From: dzik@access.digex.com (Joseph Dzikiewicz)
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Funding the govt.....(Re: Just a few...
Date: 6 Jan 1993 17:41:57 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.com

In article <1993Jan6.152831.27823@nynexst.com> baruch@nynexst.com writes:
>
>Insuring yourself against crime should make you warm and fuzzy, feeling safe.  

Some crimes cannot be insured against.  If I am murdered or killed by
a drunk driver, insurance may help support my heirs, but it does not give
me back my life.


>*I* decide how much *I* pay, and that's the extent of my protection.  Why do
>you want to force *me* to pay for *your* protection (or mine, for that matter)?
>Why does everyone have this urge to force other people to pay for things, when
>they can pay for it voluntarily?  Answer me that!

The problem is, some forms of protection are communal.  

For example: Say that I am murdered tonight by a homocidal lunatic who
is into killing.  Finding my murderer and bringing him to justice doesn't
help me.  So why should I pay for a form of insurance that will make this
happen.  However, taking the killer off the street helps everyone who still
lives.  Therefore, since everyone who lives benefits, everyone who lives
should pay for the service.  But you don't want the service, you say?
How does anyone else get this particular service unless everyone gets
it?

Second, another good method of preventing crime is to educate potential
criminals.  This benefits everyone who lives in the same society as
the potential criminal.  So shouldn't everyone pay for it?

That's the purpose of governments: to do things that are for the common
good.  And governments do not allow people to opt out (by not paying
taxes, for example) and still receive benefits.  Makes sense to me.


As another purpose of governments: how do you regulate shared resources?
The example that I am thinking of is the airwaves.  If every radio
station tried to use the same frequency, it would be impossible to
have broadcast radio.  In the absence of government regulation, 
anybody who could afford a transmitter can be a broadcaster.  Therefore,
voluntary groups of broadcasters regulating themselves would not work,
because there's always some jerk willing to mess things up for
everyone.  (Witness the number of people out there happy to spread
computer viruses.)


More to the point, you assume that you, as an individual, have absolute
ownership of something.  However, that is not the case.  Individuals
do not have absolute ownership of anything: the government has partial
property rights to everything via emminent domain.  The government has
agreed to not exercise its rights as long as you fulfill certain
obligations to it, including paying taxes and not breaking the law.
If you don't like that arrangement, you might try to find somewhere
lacking in government.  Might I suggest Somalia?

Which leads to my final point.  Objectivism is a utopian world-view,
and like most utopian world-views depends on the good will of those
who live in its society.  A capitalist anarchy in which everyone
pays only for what he wants and must pay for his individual protection
does not lead to Rand's Atlantis.  It leads to Somalia or Beirut.