RE: POL: Anarchism vs Limited Government

On 4/5/99, Billy Brown wrote:
>> Perhaps we should consider some sort of hybrid. Consider a government>> with only two functions: national defense and meta-contract enforcement.>> Interactions between individuals and most firms would be handled by>> private protection agencies (PPAs). The government would concern itself>> with PPA-turns-into-hostile-army scenarios, and with choice of law>> enforced via a single transferable asset ("money").>>How is this better than a dual-level government, where states make the laws>and the national government is responsible for national defense and>enforcing the constitution?

Depends on what "states" are and on what is in the constitution.
You could say I'm describing a minimalist constitution with voluntarily
chosen "states."

>The PPA-based system is likely to have more variety and less actual >taxation, which might appeal to some people. However, it would seem to >have two important defects:>First, police protection is available only to those who can pay for it. >... Second, the PPA scenario offers nothing similar to the protections >of a bill of rights. ... It is not at all clear to me>that the market will force them to offer the kind of deal we really want ->they can easily collude with each other to fix prices, exempt themselves>from prosecution, crush small rivals through>assassination/bribery/blackmail, and so on.

My minimalist proposal explicitly included PPA "anti-trust", which deals
with these collusion/crushing concerns.