Life as a Service

The modern version would probably be "freemen on the land": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemen_on_the_land

"Freemen on the land" are people who believe that all statute law is contractual, and that such law is applicable only if an individual consents to be governed by it. They believe that they can therefore declare themselves independent of government jurisdiction, holding that the only "true" law is common law, as they define it.

I had the good fortune of being born Australian. Through sheer dumb luck I'm entitled to:

- Free healthcare - Free education - Free roads and parks - Free safety and security (i.e. a relatively well functioning police force that will protect me from violence)

These entitlements are far from perfect, and come with the caveat that if and when I start earning money, some of it will be taken from me (by threat of force, if necessary) to go into a communal fund to provide other Australians with these benefits.

That sucks a bit, but on the other hand I have a legal right to decide, along with other citizens, on the proportion of my income that is taken, as well as on the people in charge of managing these communal funds.

Perhaps more importantly, I get to live in a society where other people get these things too. I'm not saying this from a touchy-feely standpoint - there are huge benefits to the individual living in such a system.

Because virtually everyone in my country has food in their stomach, a roof over their head, and a shot at improving their situation through hard work, I rarely feel unsafe. From a purely selfish standpoint, I am extremely grateful that most of the people in my country feel they have more to gain by defending 'the system' than by attacking it.

As a business owner, I also have access to a large pool of highly educated people to work with and millions of (relatively) wealthy people to sell my products and services to.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I quite liked the article and often think about how silly and arbitrary things like nationalism and citizenship are.

And yet...

Sure it sucks that I never really had the opportunity to opt out of the system, but on the other hand - boy am I lucky that it was opt in by default.

Well, there's no limit to how much healthcare you can use, though. Hanson[1] suggests Americans already buy too much healthcare, and in the US, healthcare still costs most people something through copays, etc. So, I think it's quite arguable that giving people free healthcare can create bad incentives, if not limited some other way.

I also am not sure it makes sense to lump together healthcare (which includes a lot of long-term preventative care like vaccines and lifestyle advice) and fire protection (which is mostly emergency damage control). A better analogy might be if the government provided free fire insurance covering everything citizens own -- actually, the US does this sort of thing with hurricanes and floods, so there's a fairly exact analogy, and it seems clear that it does create bad incentives to build and rebuild in hurricane-prone and low-lying areas.

[1] http://hanson.gmu.edu/CutMed.htm

In some places, fire protection is apparently up for debate. This family had their house burn down because they failed to pay the $75 tax. It's only fair after all:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/tennessee-family-home-b...

I think it's even been given the unfortunate name 'pay to spray'. Fire prevention is just as much up for debate amongst people of a certain ideological bent as healthcare. It's the next logical step. Of course, most people don't want to live in that world which is why we have compulsory payments. Those who see them as a positive thing will probably always have to tolerate those who complain about how unfair they are.