Maybe baited: Label me a caught minnow. Rick Barker wrote something that was incorrect. Here’s a correction for educational purpose and to challenge readers.
Please understand this is academic and meant to stimulate conversation about alternative arrangements.
Some of it is critical of the status quo and is meant to prod readers a bit, or at least one reader …
Though police and fire as public safety services seem to be free from socialism attributes, the fact is their costs are still socialism in basis. Their effects and services are worthy of socialization and are sometimes legislated into existence for the public good.
The price of these civic services is passed to citizens. Not to be too hyperbolic but they are coercively extracted by taxes on property owners at the threat of liens on property or property seizure if owners refuse to pay.
Taxes are levied whether the citizen utilizes the services or not (which, honestly, most citizens probably hope they DON’T need them). The civic presumption and the social contract is that these services maintain order and safety in the commons for the benefit of citizens independent of their individual contribution or their social status.
An “essential” service may not always be absolutely necessary. Many societies have evolved that did not require police nor fire service. To this day many rural locales do not maintain anything but informal policing and only volunteer fire service.
Libertarians believe that self-reliant individuals can self-govern and craft enterprises that are independent of state-based solutions that necessitate bureaucratic burdens of politicians and politics and taxes on the jurisdiction.
Ayn Rand is their hero and her writings are their inspiration. There is still a cost. We cannot escape that.
One modern libertarian politician who gravitates Republican is Rand Paul. He may have a better idea than the base socialism that we are practicing, but he and his kind are fighting more than a century of vested interest and legislated habit and the inertia of political laziness.
The real danger in modern public safety provision is not the blue-suited cops or slicker-wearing firefighters, but instead the administrative load that sneaks into the mix, and the emergent “privileged classes” that come to exist via union contract.
When George Gascón was district attorney, there were many initiatives that he tried to put in place that were adjunct to these services and were vocally questioned by conservatives. Rick could draw from those as examples to jump off from in assessing the bloat.
I am almost certain that there are built-in barriers that prevent such analysis. Unions have had more than a century to build in protections for their membership and its interests.
So, Rick, are you still certain of what you speak?
Christopher Lucero
Saugus
