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Again - not one free market advocate. Not Menger, not von Mises, not Rothbard, not Friedman is for anarchy.

Friedman and von Mises certainly weren't anarchists, but I'd thank you not to slander Rothbard, who actually was consistent in his opposition to the use of "political means" (i.e. government). Of course Rothbard never advocated for the popular misconception of anarchy as a chaotic free-for-all without rules of any kind—just the absence of rulers empowered to act without regard for the universal rules grounded in reciprocation which apply to everyone else.

But don't take my word for it. Just read what Rothbard had to say about government in The Ethics of Liberty and For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto.

Unfortunately von Mises was only a minarchist, which is to say that his positions on government were inconsistent at best. No doubt the contradiction inherent in relying on an institution empowered to employ the violence denied to everyone else was not lost on him, but unlike Rothbard he was simply unable to conceive of a better way. At least he did consistently argue against any form of intervention in the market itself, and limited the role of government to pure defense from violent criminals and external attackers. If that were all it did there would be no issue, of course, but he then proceeded to contradict himself by arguing first that the institution of government should have a monopoly on providing said defense, and also that it should have the power to impose what he considered "necessary" taxation—which makes the government no different from those criminals it is charged to defend against.

The US System is not government run, it's government regulated, for now. Both links you included, don't show what you are claiming.

The US has two systems: public and private. Medicare/Medicaid are fully government run health insurance systems: the government collects the money, negotiates services, and pays out claims. It's places like Germany and Switzerland that have all-private systems with regulation, so the US actually already has a "more socialist" and more government run system than those countries. The difference is that countries like Germany and Switzerland do a better job at regulating their private systems than the US does at running its public systems.

The medicaid expansion you reference did not statistically improve the health of relatively healthy people, big surprise. It did give them better financial and mental health outcomes. I wouldn't call that a failure.

First of all, given that they are using statistical confidence, just by chance, you expect one in 20 variables to improve accidentally. Second, if you transfer large amounts of money from a population you don't measure to a population you do measure, of course, the financial well being of the population you measure is going to improve. So, that reasoning is b.s. And, regardless, it is trying to distract from the fundamental fact that the Oregon experiment failed to deliver the outcomes that expansion of public coverage was first and foremost supposed to deliver: better physical health outcomes.

The VA's patient load increased way faster then funding. [...] they just want it funded properly so it provides the services they were promised. It's certainly the least expensive way to provide those services.

Absolutely false. Veterans cared for through the VA cost even more per year on average than people covered in other ways. (The reason this gets obscured and people cite absurdly low per person figures for VA patients is because the VA only pays for about 1/3 of the medical costs of veterans; the rest is reimbursed by other carriers.)

You can see that American's have less doctor visits, they spend more without getting better treatment.

Correct. And single payer proposals do nothing to address this. Instead, what they propose is to simply extract even more money from American taxpayers and put it into the same broken system.

Now, from your your links:

In contrast, the U.S. devotes a relatively small share of its economy to social services, such as housing assistance, employment programs, disability benefits, and food security.

Actually, the US devotes a fairly average share of its economy to social services.

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/20...

But that is the wrong measure anyway; social services shouldn't be measured relative to the economy. The correct measure is the absolute amount per capita the US spends on social services, and that is near the top.

https://mises.org/blog/social-...

Finally, despite its heavy investment in health care, the U.S. sees poorer results on several key health outcome measures such as life expectancy and the prevalence of chronic conditions.

Correct. And that tells you that increased health care spending and coverage does not improve life expectancy or an increase in health. Much of US health care spending is the consequence of obesity, substance abuse, single parenthood, homelessness, and promiscuity, and increased healthcare is not effective in addressing any of those problems. In fact, we have natural experiments in the US: Asian Americans and Latinos have the highest life expectancies in th

https://mises.org/library/why-...

There are limits to how high taxes can go. Every dollar that Californians pay to the federal government that doesn't come back to the state translates to a dollar that California couldn't collect in higher taxes and use within the state. So no, it isn't "transparently false". In fact, it is self-evident.

Given that California's taxes are already among the highest in the nation, that argument is absurd. Other states manage to have better roads, better education, better government services with a fraction of the tax revenue and spending (per capita) of California.

Citation needed. The numbers don't lie. California is a net provider, rural states are net takers.

Numbers don't lie, but people lie with numbers and with terminology. "Federal spending" could be university campuses and corporate subsidies, or they could be nuclear waste dumps, border protection, and socially harmful spending. Federal spending could be political and corporate cronyism, or it could be a measly return on government-mandated programs like social security. In fact, the very term "net takers" is wrong, because it implies that rural states want the crap that the federal government pushes on them, when in reality, they largely vote for smaller government and less federal spending. Finally, if you actually look at the maps, you'll see that the coastal/rural divide just doesn't hold anyway; federal spending vs taxes is, literally, all over the map.

Yes, you can argue that it is worth spending money on those rural areas because they grow our food, but the fact still remains that if those rural states were in better shape financially, California would directly benefit.

Californians are welcome to vote for smaller government, smaller federal taxes, and less federal spending any time. Unfortunately, they always seem to vote for growing the federal government. You can be certain that that isn't out of altruism, it is because they (unlike you) understand that California is much more dependent on the federal government.

You made specific claims:

Canada, Germany, Norway, etc. have higher tax rates for the wealthy and their MEDIAN incomes are about the same or higher than USA and WITH better social safety nets. We don't have to theorize, their middle is doing better.

Those claims are wrong. Germany and Norway have lower tax rates for the wealthy, median incomes are lower in most of Europe, and their social safety nets are no better than those in the US. Furthermore, their middle class is doing worse by many economic measures.

Why is that? If smaller = richer

Why is that? Because you are cherry-picking European states and comparing against the US as a whole. If Sweden and Germany became US states, they would be among the poorest. In fact, several large US states are doing better than all the OECD states, including Luxembourg and Norway.

then CA should proceed with CALEXIT (or Pacifica).

California is has huge problems with welfare dependency, public debt, and bad schools, among others. I'm not sure why you bring it up. Most of America would probably not be sorry to see California go.

If you like big houses and big cars, you are right that it's easier to get those here. But there's more to life than that.

Good, so, we have dispensed now with the idea that the poor or the middle class in Europe are economically better off.

Now, which of these "there's more to life" issues do you think Europeans are doing better on?

but that's not the same as a comfortable living

Much of Europe has never had a comfortable life. People born before 1950 had to deal either with the Nazis or the aftermath of WWII and communism. Some of the better run countries (like Germany) have had a few decades in which life seemed safe and predictable, but they are facing a demographic cliff now. Average youth unemployment across the EU is 20%; it's 35% in Italy, 41% in Spain, and 45% in Greece. How "comfortable" do you think the life of unemployed youth in Europe actually is? And when you're older and lose your job in Europe, you're pretty much done for in many countries. The idea of a "comfortable life" in Europe is a fiction for most Europeans.

Canada, Germany, Norway, etc. have higher tax rates for the wealthy

Top marginal income tax rates are about 53% in the US, significantly higher than both Germany and Norway. Worse yet, top marginal income tax rates in Europe start applying to people in the middle class, often barely above the median. Furthermore, comparisons to Canada and Norway, two resource-rich countries in favorable locations and with small populations, are invalid anyway; we couldn't run the US like Canada or Norway if we wanted to. The only really valid comparison of the US is to the EU as a whole, rather than cherry-picking the wealthiest European states. Otherwise, you ought to compare the US to at least the larger countries, like France and Germany.

and their MEDIAN incomes are about the same or higher than USA

Among industrialized Western nations, the US has some of the highest pre-tax MEDIAN incomes in the world. More importantly, the income tax burden on low and average income earners is substantially lower in the US than in Europe, and Europeans pay massive and regressive VAT taxes on top of that. German/Scandianvian style social welfare states are paid for by the middle class. (Note that the Tax Foundation actually understates US taxes.)

and WITH better social safety nets.

The US has one of the highest amounts of per capita social spending in the world, higher than all of Europe and most of the Nordic countries. Even as percentage of GDP (an invalid comparison because it's absolute spending in $PPP that actually matters), US spending is very high. Countries like Germany have cut their social safety nets massively because they found that generous social safety nets result in people staying out of the workforce. And the services you get from the government in Europe are shitty: long wait times, limited choices, demeaning rules.

We don't have to theorize, their middle is doing better.

No, we don't need to theorize. Have you actually lived in Europe? And I don't mean as an American expat with full access to American opportunities whenever you want to? I have. The European middle class is highly taxed, has limited economic opportunities, and is less economically well off than the US middle class. Much of the European middle class lives below the US poverty line (that is, when you don't cherry-pick Norway and Luxembourg for your comparisons.) The situation in Europe is grim, both economically and politically. And if the US were really as repressive and miserly towards the working class and the middle class, it wouldn't be the migration destination of choice for so many people.

Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night. https://www.nokidhungry.org/pr...

25 % of households with children living in large cities are food-insecure.

Oh, the kind of suffering kids are subjected to in inner cities is tragic and deeply offensive. But it is clearly not due to absolute poverty: the US government redistributes tens of thousands of dollars on each of those kids per year already, on education, nutritional assistance, welfare, and other expenses, so they are clearly not suffering from absolute poverty. What they are suffering from is misguided social policies, single motherhood, inefficient schools, a bad social environment, etc. Another way of seeing that the problem is policy, not absolute income, is to realize that much of the European middle class lives below the US poverty line. I myself grew up in a household that, by US standards, would probably be considered poor.

The question you should be asking is how you can sleep at night, since you seem to be advocating policies that will keep children living under these conditions for generations to come.

I advocated which policies, now?

Am I to understand that poverty is determined by how it is caused, and not the actual condition/outcome? You think poverty in Africa, for example, is not also caused by policies? In response to your assertion about "absolute" poverty (whatever that distinction is) being non existent in the USA, I posted a link about people going hungry in the richest, most powerful country in the world. I consider someone who goes hungry to be impoverished, generally speaking. You can sling statistics about the median income in the US compared to Europe all you want. Those people are still impoverished in the US.

For the already wealthy, yes. Money has been redistributed to them quite efficiently by market forces.

Yes, economic growth and free markets benefit the wealthy more than the poor. But both benefit. That's why being poor in the US is financially better than being middle class in much of Europe.

More redistribution does reduce income inequality, but the poor still end up worse off in the long run.

So, the question you need to ask is: do you want everybody to be better off, or are you willing to impoverish people for the sake of equality.

Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night. https://www.nokidhungry.org/pr...

25 % of households with children living in large cities are food-insecure.

Oh, the kind of suffering kids are subjected to in inner cities is tragic and deeply offensive. But it is clearly not due to absolute poverty: the US government redistributes tens of thousands of dollars on each of those kids per year already, on education, nutritional assistance, welfare, and other expenses, so they are clearly not suffering from absolute poverty. What they are suffering from is misguided social policies, single motherhood, inefficient schools, a bad social environment, etc. Another way of seeing that the problem is policy, not absolute income, is to realize that much of the European middle class lives below the US poverty line. I myself grew up in a household that, by US standards, would probably be considered poor.

The question you should be asking is how you can sleep at night, since you seem to be advocating policies that will keep children living under these conditions for generations to come.

There are multiple reasons why roads should be privatized, and this is merely one of them. If a truck causes more congestion than a car, a private road would likely charge more for a truck, internalizing the cost of infrastructure for delivery.

That's true. There are laws against it. However, that's not how it should be. As the owner of your property, you have the right to discriminate. This is the same reason why the flower arrangement case makes no sense; there is no reason anyone should be forced to buy or sell from anyone. Is that not freedom of association and protection of private property? In fact, the market relies on your ability to discriminate between products and services; labor and renting are only a few of those.

Now, unfair discrimination could be a problem, but there is no reason to make it illegal. If someone wants to hurt their own ability to do business, then let them. As Rothbard explains,

Suppose, for example, that someone in a free society is a landlord of a house or a block of houses. He could simply charge the free market rent and let it go at that. But then there are risks; he may choose to discriminate against renting to couples with young children, figuring that there is substantial risk of defacing his property. On the other hand, he may well choose to charge extra rent to compensate for the higher risk, so that the free-market rent for such families will tend to be higher than otherwise. This, in fact, will happen in most cases on the free market. But what of personal, rather than strictly economic, “discrimination” by the landlord? Suppose, for example, that the landlord is a great admirer of six-foot Swedish-Americans, and decides to rent his apartments only to families of such a group. In the free society it would be fully in his right to do so, but he would clearly suffer a large monetary loss as a result. For this means that he would have to turn away tenant after tenant in an endless quest for very tall Swedish-Americans. While this may be considered an extreme example, the effect is exactly the same, though differing in degree, for any sort of personal discrimination in the marketplace. If, for example, the landlord dislikes redheads and determines not to rent his apartments to them, he will suffer losses, although not as severely as in the first example.

In any case, anytime anyone practices such “discrimination” in the free market, he must bear the costs, either of losing profits or of losing services as a consumer. If a consumer decides to boycott goods sold by people he does not like, whether the dislike is justified or not, he then will go without goods or services which he otherwise would have purchased.

That's true. There are laws against it. However, that's not how it should be. As the owner of your property, you have the right to discriminate. This is the same reason why the flower arrangement case makes no sense; there is no reason anyone should be forced to buy or sell from anyone. Is that not freedom of association and protection of private property? In fact, the market relies on your ability to discriminate between products and services; labor and renting are only a few of those.

Now, unfair discrimination could be a problem, but there is no reason to make it illegal. If someone wants to hurt their own ability to do business, then let them. As Rothbard explains,

Suppose, for example, that someone in a free society is a landlord of a house or a block of houses. He could simply charge the free market rent and let it go at that. But then there are risks; he may choose to discriminate against renting to couples with young children, figuring that there is substantial risk of defacing his property. On the other hand, he may well choose to charge extra rent to compensate for the higher risk, so that the free-market rent for such families will tend to be higher than otherwise. This, in fact, will happen in most cases on the free market. But what of personal, rather than strictly economic, “discrimination” by the landlord? Suppose, for example, that the landlord is a great admirer of six-foot Swedish-Americans, and decides to rent his apartments only to families of such a group. In the free society it would be fully in his right to do so, but he would clearly suffer a large monetary loss as a result. For this means that he would have to turn away tenant after tenant in an endless quest for very tall Swedish-Americans. While this may be considered an extreme example, the effect is exactly the same, though differing in degree, for any sort of personal discrimination in the marketplace. If, for example, the landlord dislikes redheads and determines not to rent his apartments to them, he will suffer losses, although not as severely as in the first example.

In any case, anytime anyone practices such “discrimination” in the free market, he must bear the costs, either of losing profits or of losing services as a consumer. If a consumer decides to boycott goods sold by people he does not like, whether the dislike is justified or not, he then will go without goods or services which he otherwise would have purchased.

Only I don't go around lumping FDR in with Hitler (Godwin)

Naturally you don't: FDR is a progressive hero, and you don't want to taint his legacy or image. Progressives instead love to lump Trump, Trump supporters, libertarians, conservatives, and anybody who didn't vote for Hillary with Hitler [1] [2] of fascism[3][4].

Pardon me for trying to set the record straight and point out what plenty of academics and historians agree on [5] [6].

Similarly, your blinkered view of history and misplaced reverence may lead you to a very rude awakening.

I actually had quite a pleasant awakening when I came to the US and saw that there was an alternative to the socialism and progressivism that I grew up with. And my view of history is shared by large numbers of historians, political scientists, and US voters. See above.

Lots of women are against a woman's right to choose; Their gender doesn't make them any less deluded...

So you are saying that any woman that doesn't defer to your superior progressive American male intelligence must be "deluded"?

like those Hispanic Americans who supported Trump and are now shocked they live in "Papers Please!" hell.

So you are saying that any immigrant that doesn't defer to your superior progressive American male intelligence must be stupid?

FWIW, I have zero problems with police asking to see my papers when they notice (as they do) that I wasn't born in the US.

That just makes you a Randroid shit who shills for privilege

I'm just "shilling" for myself because I don't want the US to turn into the kind of places my family and I escaped from. The only "privilege" I enjoyed was that I grew up in an intact family that stressed education and self-reliance; by US standards, I was pretty poor growing up.

noticed your habit for calling people names, BTW.

I'm sorry I upset your sensitive progressive feelings by factually calling fascist economics "fascist economics". Why don't you go to your safe space and cry a little? Feel free to continue to spew your vitriol, I have a tough skin; I had to develop that growing up in a rather more homophobic and oppressive environment than you apparently did.

Not according to the history I have read about Rockefeller and Standard Oil. There are government-regulated monopolies, for sure, such as the old telephone company or utilities companies. But monopolies such as Standard Oil occur through aggressive business practices.

Maybe you've been reading some biased history. Here is a detailed and well-sourced document that counters the "big-government-is-needed-to-solve-every-problem" standard view that you've always read.

For those of you who want the world to be better without a government acting as the means to corral all of us cats wandering around need to

First thing to do when something doesn't work is to stop doing that. We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"

start showing us who think otherwise how that's going to work.

Do you want to just say that or do you want to put in the time to read Man, Economy, and State, The Road to Serfdom, On Human Action, Economics in One Lesson, and I, Pencil (in reverse order) to understand the arguments of people who do not believe that the status quo will ever bring widespread wealth among the population?

The newest of those is forty years old and they're all available for free, so there's no real reason to not at least understand this alternate system that the vast majorith of people (including many former communists and socialists) never go back from after understanding.

For those of you who want the world to be better without a government acting as the means to corral all of us cats wandering around need to

First thing to do when something doesn't work is to stop doing that. We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"

start showing us who think otherwise how that's going to work.

Do you want to just say that or do you want to put in the time to read Man, Economy, and State, The Road to Serfdom, On Human Action, Economics in One Lesson, and I, Pencil (in reverse order) to understand the arguments of people who do not believe that the status quo will ever bring widespread wealth among the population?

The newest of those is forty years old and they're all available for free, so there's no real reason to not at least understand this alternate system that the vast majorith of people (including many former communists and socialists) never go back from after understanding.

For those of you who want the world to be better without a government acting as the means to corral all of us cats wandering around need to

First thing to do when something doesn't work is to stop doing that. We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"

start showing us who think otherwise how that's going to work.

Do you want to just say that or do you want to put in the time to read Man, Economy, and State, The Road to Serfdom, On Human Action, Economics in One Lesson, and I, Pencil (in reverse order) to understand the arguments of people who do not believe that the status quo will ever bring widespread wealth among the population?

The newest of those is forty years old and they're all available for free, so there's no real reason to not at least understand this alternate system that the vast majorith of people (including many former communists and socialists) never go back from after understanding.

For those of you who want the world to be better without a government acting as the means to corral all of us cats wandering around need to

First thing to do when something doesn't work is to stop doing that. We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"

start showing us who think otherwise how that's going to work.

Do you want to just say that or do you want to put in the time to read Man, Economy, and State, The Road to Serfdom, On Human Action, Economics in One Lesson, and I, Pencil (in reverse order) to understand the arguments of people who do not believe that the status quo will ever bring widespread wealth among the population?

The newest of those is forty years old and they're all available for free, so there's no real reason to not at least understand this alternate system that the vast majorith of people (including many former communists and socialists) never go back from after understanding.

For those of you who want the world to be better without a government acting as the means to corral all of us cats wandering around need to

First thing to do when something doesn't work is to stop doing that. We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"

start showing us who think otherwise how that's going to work.

Do you want to just say that or do you want to put in the time to read Man, Economy, and State, The Road to Serfdom, On Human Action, Economics in One Lesson, and I, Pencil (in reverse order) to understand the arguments of people who do not believe that the status quo will ever bring widespread wealth among the population?

The newest of those is forty years old and they're all available for free, so there's no real reason to not at least understand this alternate system that the vast majorith of people (including many former communists and socialists) never go back from after understanding.

I would fully agree though the main issue with the CIA is keeping them on a short leash. But if you think the problem is recent, this offers a better starting date : https://mises.org/blog/truman-...
What the latest leak shows is that the CIA is diversifying more , increasing their reach, making them more independent. They don't have to ask the NSA for help, they've got their own departments. That is all about increasing power.

Doesn't mean the amount or quality of science research will go down. If anything the amount and quality will go up as private interests start allocating resources to those science projects most likely to make a big return on investment. I for one want to get the government out of as much science funding as possible, According to this article https://mises.org/blog/trumps-... the NIH science research alone is 87 percent waste. Also I don't like science being guided by political interests. I remember learning how the government paid scientists to 'prove' that cannabis damaged brain cells. So one particular scientist pumped so much cannabis smoke into monkeys mouths that they passed out from oxygen deprivation. Then when he dissected the monkey brains later, surprise surprise! evidence of brain cell death! This "Cannabis kills brain cells" research paper was cited by other researchers and considered legitimate for decades....

So yeah, get the government out of science research. If this bill didn't also allocate a ridiculous amount of money to the military (our largest money pit in the US) I would root for it!

Oh yeah and i'm not in favor of the State Department either. I don't think they do as much 'diplomacy' as they say they do. Its really just the 'Department of Neo-cons'

The question is whether the free market or the government can provide better services to the public.

You seem to automatically assume that the free market is always better. I don't know what your evidence is for that. Maybe you're basing it on ideological theories https://mises.org/blog/new-yor... I notice that nowhere in this essay does this author refer to data. Nor did she actually talk to people who oppose Airbnb to find out what their actual arguments are.

I believe that the answer depends on the market, and the best way to answer this question is through empirical observation of the actual facts.

This is an example of the tragedy of the commons, where the continuous calculations of individual self-interest leads to the destruction of the resource for everyone.

One example is ocean fisheries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... If every economic actor follows his own greedy self-interest, as the Wall Street Journal editorial page advocates, then they will destroy the fishery, and no one will benefit.

"The Grand Banks: Where Have All the Cod Gone? New Scientist 16 Sept 96 p24

THIRTY years ago, children in Newfoundland could catch fish by dipping a basket into the ocean. Now Canadian research vessels sweep the seas in vain, finding not a single school of cod in what was once the world's richest fishery. The destruction of the Grand Banks cod is one of the biggest fisheries disasters of all time. And science helped make it happen. The Canadian government banned fishing on the Banks in 1992, when scientists discovered there were nearly no adult cod left. That ban is likely to remain in place for at least a decade. Canada has blamed Spaniards, seals and the weather. But the real damage was done by years of "safe" catches that scientists now realise were just the opposite... Cod stocks there collapsed, and the fishery has been totally shut down since 1993, with the loss of 40 000 jobs. "Signs of recovery of the stock are still very small, and in fact some stocks still seem to be in decline," says Cook's co-author, Alan Sinclair of the Canadian government's fisheries department".

New York City tried to charge motorists according to the demand they made on a limited government-provided resource (city streets), by charging them a special tax, and require a special windshield sticker, to drive in midtown manhattan during rush hour, as some European cities have done. Suburban motorists got laws passed against it.

Companies such as Airbnb and Uber serve to show just how regulated most industries are. When they waltz into an existing industry with services just different enough to escape regulations, the suffocating nature of special interest-driven regulation becomes apparent. Entrenched taxi companies demand licensing restrictions. Hotels demand regulation and taxes. Unions demand classification of contractors as employees (and people realize they aren't so different from each other -- employees are just special contractors with government-mandated benefits). The New York decision is a classic example of special interests aiming to limit competition and creative destruction.

Regulations are why it's taken so long for a competitor to arise. The solution to bad regulation shouldn't be more regulation, it should be fixing the bad parts.

http://www.npr.org/sections/he...

https://mises.org/blog/lack-ep...

They repeatedly stopped competitors

Bottled water does not compete with pipes.

Apparently, it does), at least for drinking water. Oh, but you were talking about the consumer side of the transaction? Well, some people think that competition is happening there as well.)

But, yes, I'd like to see a transition of water-supply (and other "natural" monopolies) from governments to competing businesses.

Great - even more shared-infrastructure disputes, and more wasteful duplication of infrastructure. And no, von Mises' nuance-challenged Randian 'either / or' arguments don't impress me.

Then, maybe, we'll finally see some 21-st century innovation in those markets too.

Oh... you mean like the modern tracking and advertising innovations we're now enjoying at the hands of Google, Facebook, et al? Or do you mean the IOT innovations that render things like thermostats remotely hackable? Again, no thanks. Innovation is neither inherently bad nor inherently good; I promise to remember the latter and take it into account, so long as you promise the same about the former.

Privatizing natural monopolies

"Natural monopoly" is a myth.

How do you have competition in laying pipes?

This often-asked question has a simple answer — by laying them side by side. The cost of the process is, actually, a small fraction of the overall cost of maintaining the infrastructure.

there is still the problem of the people losing control of the future of their local infrastructure

OMG, "people losing control"? Are you not afraid of losing control of your area's supermarkets? There is no argument for government controlling the water, gas, or electricity distribution, that would not also apply to distribution of food (and clothing), as well as, say, construction of homes. Should all of those be socialized too?

Bottled water does not compete with pipes. But, yes, I'd like to see a transition of water-supply (and other "natural" monopolies) from governments to competing businesses.

Then, maybe, we'll finally see some 21-st century innovation in those markets too.

The WMF has been pushing those schemes for a while now, people are not happy where it has happened, on the other hand there's Flint where the infrastructure has been neglected for decades and the people are not happy either; somewhere between the two should be the sweet-spot.

So what you are saying is the local governments should also be forced out of the business of providing running water now that private companies are providing bottled water and water delivery services.

Bottled water does not compete with pipes. But, yes, I'd like to see a transition of water-supply (and other "natural" monopolies) from governments to competing businesses.

Then, maybe, we'll finally see some 21-st century innovation in those markets too.

Also he is releasing all these criminals but the homicide rate is at a 50 year low. It's almost as if a lot of non-violent offenders were being kept in jail to fuel the prison industrial complex, and when you release them crime doesn't increase at all...

When is the President going tell the NSA to start playing with the full legal deck! This is the National Security Agency not the CIA which is another bed of garbage!!! National clearly indicates country or origin not the world! I'm getting sick of this!

How does the Fashion Industry do it without copyright?

HINT: You don't Imaginary Property to make money.

Hell, when even a patent attorney are saying society should be Against Intellectual Property then you know there is a problem.

Are you saying that free market people do not understand comparative advantage?

Or are you saying that Trump supporters are opposed to the free market?

Or maybe there coalitions that support candidates for a variety of reasons - and that not all the positions held by the supporters are in common? (Think of a Venn diagram).

Free markets supporters of Trump (because Hillary was the opponent) are certainly aware.

Heritage Foundataion.
Von Mises,
AEI,
ARI
See: https://mises.org/library/unde...

Interesting bringing forth a libertarian, free-market argument against Trump. (Unless I misunderstood your position) Therefore you agree that not all Republicans are for the free market.

By the NAFTA is not an example of free and open markets. Neither is TPP.

I see you also like to use ad hominems with anyone who disagrees with you.

/sarcasm I guess this patent attorney who questioned the value of Imaginary Property also didn't take his meds.

--
There is a name for people who like to pretend they can own a number or formula: Delusional

Copyright isn't stealing. Since property rights are the rights to control a scarce resource, they cannot apply to "creative" works since they are not source. It would make no sense to have property law if there was unlimited land with identical value. If I took a fruit from a fruit vendor but the basket had infinite fruit, he cannot claim I have done anything wrong.

Copyright law itself is a violation of property rights. It tells people that they cannot use their pen and paper to write a copy of someone else's work. It forbids people from writing certain data to their hard disks.

For a more complete explanation of why property rights for "creative" work makes no sense, see: The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide or Against Intellectual Property (73-page Book).

Copyright isn't stealing. Since property rights are the rights to control a scarce resource, they cannot apply to "creative" works since they are not source. It would make no sense to have property law if there was unlimited land with identical value. If I took a fruit from a fruit vendor but the basket had infinite fruit, he cannot claim I have done anything wrong.

Copyright law itself is a violation of property rights. It tells people that they cannot use their pen and paper to write a copy of someone else's work. It forbids people from writing certain data to their hard disks.

For a more complete explanation of why property rights for "creative" work makes no sense, see: The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide or Against Intellectual Property (73-page Book).

"means it is much easier to do business since the rules are the same, hence extending across europe is easy"

Wait, is this the same EU that has 109 regulations regarding pillow cases?

There was a concerted effort to prevent municipal WiFi.

Citations, please...

Based on using both state government to preempt municipal WiFI (its illegal in most states)

WiFi is not illegal explicitly. Provision of non-government-specific services by the government is prohibited in some places. Which makes perfect sense — because the prospect of competing with the town hall is the kiss of death for an honest business-plan. But even where it was not prohibited — such as Chicago — it still fell apart. San Francisco — the nation's most "progressive" town — cancelled theirs in 2007. You were saying?

And, had it somehow succeeded, the entirely new sort of worms would've started coming out of the can.

It seems immensely popular once done.

Only among porn-surfers, it would seem. But do list your own citations, please.

Governments shouldn't run sneaker factories.

Why not? How else can the workers be protected from exploitation by KKKorporations interested only in profit$?!?! What, other than collective ownership of means of production, can prevent such abuses as well as shipping the manufacturing to other countries?

I challenge you to come up with an argument for government-owned WiFi or schools, that would not apply to a government-owned sneaker factory. Unlike with wired Internet — or water- and gas-pipes — there is not even the usual "last mile" argument with WiFi.

But there are plenty of things (e.g. roads) that work well when run by government.

Citations really are weak point of yours, let me help you. Ooops, government-owned roads obviously do not "work well" either. Would privately-owned ones be better? We never tried... But we can look around... If Tokyo can have privately-owned and competing subway/commuter-rail lines — which actually works well — why can't New York?

For about 100 years now, the Statists have been repeating the myth of "natural monopoly" — convincing the rest of us and themselves that some things are better done by "a public utility". Looked at carefully, the myth falls apart. We've fallen for it, when we gave AT&T their telephone monopoly — and paid dearly for that mistake. Why would anyone seek to repeat it in other markets?

Oligopolies suffer from similar problems as "big gov't": not enough competition to give them incentive and to give consumers real choices.

Full agreement.

The biggest road-block to more competition in my opinion is the "last mile problem". It's not realistic nor efficient for every competitor to run wires to every potential customer.

That's not true — "natural monopoly" is a myth. But do find citations supporting your assertion.

It's the main reason Google is dropping out in many areas.

Another unsubstantiated claim. Google Fiber was meant to run all of the "last miles" from the get-go — it was not something they realized they have to do later. I explain their lack of wide-spread success by the above-referenced regulation of local governments, but you are welcome to offer citations supporting your assertion(s). Meanwhile, I offer this map as evidence supporting my assertion. They are already offered in the "redneck" parts of the country like Salt Lake City, Charlotte, and Kansas City, while the corrupt locales like Chicago — despite having many more thickly-settled (and thus easy-to-wire) would-be customers — are merely "being explored".

If a gov't utility could set up "last mile" wiring, then [...]

Then instead of the poorly-competing oligopoly, we'll have a bona-fide monopoly — with government policing the Internet traffic. Today I can switch from FiOS to Comcast in a matter of days should I decide to. Bringing about a change to the government-owned service will require months and years of raising awareness and electioneering.

The right conditions have to be in place for capitalism to work right.

Absence of wrong conditions is sufficient.

Yes they did.

Do not want.

If you discount the things we get "for free" out in society which is also paid for by taxes or how do you make that happen? 2014:
26.0% of the GDP of US went into taxes.
43.9% of the GDP of Finland went into taxes.
50.9% of the GDP of Denmark went into taxes.

Your number for the US is wrong since you only count federal spending. Total US government spending as percentage of GDP is about 41%, and in addition, US per capita GDP is about 35% higher than Finland's.

There are plenty of articles on this. Note that the US is a high spender even relative to GDP, but given that the US has one of the highest per-capita GDPs in the world ($PPP), that translates into even higher absolute spending, and social welfare spending ought to be compared in terms of absolute per capita spending in $PPP.

The question that has to be addressed is what created the monopoly that fosters the "price gouging" (no such thing by the way)?

Always, always, always there is government involvement that creates the situation where consumers have no choice. Corporations can't really be held to blame, they are simply scorpions doing what scorpions are going to do (q.v. parable about scorpion and frog). If the government said that ACA plans must cover a monthly pint of Ben & Jerry's, I have zero doubt that the cost of a pint of Ben&Jerry's would rise significantly no matter how crunchy the CEO might be.

Situation is even worse when government creates a monopoly. Why is there no generic form of EpiPen costing $25 per? I had my first epi-pen 30 years ago. Surely their patents have expired? Search and you will certainly find some government regulations propping up the monopoly. See https://mises.org/blog/lack-ep...

(from the Mises link above)

"As it turns out, Mylan has a great friend who keeps would-be competitors out of the market...That friend is the FDA.

"Just this year, Teva Pharmaceutical’s attempt at bringing a generic epinephrine injector to market in the US was blocked by the FDA. Adrenaclick and Twinject were unable to get insurance companies on board and so discontinued their injectors in 2012.

"Adrenaclick has since come back...and the FDA has made it illegal for pharmacies to substitute Adrenaclick as a generic alternative to EpiPen. Another company tried to sidestep the whole auto-injector patent barrier by offering prefilled syringes, but the FDA has stalled them, too.

"Mylan has been repeatedly protected from competition, and it has repeatedly (and predictably) increased the price of EpiPens in response.

"One thing is for sure: capitalism is not to blame. Government regulations have choked this market and many others. What we need is a big dose of freedom.

It has been pointed out that the CEO is a Democrat, the daughter of a Democrat Senator from WV so all of Hillary's bluster on the issue rings hollow.

The solution is not *more* government, as it was more government that caused the problem in the first place.

The money that various companies pay to be the official XYZ sponsor of the Olympics is paid to the Olympic Committee, which is a "not for profit" yet takes in billions and putts draconian restrictions on everyone attending. Here are some details of their various demands: https://mises.org/blog/olympic... Reasons like those outlined in the link are why any sensible country is opting out.

Not all of us.

https://mises.org/library/open...

Or if you prefer to listen,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

One suspects the support of "open borders" got into the supposed-libertarian platform by way of a metasticized "You can't tell me what to do!"

Let's ignore all the known problems mentioned by other commenters (such as the Mises' economic calculation problem, Hayek's knowledge problem, and other incentive problems, which you can read more about in [1]) for a moment.

Try it:
1. Buy a piece of land, organize as a commune with a master computer program and plan.
2. Because your commune will work so well (very effective production and happy participants), you'll be able to expand.
3. Take over the world (peacefully)!


[1]: https://mises.org/library/end-...

Better? Nope.
Lots of inflation of consumer prices...
13.5% increase in incomes vs. 15+% increase in consumer prices over 10 years
But hey, what about unemployment?
Still over 10%...
Why is the US' rate under 6%?

But yeah, Europe is doing great. Really. The acid truth of the numbers and the failure of the blue state model is antithetical to you, but true.

praised Somalia for its lack of a central government

Citation needed.

Surely you could have found a better link to support your point.

Why? Because ad hominem is now a valid argument?

The article I linked to — by Thomas DiLorenzo — was written in 1996 and has been cited by economists quite often since then.

Surely you could have come up with a better rebuttal.

Internet, at least the last mile, is a natural monopoly

"Natural monopoly" is a myth. A very convenient myth — for both the monopolists and the government officials seeking to profit from them — but a myth nonetheless.

Sure it does, but not that much. The energy sector's contribution to Norway's GDP is 20%. What about the remaining 80%?

It also accounts for 50% of their exports. Those numbers are quite dominating. And since government spending is part of GDP, it would seem like the energy income gets double-counted if they use cash from energy to supply government benefits. I'd have to see how this number is calculated.

If you call "capitalist" a system where the government controls the 5 largest companies, manages 50% of the GDP in public expenditure, and puts heavy tariffs on agricultural imports (free market?!), then I'm very capitalist too! I posted hard statistics to prove my point, not adjectives.

They described it as "mixed", because you can flip the stat around and say they don't control 50% of the GDP, and outside of key sectors like energy they let capitalism and the free market work, with the exception of tariffs. And with regards to tariffs, that doesn't mean they don't have free markets within the country.

These numbers also don't take into account the kind of lifestyle the median Norwegian has. What kind of home can he afford? How much discretionary spending does he have? What does it cost to be consumer items? They may be "rich" in government benefits, and poor in consumer benefits.

Like, for example: Finland (government expenditure: 58% of the GDP), Denmark (53%), France (57%) and Sweden (49%)? Sure, they must be so poor and sorry not to have tea party drunkards in power.

https://mises.org/blog/if-swed...

Now look at a country like China, and all the benefits they received by loosening state control and moving towards capitalism and free markets. Then look at countries like Greece and Venezuela.

Consider net neutrality. Most posters here seem to be in favor legislation forcing companies to act against their own profit interests in favor of something benefiting the greater good of the society that creates the rules.

This coming from an avowed libertarian.

That's because ISPs and other utilities need permission from the city to operate in the city in the first place, which in turn is because cities own the roads under which utility lines are buried. It then becomes reasonable for the city to require some minimum quality of service from its tenant utilities.