By that argument, why is the government in the security business competing with the private sector to protect citizens against crime?
Up here in Socialist Canada, in addition to keeping its citizens healthy, the government actually provides the water I drink in direct competition with the private sector who sell water in nice little plastic bottles. Yum :-)
Also, the expression "tax-subsidized" is not correct. Funding an activity with taxes is one thing. Subsidizing an activity with taxes is something else, such as a program to give privately held corporations massive tax breaks in exchange for locating their businesses in a particular state or county. Which companies do, and somehow I never hear conservative pundits complain about the anti-competitive tax subsidizing going on.
Yeah, the point of the security/anarchy argument is that you can't just argue blindly from a position of "less government" as if it were an end rather than a means, because if that's your only concern, you're free to move to Somalia and experience the free market first hand.
It turns out that many subjects require more knowledge and sophistication than a 2-word bumper sticker if you want to set smart policy.
Strangely, it turns out that there are groups in Somalia who will demand that you pay them in order to continue to exist, and the penalties for not paying this -- what shall we call it? Oh, yeah -- tax is even worse than not paying taxes here. The US has far less government/crime* for its GDP than Somalia.
* "government" being what large criminal enterprises are called, basically.
Up here in Socialist Canada, in addition to keeping its citizens healthy, the government actually provides the water I drink in direct competition with the private sector who sell water in nice little plastic bottles. Yum :-)
Also, the expression "tax-subsidized" is not correct. Funding an activity with taxes is one thing. Subsidizing an activity with taxes is something else, such as a program to give privately held corporations massive tax breaks in exchange for locating their businesses in a particular state or county. Which companies do, and somehow I never hear conservative pundits complain about the anti-competitive tax subsidizing going on.