Posted On: August 23, 2007, 9:16 am CDT

Posted By: gimme shelter

No, not "volunteers" in the sense that they'll work for free, but people that you've entered into a voluntary arrangement with, as in, "if you provide this service for me, I'll pay you x amount. Agreed? O.K., let's work out the details." There are countless examples of private businesses doing things that some maintain "only the goverment can do!" such as private security firms, private mediation/arbitration firms (instead of a monopolized legal system), private business evaluation/rating firms (e.g., A.M. Best, J.D. Powers, etc.), etc. These arrangments work and do not require that people who have no interest (either financial or otherwise) be compelled to pay for them.

As far as the example of "who's going to prevent my car from being stolen," the police (or any other government agency) has no obligation or duty to do any such thing. And the government has admitted this in countless court decisions; their words have been (and this is almost verbatim) "government has no obligation or duty to provide services, even as elementary a duty as protection," for example, check the case of Bowers v. DeVito. And this makes intuitive sense; suppose your car gets stolen; you won't find a lawyer in the world (unless he wants to be disbarred) who will file a suit against the gov't/police dept. for "failure to fullfill duty to protect and/or prevent car from being stolen." Sure, you could try filing such a suit on your own (if you can get past the "justice system's" hatred of non-lawyers), but it will be thrown out for "failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted."

So, ponder that: people are forced to pay for police, etc., ostensibly under the belief that the police, etc. are obligated to "do something;" then the gov't comes out and plainly admits, with no shame whatsoever, they are not obligated to provide anything whatsoever. Suppose that a private firm did that. How long do you think it would be before the gov't rounded them up and put them all in jail? What do you think the mainstream media would make of that? "Private firm takes money and doen't provide anything in return!! Kill them all!! Burn down their houses!!"