Hi there. Firstly, I've got two apologies to make. One, for resurrecting a thread that should probably be allowed a dignified death and two for taking so long to respond to a post addressed to me.
So without further ado... breadandbutterfly takes umbrage with me for asking everyone to do a thought experiment whereby one imagines that government spending is severely slashed and the money that gets saved is returned to the economy via tax cuts. They wrote I don't need some interesting hypothetical stretch of the imagination to figure out what the world would be like if the government spent less... because that is exactly what this government ARE doing.
In a nutshell, no they're not. The Tories are reducing spending certainly, but only to reduce the deficit. There has been no mention of tax cuts - in fact, it was the Tories who raised VAT to 20% and refuse to cut the 50p Income Tax rate or Inheritance Tax. Doing one without the other won't stimulate the economy.
You then go on to list areas of governmental intervention that my business couldn't do without. Like you, all Libertarians believe in the rule of law so, like you, most of us don't have a problem with a judiciary, law enforcement or a penal system - we accept that some tax needs to be spent.
You move on to a slightly sticky wicket when you mention infrastructure that our taxes go towards, namely roads, public transport, rubbish collection. Roads are essentially a state monopoly paid for several times over with our Vehicle Excise Duty and Fuel Taxes. I would certainly welcome wide scale privatisation of our road network if it resulted in lower fuel prices and the abolition of the VED.
It was the private sector that built and successfully ran our rail network for donkey?s years. It was only in the aftermath of the last war that rail was nationalised and it's been going to hell in a hand cart ever since. The 'privatisation' plan put forth by the last government ballsed up the system even more - one thing we don't have in our rail system is capitalism or a free market.
Finally, why can't rubbish collection be privatised? If I want my bins emptied weekly, why don't I strike a deal with a collection company, likewise, if I hardly generate any rubbish at all why not have a collection once a month and they can charge me a bit less? Why do we assume rubbish collection can only be provided by a government, one-size-fits-all monopoly?
You also mention Trading Standards but surely any trade that I do is bound under contract law - Caveat Emptor and all that...
You mention schools - again all evidence points to a market based system (either through Private schooling or through the provision of a voucher system) as being the best way to deliver education for the majority of kids. Also, could you explain why the state has to take direct responsibility for educating children rather than just being a provider of funds? It doesn't take responsibility to feed you if you are out of work, it gives you a sum of money and expects you to find food for yourself as provided by any supplier in a free and competitive market - why the double standards on education and health?
the happiest and most economically successful countries are those like Scandinavia... which actually pay relatively high taxes and have correspondingly relatively equal societies and strong benefits. Well Norway, for example, is a country more or less the same size as Britain, they have more or less the same natural resources as us and have oil and gas reserves roughly the same as ours - we split our resources amongst our population of 70 million, they do the same split but between a mere 5 million people. Sweden, on the other hand, has spent much of the last ten years moving away from being a country of big government - they have embraced libertarianism and, so far, the signs seem to be good for their economy. It will be an interesting place to watch over the next few years.
Your final paragraph asks me to name a no-taxation model and suggests that my policies would wind the clock back to Victorian Britain - I suggest nothing of the sort. I'm for a low taxation economy (Singapore, New Zealand), not a no taxation economy (Monte Carlo, Cayman Isles) and would suggest closely following the experience of the New Zealand government over the last twenty years or so.
ProgressivePatriot I'm really not a fan of Marcus Brigstocke - trying to claim that a country which conscripts children to fight in wars and refuses to address the root causes of its famines, i.e. land reform and the rule of law, is somehow libertarian makes him come across as a cock! Finally, I have read Chomsky - his work on linguistics is very interesting - Libertarian Socialism, with its dogmatic principles of who can own what, is an oxymoron. In my opinion, any form of Libertarianism which requires rules beyond property rights and contract law (i.e. who owns what and to whom, and under what circumstances, are they selling) is off to a non-starter.