Revolution in Kiev

I think all your assumptions come from the fact that you don't believe competition, specifically on the protection market, can work. If I could convince you that in fact it would, then it appears all other questions can be resolved. For example your hypothetical scenario in the last paragraph is absolutely impossible if people have a choice of whom to pay for what services. In fact, it is possible even if this firm is monopolistic: stolen property? how was it stolen? why did nobody care? why did customers thought it's okay to keep paying to that firm knowing that their property can be alienated at any point in the same way?

But anyhow, back to competition. First of all, for a competition to exist, it doesn't have to take 50% of the market. It only has to be sure that it is cheaper for the monopolist to compete with it fairly than to go to war using tactics such as predatory pricing or actual violence. In almost all cases fair competition is more profitable in the long term. It is established by many industry experts and economists that predatory pricing doesn't actually work. Only legislators seem to not grasp it and there's a good reason why: because their pay depends on the fact that they are supposedly protecting the public. I've read an awesome book about Airlines once (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W6871G/) and at the time it was a big surprise for me to find that governments very often launched predatory pricing and anti-competitive cases against discounters, who tried to disrupt the market of big established carriers.

> In a system with a democratic government, the official has to at least pay lip service to working for the public good and it's illegal to accept that payment.

The difference is, in a democratic government official when elected knows almost definitely he's not going to lose his job for the next n years. He knows people will keep paying taxes. How does that create any incentive for him to work in the interests of the public? This kind of situation only creates incentives to accept bribes and use the position of power. If this official does this carefully, he will never face allegations, let alone jail time, because, of course, the judges and the police work in the same system with him and it is HIM who pays them, although not from his own money. The only people who go to jail are in the lower echelons of power and those are the ones who weren't careful enough to not piss off their masters. The Democratic system the west adores so much is just civilized and institutionalized corruption. It's a theatre pulled over the eyes of the people and it's so sad many people have this blind faith or at best acceptance of it.

Sorry this is quite long.

I'll provisionally agree that enough people could buy into regulatory information assuming it's useful enough. I'll even allow that it's not corrupted (though I have written a paragraph below on why I believe this wouldn't be the case). I'll allow that the regulators are able to discover who own the company above a protection firm all the way to the top. I'll allow that people will actively switch between companies to stop a local monopoly forming (though I've written another paragraph below saying why this might not be true). Is there any way you can stop an investor buying up all the competition in a small region at a price above market value for a competitive market and below market value if you had a monopoly and were willing to abuse it?

Ignore the next two paragraphs if you want as they're the ones referred to earlier: I don't know that the regulators aren't in bed with the regulated in the public system. I do know that if people care about it enough they can effect the regulators. I believe it's easier for the regulators in a free market system to get in bed with the regulated because those most motivated in regulating a specific industry are those within the industry itself.

You may believe it's obvious that consumers will switch to the better option in the market but the vast majority don't because the majority of people can't pay attention to everything they spend money on all the time. If you look up the “What's my number” campaign in New Zealand you'll see that simply reminding people they could change electricity providers and giving them an easy way to compare them hugely increased switch overs. The point being in this protection market which would be a service you just pay every other month would be something to easily forget about until it's to late. Even given advertising by concerned parties how do I trust advertising anymore when there's no one regulating it, I could put out an advert saying I'm the official spokesperson for a company and what would be the consequence?

My last paragraph was admittedly a quick example without explaining the reasoning behind it. I'll explain my reasoning now. You say that protection and laws will be decided by what protection company you subscribe to. You obviously don't have a system outside these providers to enforce other laws except market forces.

These providers can decide what services they offer. One of these services will obviously be protection from theft. i.e. If I stole from you your protection service will take action against me in some form.

What is the incentive for your provider to not offer varying plans that we find socially objectionable but say 5% of society is ok with. i.e. Plan A we imprison the perpetrator for these crimes. Plan B we cut off their hands for these crimes. Plan C (our platnium package) we shoot the guy for any crime against you. Plan D (our cheapest) we take the perpetrator to a work camp were he works off his debt to you. (Plan D is at a work camp were room and board costs more than what we pay the perpetrator). These providers also offer lower penalties i.e. no work camp penalty to those who are customers.

So obviously the next step is your provider comes up with a set of rules that limit what other providers can do to you without some form of retribution. What form of retribution is this? Is it a financial penalty? If so how do I stop a rich man from saying I'll double the cost of the penalty just get rid of this man. If it's physical retribution does that mean we accept people being beaten up in the street by the protection providers as part of our daily lives?

Let's say one provider has imprisonment as a penalty, why would I pay more for a provider that offers the same service but there prison is nicer that the alternative provider. Unless say the providers have a reciprocal agreement were they place their own customers in their own prison, which of course means the rich get to live in a country club for the duration of their sentence and the poor get whatever they can afford.

Finally the fact that everyone can afford a provider. While I do not agree that everyone will be able to afford a provider and there won't be any homeless who can't be preyed on with impunity, or that there are no poor that can't afford health insurance (sorry I meant protection) we'll ignore that. Instead consider what happens if for the sake of argument I forget my payment one month or I'm outside of my protection services city/village. Am I suddenly no longer protected and subject to others whims? Are there roaming fees for protection? If it's a sunday night and I need to drive to the other side of the country to get to my dieing mum am I able to be beaten up at any gas station along the way with no penalties for the offender, and possibly penalties for me if I fight back?

Assuming we surmount these regional justice issues and we also get a system were the providers effectively offer an equivalent and fair level of 'justice' no matter who you subscribe with how do you stop one growing on the basis of being the most efficient and then leveraging economies of scale to get into a monopoly position. When the monopoly is established how do you expect a new upstart in the region to be able to get a reciprocal 'justice' agreement with the monopoly when from a business point of view it is better to not have the competition.

Alright, you have a lot of good questions here. I won't be able to answer them all, since this would expand the discussion enormously, but I'll get through some of the points.

> I believe it's easier for the regulators in a free market system to get in bed with the regulated because those most motivated in regulating a specific industry are those within the industry itself.

You do know that ex-regulators and those closest to the political elite are usually hired by companies to serve as lobbyists (usually called something like "consultants" or "advisors")?

> You may believe it's obvious that consumers will switch to the better option in the market but the vast majority don't because the majority of people can't pay attention to everything they spend money on all the time.

Absence of a government doesn't mean people would need to waste more time tracking things. It means they would have a choice of who would track all these things for them. So, for instance, I subscribe to consumer protection agency A and it then simply drives my choices based on its research. People wouldn't need to choose everything by themselves.

Also, you can't excuse forcing people to do certain choices because they, allegedly, are not willing to make them on their own. It smells nanny state and unless you give people choice of experiencing why is it important to make choices and giving them time to make them, they will never learn. When slavery was abolished, many slave owners used to say that black people cannot survive on their own, they don't know how to work for money and how to spend it properly, so they would be much better off with their master. Indeed, in some cases that was true, because it's very difficult to learn to do things you never tried doing before. Eventually, they did learn.

> Instead consider what happens if for the sake of argument I forget my payment one month or I'm outside of my protection services city/village. Am I suddenly no longer protected and subject to others whims? Are there roaming fees for protection?

The way the market would work nobody can predict. What I can say is that it would find a way to provide you with what you need. One can imagine that when you go to a different territory you are protected by another company with which your company has a contract. If your company doesn't have a contract with another company or you are a poor person who can't afford protection, my guess is that you would still be able to count on some minimal level of protection: if people in my neighborhood are getting robbed, I as a paying customer of my protection agency would want them to prevent this happening regardless of whether the victim is their client or not, because next time it could be me.

Again, I think you have interesting questions, but I believe this discussion can go endlessly. At this point, I'd like to recommend you one book, it is called "The Machinery Of Freedom", written by David D. Friedman, who is an economist and a lawyer. In it, he thoroughly describes how a society without government would work. One of the most interesting chapters is about competing protection agencies and why they in fact wouldn't turn into de-facto government-like mafia. He also has some very interesting talks on YouTube which I recommend. I think this book would definitely be of interest to you. You may not be convinced by it, but it presents some great mental exercises and it would at least provoke you to look at the world from a different point of view. If it happens so that it does change your mind, please email me, I'd be very pleased to know that happened :)

Since I live in Beijing. Yes.