people probably wouldn't work really hard at the kind of things that fill needs and exploit opportunities, but instead focus on working the system to get all they can out of the state.
Before I go much further, we need to realize that the US government has parts that fit into each category. Yes, we have a massive free market economy, but we also have a huge federal government that distributes a huge amount of money in a non-market-based way. The white elephant in every elections are the pork barrels and pet projects tucked into the budgets and the bureaucratic way many of the legitimate funds are allocated - this is how I imagine the communist ministries must have worked, with the difference being only of scope of items involved.
The libertarian idea of putting everything in the hands of the market and minimizing the government begs the question of what happens if we dare to apply free market principles to things that we've always assumed must be run central government - for example, national defense.
It seems that if we were to 'privatize' national defense, we would end up with each individual paying directly for the amount of defense that they wish to receive - those who fear invasion paying, those who do not fear invasion not paying. Initially, one would expect some fluctuations as people get used to the idea, but eventually we would expect to see an equilibrium develop, where the amount of funding the military receives would directly correlate to the aggregate perceived need by the population. Unpopular wars would quickly die out, as people stopped funding the war, and wars seen as critically important would find themselves well funded.
Lets take the concept one step further from a 'voluntary donation' funding source and introduce the possibility of different military 'companies' competing for those donations. The heads of the each company must now seek to each provide better 'deal' for the citizens, in the form of more defense at a lower cost to get a larger portion of the citizen's 'wallet share.'
Additionally, this would let militaries fragment and specialize and differentiate - for example, there could be an urban warfare army, and a Star Wars missile defense army. As perceived need for different kinds of warfare evolved, so would peoples contributions to different security companies.
Of course, all this rests on a individuals who are able to value their security, and then are willing to voluntarily pay to protect that value.
In business school, we have a tremendous amount of faith in the market, and it seems to work pretty darn well for filling people's needs and finding opportunities to improve, allocating resources, and other such things. Also, a bit of thought shows us that in a government controlled welfare society, people probably wouldn't work really hard at the kind of things that fill needs and exploit opportunities, but instead focus on working the system to get all they can out of the state.
Before I go much further, we need to realize that the US government has parts that fit into each category. Yes, we have a massive free market economy, but we also have a huge federal government that distributes a huge amount of money in a non-market-based way. The white elephant in every elections are the pork barrels and pet projects tucked into the budgets and the bureaucratic way many of the legitimate funds are allocated - this is how I imagine the communist ministries must have worked, with the difference being only of scope of items involved.
The libertarian idea of putting everything in the hands of the market and minimizing the government begs the question of what happens if we dare to apply free market principles to things that we've always assumed must be run central government - for example, national defense.
It seems that if we were to 'privatize' national defense, we would end up with each individual paying directly for the amount of defense that they wish to receive - those who fear invasion paying, those who do not fear invasion not paying. Initially, one would expect some fluctuations as people get used to the idea, but eventually we would expect to see an equilibrium develop, where the amount of funding the military receives would directly correlate to the aggregate perceived need by the population. Unpopular wars would quickly die out, as people stopped funding the war, and wars seen as critically important would find themselves well funded.
Lets take the concept one step further from a 'voluntary donation' funding source and introduce the possibility of different military 'companies' competing for those donations. The heads of the each company must now seek to each provide better 'deal' for the citizens, in the form of more defense at a lower cost to get a larger portion of the citizen's 'wallet share.'
Additionally, this would let militaries fragment and specialize and differentiate - for example, there could be an urban warfare army, and a Star Wars missile defense army. As perceived need for different kinds of warfare evolved, so would peoples contributions to different security companies.
Of course, all this rests on a individuals who are able to value their security, and then are willing to voluntarily pay to protect that value.
posted by Me at 11:54 PM
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