I would love to add something to this discussion: Everyone knows that every First-World country's government purposely spends more than it's budget, right? In addition, most all of expidentures are for small interest groups whom helped elect said official. For example, Barack Obama, who as you may recall promised to help jumpstart the economy. Well, in case you haven't noticed or don't know. Every measure that his administration has come up with has the exact opposite effect. In addition, as eloquent as the man is: he can not get support behind his *cough* 'plans'.

So in order to summarize what i am saying: Government's must learn how to spend public money only on such projects that BENEFIT EVERYONE, NOT your interest groups. Thus, leading to the ability to lower taxes to more appropriate or economy stimulating levels.

(BarackObama READ THIS!!)

What are you and RG trying to solve? It sounds like a battle of “I have read more books than you so I’m more qualified.” RG sounds like a politician.

I think your argument of taxation brings no good is simple enough. There just needs to be a better way to collect taxes instead of just taking it through income taxes or raising taxes on certain products (like yachts). I like a flat federal retail tax. This way the government can only get as big as the market will let it.

The neo-Communist error to which you allude, is essentially the same error from which proponents of any monopolistic system of organization suffer…

But the reason the problem of the Commons/freeloading is an issue is that it’s one of the central issues in human organizing (the other is resource contention). So if you posit a system of organization that cannot address these basic problems, your system is likely broken. Also, if you cannot find exemplars of your system in action, that should also be a red flag. Be careful not to sound like the neo-Communists: our system is great; too bad it’s never been tried in its pure form.

Good punt. I’m not asking for you to be an expert at everything. I’m raising basic objections to named economic problems. We’re not in esoteric theory here, we’re doing basic pricing and resource allocation.

But good punt anyway, not addressing that the competing systems are not allowed in Afghanistan, Congo, etc. There *are* states further toward your ideals, you are just ignoring them.

As you address how you would go about pricing of the services I mentioned, please keep two things in mind:

1) Massive resource contention among competing providers. You should be able to explain how n militaries can coexist in the same airspace, for example, without a referee.

2) Pricing will be done by a monopoly or oligopoly provider. The size of the spaces and the resource contention will dictate this. Use what you know about monopoly/oligopoly pricing power in a vacuum to address this, and why this is better.

“My assertion is further that unless a competing system can address all these issues with more than soundbites, it will never overcome the hurdle of massive experience & choice on the other side.”

And my thesis is that for most of these services/goods, “competing systems” are outlawed entirely. This is surely a massive hurdle.

My oversight, the Luxury Tax was a congressional act, not a State-specific one.

You’re way too obsessed with the freeloading/commons problem, you could probably Google some great essays from imaginative authors smarter than I am, who can describe in detail the very way these problems have been in the past eliminated/reduced (see “The Voluntary City”) or theoretically how they may be eliminated in the future (see Tabarrok’s “Dominant Assurance Contracts”).

Seriously, do you have your own blog? The sidebar here is a terrible forum for discussion.

I’m not sure what the problem with this is: I’d accept as a compromise, the ability to pay for those things I’d like to share, so long as I don’t pay for the things in which I want no part. I’m somehow selfish, because I don’t want everything?

Okay, let’s play this out. I opt in to everything provided by the Government. Let’s say I’m on the Premium plan. So I get roads, schools (even though I have no kids), military, etc. You just want the military. Fine, but you pay a much higher rate for the military-only plan. If I were in business, I might set that rate very high. Or, I might not make it available at all, since my organization still has to do all the services anyway. Then, if you ever have kids, I might decide that you owe for the last 28 years of premiums before you are eligible to pay for schools for your kids. Sound ridiculous? Call Comcast and try to get The Discovery Channel by itself. Or try to get Internet service that’s domestic-only (maybe you don’t need to pay for the Asian cable runs that are so expensive). Or try to get car insurance after someone hits your car, or fire insurance while the house is on fire. My point is that the private sector arranges itself this way too. My assertion is that this is the result of billions of individual decisions over thousands of years, with trillions of dollars of wealth hanging in the balance. My assertion is further that unless a competing system can address all these issues with more than soundbites, it will never overcome the hurdle of massive experience & choice on the other side.
Also, how would you propose the pricing for prisons? Specifically, if you’re on the Government Lite plan with only fire and road access, how do we address the fact that you are freeloading on all the people who pay for the police (by reduced probability of crime against yourself)? Or how do we price the fact that you are freeloading on the unemployment system (which makes it more likely that people will take risks, generating more employment & consumption & wealth & opportunities for you)?