4 ms·

pay as you go, like tolls

• save_ferris 7y ago
  How would that work for something like the Hanford nuclear contamination zone[0], which threatens the water supply for millions of Americans? The cost to clean up the contamination has run into the billions, and yet there's no apparent private incentive to clean up this mess. If the market doesn't present a solution, are those millions of Americans just screwed? How would you effectively pay for services that maintain the community behind the scenes, i.e. police and fire department? Swipe a card every time they show up? How would we pay for the military without taxes? Just sell contracts to private security firms? How do we hold those firms accountable when they commit war crimes, as we recently saw from a former Blackwater contractor[1]? But then how do we pay for the justice system to hold those accountable if not through tax revenue? Make it so only those who can pay can participate? 0: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-cost-20161216-story.html https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-cost-20161216-s... 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/politics/blackwater-nicholas-slatten.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/politics/blackwater-ni...
  • alt_f4 7y ago
    Re. the nuclear thing: so you're saying you need govt funding to solve a problem created by the govt? Also, you are overestimating my desire to pay for foreign military adventures. Your point about the police is actually great: the quality of customer service is so bad, racist and ineffective, that if they were a private enterprise, they'd have gone bankrupt. Generally, I'm not saying the govt should have no role in things, I'm just in favor of reducing its current involvement by about 80%, along with the productivity it robs from workers and business.