I'd like to recomend some reading to you that might help you understand the free market and how it would handle the things that you say are of "common concern".
THE MYTH OF NATIONAL DEFENSE:
FREE MARKET TRANSPORTATION:
DENATIONALIZING THE ROADS*
Education: Free and Compulsory
If You Love Nature, Desocialize It
All of that and more can be found at Mises.org, and another good daily reader is http://www.lewrockwell.com/
Sic semper tyrannis
THE MYTH OF NATIONAL DEFENSE:
FREE MARKET TRANSPORTATION:
DENATIONALIZING THE ROADS*
Education: Free and Compulsory
If You Love Nature, Desocialize It
All of that and more can be found at Mises.org, and another good daily reader is http://www.lewrockwell.com/
Sic semper tyrannis
Ok, what Disco is saying here helped me realize a nagging concern I have about Paul. For example, Paul's site says: "Cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education), abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners..."
I find the idea that a private corporation or individual should handle tasks of great common concern illogical and undemocratic. A transfer of control of things like security, education, military, and energy use from government to private, along with a decrease in regulation of the private sector, could lead just as quickly to corporate tyranny in these aspects of our lives, as dangerous if not more than a government tyranny.
I don't see where Paul says that, but if its true, doesn't transferring control of some of these departments and projects to so many states sound like a logistical and bureaucratic nightmare?
But why should a private owner be given ownership of something of value to the whole community, sometimes the whole nation? How does any other individual (real person) participate in the caring for and protection of a park or land that is controlled by a private entity with no democratic structures in place?
But what makes sense to one person (who happens to own a land) might not make sense to another. In the case of private ownership of a federal or communal land, the private owner has no obligation to consider the wishes of anyone other than themselves with respect to their property, right?
This seems like a contradiction to me. The federal government shouldn't own land. Why? The American people are the government, in a democratic society. Government ownership of the land then is a way of communal ownership where the property is of concern and value to a whole community of people and not just one individual.
Transferring ownership of such things to the state pretends to solve this, and probably does in some cases. But rarely does private ownership make sense to me. I would like to see more details about what Paul proposes for certain federal departments, properties, etc. and whether he advocates state or private ownership. If you can point me to these details, I'd appreciate it.
In general my concern is what concerns me about American libertarians in general. The singular focus on individual freedom and private ownership can be a threat to democratic society where it is supposed that a balance between individual interest and communal interest must always be kept, and the structures for such a balance and for the participation of the individual in the interests of the communal is called democratic government. A government that doesn't govern with democratic structures is a tyranny. But the transfer of ownership of communal interests to private entities easily becomes corporate tyranny, which sounds worse in my mind. A corporation doesn't even pretend to be structured democratically, neither inside within the ranks of employees and decision making, nor outside in its complete lack of transparency to the community. Is it that libertarians have completely lost hope in our ability to maintain democratic structures in government, so they just say, to hell with it, the democratic project failed, only the individual's freedom and self-interest remains?
Last edited: