What would happen if everything were privatized?

Everything privatized? Are you saying that we should have our credit card on hand when we call 911?

 

You mean like the Wild Wild West or a third world nation living in the stone ages?

 

depends on the market. For example, law enforcement being unregulated (not sure how that would work rly) would be far different than the food industry being unregulated.

third world countries are not free markets (usually). They are the exact opposite. Dictators controlling the markets with gun in hand. i.e. Africa

 

How are they supposed to put people in massive amounts of debt if they asked for a credit card up front?

 

Ha, unregulated food industry would be amazing! An excellent idea.

 

Few conservatives have problem with education and prisons being privatized. Why should law enforcement be any different? One public service after another is relegated to just another commodity for profiteering.

 

the end would be a free market in a de facto sense. Certain groups going unregulated would monopolize certain aspects of the economy and bleed the american people dry.

 

I would smoke mar1juana, most people would smoke mar1juana and America would hit a Golden age because of it. We would all be rich because of it and start up our own videogame companies and space programs. Because we are all rich and competing against each other we would have

1. An awesome NFL football video game instead of... madden eh..

2. Our own planets because we would finally conquer the universe and ftl travel

And because everyone is smoking mar1juana (star wars episode 7 would be amazing) but there would be no corruption- all the private organizations would not be out for greed but for human prosperity as a whole. We would find world peace here on the home planet as we embark on the galactic.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)

 

That wouldn't work in the modern era. Take Cell Phone companies for example, people may hike prices up but there will always be someone ready to pounce and profit off of it, Cricket for example here and now Ting

Or when internet companies begin to charge for data usage, there will be a new company ready to pounce and profit off of offering unlimited service at the same old price.

Investors are much easier to come by now than in the 1800's

 

Wireless is one of the crappiest industries to use as an example for fair competition.

Not all third world countries are dictatorships.

I mostly meant, like the WiWiWest, in areas far away from centralized control where people would have to self organize and form essential community services...or not at all.

In a psuedo-anarchy, you'll still have richer areas with a semblance of control and poorer areas with whatever scenario you can dream up. The base assumption that every place would be the same in a country that's 3,000 miles wide (continuous) is pretty simplistic.

 

Well hopefully the libertarians, economic conservatives and other market fundies who devote most of their brain power to this Ayn Rand/ Paul fantasy will chip in.

We would have the gold standard and therefore be all rich and free and happy all the time-- except for the untalented 90 odd percent who would get what they deserve (read supply or demand) in ONE MARKET UNDER GOD dominated even more by the .1%, with a bit of input from the rest of the 1%.

We would be free of minimum wage laws, anti-trust laws, laws making it illegal to fire folks who want to unionize, progressive income taxes, state supported schools, health care for the poor and other abominations that tend to interfere with the market distributing societies' wealth .

 

Need to make a distinction between publicly administered and publicly funded.

At the very least, everything short of police could/should be contracted out.

Begets choice/competition begets better quality/service at lower cost.

 

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Both of those are very different than enforcing the law.

 

You can privatize pretty much everything and still have government regulation. As a conservative, I would like to see the government largely get out of the business of delivering services, and be limited to a regulatory role in many of these instances. But 100% unregulated? I do not know anyone of note who favors that.

 

So...kinda like now?

 

Well, isn't early 20th century a pretty good indication of free market at its finest? I mean, that was as free market an economy as it can reasonably get(assuming no anarchy). The good ole days of tainted meat, monopolies, 60hr work weeks of constant manual labor, etc. Oh how I wish I had grown up back in those days, instead of having some Muslim terrorist as my president, and the government providing help for people. Sickening world we live in these days...