Well, I'm quoting him again here, anyway.
He hasn't really gone away. His last couple of articles have really kicked butt. Oh, I guess I've only read two of the last four - the second and the fourth of these:
If You’re Not an Extremist, You’re Not Paying Attention
Posted by Kevin Carson in Commentary • No comments
Kevin Carson says America’s real owners need a population just smart enough to keep doing their jobs — but too stupid to look at the man behind the curtain.
Oct 12, 2010
Is the South Fulton Fire Department Really an Indictment of Libertarianism?
Posted by Kevin Carson in Commentary, Feature Articles • 17 comments
Kevin Carson on the Cranick fire incident.
Oct 8, 2010
Only the Guilty Need Fear? Tell It to Anne Frank
Posted by Kevin Carson in Commentary • 6 comments
Kevin Carson on gullibility and a long history of criminal government.
Oct 6, 2010
Why Self-Organized Networks Will Destroy Hierarchies — A Credo
Posted by Kevin Carson in Commentary • 11 comments
Kevin Carson explains why we’re going to win the struggle for humanity’s future.
Here's the conclusion of the fire department article:
By the way, there’s one thing we should never lose sight of in all this: what the actual statist alternative is. Lots of people point to the harshness of letting the house burn down for nonpayment. But keep in mind that having one’s house auctioned off for nonpayment of taxes is more common than house fires, and that it entails just as much of an effective loss of your house as having it burn down. The modal statist alternative, as practiced in most places, is to fund fire services with mandatory taxes — and unless taxation is backed in the last resort by punitive measures almost as harsh as having your house burn down, it’s prone to exactly the same moral hazard problems as a voluntary payment system.
That’s a favorite tactic of critics of libertarianism: to compare the actual performance of voluntary institutions to the good intentions of the state. But any social system can be expected to work optimally if it’s staffed by angels.
4 comments:
Y'know, all that hoo-haw over that fire department doing what it was(not) contracted to do... the media made a big ugly out of it, but the homeowner was not angry in the initial reports. He knew it was his own failure that caused the situation. Also, the fire department would have acted, regardless of payment status, if there was anyone trapped in the home. The media could stand to learn some logic from that homeowner.
I am liking Mr. Carlson's 'If You're Not an Extremist...' I have been getting high on John Taylor Gatto lately. Very similar thoughts. I keep looking for ... the balls? ... to pull my 18 yr. old son out of his last year in the public dummy-maker. I will never send my 15 yr. old back there.
NZ got the Fire Department problem sorted about 1906. Up until then all fire-fighting had been done by volunteers; it still is in many rural areas today.
Funding is primarily by levy on insurance companies; every cover for fire has an associated levy for fire-fighting.
The government pitches in for additional functions like rescue (from crashed vehicles for example), storm damage (temporary repairs like tarps over roofs) and so on. That part of their funding is about 20% of the total budget.
The service covers uninsured property as well - a practice which started before 1906. The attitude of the insurance companies was and is that a fire might be next door to one of their clients. Better to stop the fire where it is than to wait for it to spread...
In all fairly altruistic. And I can't imagine the US being any different.
"If you think Noam Chomsky’s a raving anti-American lunatic, it’s a safe bet that you don’t know anything about the role of the U.S. government after WWII in setting up provisional governments staffed by former Axis collaborators, about the things the U.S. government did in Guatemala in 1954 and Jakarta in 1965, about Operation Condor, or about the School of the Americas."
Just LOVE that. Says it all...
Deb S - good luck schooling your 15 y-o. Personally I would feel sorry for him; well, at least until I found out how much the US pays its teachers compared with NZ. I think that many of our teachers are under-paid and that would put many of those inthe US on the poverty line...
But then, that is the American way, huh!
Many US teachers on the poverty line might be a huge improvement, simply due to the improvisations that would be driven by sheer need. These people are paid very, very well to teach very, very little. They do that exceptionally well, too.
My son is fine, at least he's not lost his curiosity and need to learn things. I don't imagine he'll be in the 60 percent of incoming college students who require remedial courses, if he chooses to go to college.
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