I’m not aware of any that don’t. Everyone who lives in the neighborhood is part of the HOA, and almost all newborns live in the same house as their parents. Are you saying that if I want to get around the HOA’s rules on what color my house can be, I can just let my kids paint it?
Oh, and as for the argument that private companies would spring up to cover flood insurance: The only reason the government does offer flood insurance is that no entity smaller than a government is able to do so. There are private companies for almost every other form of insurance, and there are no laws against a private flood insurance company, either. So why aren’t there any? Because it just doesn’t work. For life insurance, or car insurance, or health insurance, you can have your crack team of statisticians work out, to a very small margin of error, how many people will die, or have car crashes, or get sick, in any given year, and so guarantee a nice, steady, reliable flow of money. For flood insurance, though, you’ll have no claims at all for years on end, and then suddenly, at a time you can’t predict in advance, you have each and every one of your clients filing a claim at once. In order to make a profit on insurance with that much unpredictability, you’d need a company with such a huge reserve of resources that it would functionally become a government.
If 100 progressives were making a constitution from scratch, would it look exactly like the one we have now? Almost certainly not. So why aren’t they being grilled on what their ideal society would look like, and how exactly would it work, and what each and every one of its provisions be?
They aren’t because it’s a silly question to ask. Progressives aren’t making up a society from scratch, they are responding to an already-existing society and suggesting ways they think it should be changed and improved. And while a few extremists may sit around and talking about what kind of radically-different social structure they’d put in place if they had total power, the vast majority of progressives are more concerned with how the general ideas of progressivism apply to the real-world issues of the day. Asking them how things would work in a perfect, extremist, ultra-progressive society may be useful for people trying to score silly points in an argument (“So, unlimited welfare for everyone? Publically-funded late-term abortion clinics located inside middle schools? Disability coverage for my clinically-diagnosed twinkie addiction?” Hmmmm?), but don’t really reflect as well on anyone trying to be taken seriously.
Now, reread those two paragraphs, replacing “progressive” with “libertarian,” “aren’t being asked” with “are” and “unlimited welfare for everyone” with “would there be a Supreme Court?”
Under 18, you’re a minor. Over 18, if you keep living in an HOA, it’s a choice.
Because the federal government’s insurance – subsidized by Mr and Mrs. Everyone Else – is so cheap there’s no competing. If the government starts selling gasoline for $1 gallon, Exxon will be gone, too.
The terms “ten year flood” and “hundred year flood” reflect exactly the kind of statistical work you say is impossible. 100-year flood - Wikipedia
A major flood is going to wipe out a valley; earthquakes and hurricanes do far, far more damage and there are plenty of companies selling both.
Major insurance companies already do have massive assets; State Farm’s revenue was $63 billion; that makes them about the size of West Virginia. Their $200B in assets could have covered the entire cost of Hurricane Irene.
Directing this question to the big “L” Libertarians out there, I once again quote from the Libertarian Party platform:
Who should be interpreting what the boundaries of the Constitution are? If it is still the Supreme Court, then what would change under a Libertarian society, if anything?
And if you keep living in a nation, that’s a choice, too. The way to escape from the HOA is the same as the way to escape from any other government: Move to somewhere outside that government’s jurisdiction.
No, the type of statistical work I was referring to is figuring out how many events you’ll have each year. There’s no way to know how many 100 year floods there will be in any given year-- It’ll usually be 0, but it’ll occasionally be 1, and if there’s 1 when you assumed there would be 0, you’re in trouble.
Sure, you could use the same sort of techniques to estimate how many 100 year floods there will be in, say, a 500 year period. But if you go to investors with a business plan that requires you to average your expenses over a 500 year period, they’ll just laugh at you. Private, profit-motivated businesses can’t deal with timescales that long.
Do you seriously think an HOA is not fundamentally different from a government? Or are you just being deliberately obtuse for the purpose of argument? There is no third choice; you’re either a fool or trolling.
I’m sorry but you’re simply misinformed. In the real, actual world, major insurers take on policies for hugely expensive and highly rare occurrences all the time. To repeat: earthquakes and tsunamis are far more unpredictable than floods, and yet earthquake insurance is readily available.
Joe’s Discount Insurance Shack would have exactly the problems you cite; a multinational industry with trillions in assets and millions of policies in dozens of countries is a different story.
9/11 was a completely unprecedented event; outside of war, never in history had a single attack done so much financial damage. There was no way to know how many 9-11 events would happen, if ever … and $33 billion in insurance was paid; that dwarfs any flood you want to name.
You want to find some self-proclaimed progressives and ask them what they would do if elected, feel free. What we’re doing here is asking some self-proclaimed libertarians what they would do if elected. But what we’re getting seems to be a run-around.
“Why should people elect Libertarians to office?”
“Because Libertarian policies are better than other policies.”
“That sounds good. But can you explain why they’re better?”
“Because they’re different from what the other parties have been doing.”
“Well, I guess being better implies they must be different. But can you explain exactly what the differences are?”
“We can’t know what we’d do until we’re faced with the situation.”
“Wait a second. If you don’t know how you’d do things, how do you know you’d do them better?”
“Because we’re different.”
“Okay, you’ve covered that. But what happens if the difference is you’re worse than the other parties.”
“We’ve already established we’re better.”
“Technically, we’ve only established that you claim to be better.”
“And different.”
“Okay, let’s focus on the different part. How would you change about the way the interstate highway system is being run? It seems to be working okay.”
“Then we wouldn’t change anything.”
“What? I thought you said you’d be doing everything different?”
“We will be doing everything different. Except some things we’ll be keeping the same.”
“And which things will be different and which things will be the same?”
“I already said we can’t know what we’d do until we’re faced with the situation.”
A very large percentage of the misconceptions about economic policy would go away if people could close their eyes and momentarily forget about pieces of paper like banknotes and insurance contracts. Economic policy is about maximizing useful goods and services, not manipulating pieces of paper. (I’m not deprecating such paper, just espousing certain thought experiments.)
Flood control presents a good example. The goal of farmers (and society) should be to prevent the floods (quite doable with properly managed dams and reservoirs); yet attention in this thread is focused on the pieces of paper that move flood losses from one entity to another. :smack:
It is easy to understand why libertarians are unwilling to consider flood control seriously. If they reasoned the problem out step-by-step they’d gradually reinvent a representative democracy with taxation powers that would hire experts.
Instead their dogma will lead them to a silly system with private companies competing to build little dams, and in their “perfect free market” farmers will “vote with their feet” by moving away from the paths of the dams built by the companies whose dam broke a decade ago, killing thousands.
The extreme libertarian model is so silly, I’ve got to wonder if you guys are just trolls testing Poe’s Law.
I self-identify as libertarian (though I’m registered Democrat), Political Compass also pegs me as really libertarian.
Depends on your definition of legalizing. I certainly agree with taking away the utter illegality of doing it, but they still need to be controlled. I’m not going to recommend stocking heroin at Circle K, ever, I just think that there should be ways to shoot up if you REALLY want to ruin your life, along with about 5 billion waivers you have to sign. Harder drugs like Meth and Heroin should also be monitored, by that I mean that you literally need a professional watching you while you do it, no taking it home and doing it whenever. Hell, I recommend this for no other reason than doing medically prescribed, FDA inspected cocaine is at the very least better for you than snorting cocaine plus god knows whatever was cut into it.
If by “corporate welfare” you mean “random arbitrary grants just 'cause” than I agree, if “corporate welfare” has come to be slang for “end government subsidies” then I couldn’t disagree more, since subsidies keep a lot of good research firms rolling and a lot of jobs in tact. They just need to prove they deserve it first.
Yeah, I’ll grant this one. Though I also need to reconcile the fact that defense funding also pays for innumerable research grants.
I’ve finally been convinced that Social Security isn’t too big of a problem, for now at least. However, Medicare and Medicaid probably could do with some reform.
Most of the things defined as “middle class welfare” are fine, in my opinion. A lot of people decrying it are yelling at student loans. Besides, Defense, SS, and Medicare/Medicaid are the real drains on our economy, even if I agreed I wouldn’t pick that battle now until we look at where we can cut the big cows for some deficit money.
Eh, freer in what ways? Speech is already pretty damn free, time and place restrictions make sense. Maybe stop requiring a permit for protests? Really the worst censorship (in the US) is industry imposed, not government. The MPAA and ESRB have done more to censor art than the government ever did.
I don’t know, I mean, even though by every automated quiz metric I’m libertarian I can’t get too worked up about the current government. I mean, I’d prefer more social changes, I guess, legalize abortion, gay marriage, etc.
Perhaps what makes me a bit of a poor libertarian is I think the government should still provide public goods that everybody has a right to have access to. This means libraries and schools or other educational trades primarily, but also (scaled down) defense, justice, and possibly health (everyone has a right to live). The greatest foundation of civilization is access to information and education, and I don’t trust the private sector to keep it for everyone. That’s not to say the government didn’t make mistakes, oh lord no. For one, I’d try and find a way to get rid of standardized testing altogether (granted a lot of standardized testing isn’t even government commissioned). I just don’t think “government messed up” necessarily means “government needs to step down”, it just means we need to elect people that are actually competent and willing to reform education.
This doesn’t mean “libertarians are better at education, even if it’s the same” by the way, it means “on this issue I disagree with perhaps what most libertarians would say, education needs reform, not privatization.”
Most of my qualms with the government is that I think it should act more like a corporation than a ruling body, which sounds a tad odd. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that these branches should be kept on different sides of the playground. One side would focus on regulating things that should be regulated, drugs, guns (which should be legal but controlled), law enforcement, etc. And then the part that actually spends money should act like a corporation, “does this work, how can we invest this best?” Rather than allowing Congressmen to promise money and pass laws to that effect, there should actually be an agency, a branch, a separate legislature, whatever, that is responsible and publically accountable* for performing investments, money management, and program budgeting (where programs would be determined to exist by congress, but funded by the investments branch).
Actually, my thoughts are more complex. My idea was to have something like two houses, one elected and one appointed. Elected ones have a long-ish term like senators, appointed ones have lifetime appointments with number of seats determined by congress like the Supreme Court, though perhaps with more rules to kick them out so that “lifetime appointment” doesn’t become too much of a liability.
The main problem I have with libertarianism is their arguments about “the role of government”. My opinion is that the role of government is to serve the people. So I support a pretty broad role for government.
I feel if something is a good idea, then it’s a good idea. I don’t care if it’s enacted by a single individual, a private business, a public collective, or the government. If it was worth doing then it should be done without arguing about who should do it.
Like the flood control program we’ve used as an example. I think it’s ridiculous to say that it’s a great idea if some private company built the dam and controlled the flood waters but it’s a terrible idea if the government build the exact same dam for the same amount of money. Even more ridiculous is to acknowledge that the dam is a good idea but one which private business is unable to accomplish so it shouldn’t be done even though a government could accomplish it. That’s just society shooting itself in the foot.
Having a well balanced diet is a “good idea”. If it’s enacted by a single individual, that’s fine. If it is forced on you by the government by, for example, banning grocery stores and restaurants and forcing everyone to go to government eateries where it monitors how much and what you eat, should it still be done without arguing?