Fairer Laws: The Law Merchant was a non-governmental system of commercial-dispute resolution that arose in Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Merchants viewed it as fair and abided by its decisions because it was created and administered by and for merchants. The Law Merchant was highly successful until governments began to subvert it and expand their own power. But because government-run legal systems have become increasingly slow and arbitrary, the Law Merchant is returning in the form of private arbitration and mediation services, which now help resolve criminal as well as commercial disputes.
There are many commercial dispute resolutions around today. I’ve got one in my contract with a toy company, and I’d probably need another business to afford to use it. I also tried that concept when I was kicked out of a tenured teaching position, which I never got back. When these benign but toothless venues don't work, you need a court system that does work—though that is precisely what we don’t have now--thanks to Big Business controlling the courts, brought to you by unregulated capitalism.
Livable Communities: Private neighborhood associations have grown dramatically in the United States in recent years. An important alternative to government zoning and the tragedy of the urban commons, they represent the most far-reaching trend in privatization today. The hotel, the forerunner of better residential communities, is the prototypical “proprietary community.”
We have a lot of ugly paranoid gated communities around Salt Lake. I also got kicked out or more and more beautiful and to me sacred places when I was growing up on Long Island, because the wealthy few started scarfing up the land and keeping everyone else off. Try finding a beach on the north shore of Long Island where you can actually enjoy the solitude and beauty of nature, and you’ll find a place I never did. Try painting your house a color you like but your neighbors don’t in some of these wonderful communities, and you’ll be an instant criminal. Freedom my ass.
Educational Innovation: Prior to state involvement, literacy and school attendance rates in England, Wales, and the United States were 90 percent and rising. Perhaps more surprising is that private education is enjoying a remarkable ren-aissance in many developing countries today such as India, Brazil, Colombia and South Africa. In these countries, a large private-education industry, often aimed at serving the poorest of students, exists to alleviate the failure of government-run schools.
I worked in one of the most exclusive elementary schools in the U.S. (on the north shore of Long Island) for nearly four years, and saw some of the ugliest behavior exhibited by human beings—not so much the kids, though they were headed in that direction. Contrast that to a poverty-stricken west side school I worked in here in SLC, and it was truly beautiful, with kids from every corner of the world (over 20 languages spoken), and somehow learning to get along with each other.
FYI, I was an infinitely better educator by the time I was working here, than when I first started out back east. So much for vouchers and private schools. And why would anyone in their right mind NOT want to improve public education, in every way possible? Don’t you know it is individual human minds that have brought us every single usable artifact humans have had, from stone chisels to the Hubble Telescope?
Government Failures and Market Challenges: Many laws governing cities are based on faulty notions about what governments are likely to achieve. In contrast, the non-governmental alternatives presented in The Voluntary City are based on historical case studies that illustrate the difference between entrepreneurial incentives and political incentives. Private entrepreneurs typically deliver better “public” goods and services than do government bureaucrats, and market failure is less common than government failure.
I am a very serious private entrepreneur. I was just at a three hour meeting last night, where were working on a business plan that will literally change the world, within the decade. For the better or for the worse, will depend on how government regulates what we do. And so far, I’m sad to say, the government will regulate it the wrong way and use our ideas for mostly wrong purposes. That won’t stop me from trying to direct the course of events properly, but it is ideas like yours, and the insane fear of intelligent regulation and the urgent necessity of people working and cooperating together on a grander scale, that are the problem.
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