Revolution in Kiev

You're missing the point. Paying service fees is never taxation because the result of not paying for a service is denying that service, while the result of not paying taxes is forceful alienation of property and possibly imprisonment. I am yet to hear of a private company who threatened its customers with all that if they cancel their subscription. If this happens in the free market with the said protection agency, my point is that it will be called extortion and recognized for what it is. That's important because the threshold of compliance in people lowers when they recognize they are being robbed.

> Prices are set to what the market will pay, in this case it's as close to revolt as the business can get away with.

I don't understand this point. What prevents a competitor (say, a big investor) from entering the market and establishing another big protection firm with lower prices and better service? If you say "they all will form a cartel" then I will point out that cartels are always very unstable and someone deserts or another outsider disrupts the market, historically this has been true.

> I would also like to point out that I don't disagree with your assertion that their are negatives with a government controlled monopoly on law enforcement, I disagree with the idea that a free market system for it would not be subject to worse corruption/abuse.

What could be worse than conducting a theft from people calling it taxation, then be bribed by corporations and using those tax money to serve corporate interests? Simple math: a company bribes an official with $1, the official spends $10 of somebody else's stolen money (so it doesn't cost him anything) for that company interests and that makes the company $100. In the free market, companies at least deal with the money they actually made, so there's no "free" money for them and no one to bribe.

Again, if people are apathetic about something, then what right on earth does a government have to extract money from them and teach them what's good and what's bad on this money, regardless of whether they agreed with that or not?

As far as actual conditions, I cannot judge this well. I left Ukraine for the US about 14 years ago. I have family and friends there, but I cannot tell exactly if things are better or worse than pre-1990. I can say that they are definitely not good currently. Median income is low, prices are high, good jobs are scarce. Education is something I don't know much about.

The healthcare system there is technically state run but practically is what I would call "microcapitalism": you have to pay effectively a bribe to your physician and you have to buy all of his/her supplies for whatever procedure you need. It's almost a libertarian heaven: you negotiate what you need done and can shop around for any medication and supplies needed. If anything it's a case study for how a market solution like this means no quality control on the care you receive. If you cannot afford the "premium" care where you pay the doctor directly, you will just end up waiting weeks, months, or years for the government to pay for your treatment, by which point your condition is likely to get worse. There are no charities, etc. to step up and pay for you: the market does not want those. Even if it did, my gut feeling would be that the charities would simply fall prey to corruption and would become money laundering machines.

An example of this is my grandfather that about a year ago went for his physical and needed to have blood drawn and to get vaccinations. The doctor told him to go across the street to a pharmacy to buy needles and vaccines. My grandfather spent the next two hours waiting in line for service, and ended up paying a few pennies for all of this. The doctors cannot hold onto this stuff themselves since they or their staff will just sell it for cash out of the back door.

Another example is my other grandfather who passed away a few years ago of colon cancer. He could have been saved with a colonoscopy, except he had one about 10 years prior to that and the hospital did not have any anesthetic. Naturally he did not want to experience the same pain again, so he never went back, developed colon cancer and died in horrible pain. His nephew ended up going to a hospital, grabbing a random doctor off his shift, paying him about $1000 in cash to drive 50 miles away to help my grandfather with his pain in his last few days.

Sorry for the rant, but you did ask :)

If people are apathetic about the property rights of their neighbour what right does the government have to step in and stop them taking that property?

In fact how would that even work in this pay for protection system? The neighbour will buy into a protection firm that will take the property back and a fee? If they can't pay the fee they will be placed in a work camp to deter the same action from others? Unfortunately the cost for board is higher than what your paid in the work camp. Is this perfectly acceptable under your system? If not how is it prevented? Does that man buy protection from a second company that will go in and storm the workcamp? If you're too poor to buy protection from one of the companies how is it illegal for them to just be collected and put in work camps? I just can't see your system of pay for protection being less abusive than one with a government.