"We need a state that rewards us for cooperating and punishes us for cheating and stealing. At the same time we must ensure that the state is punished when it acts against the common good. Human welfare …is guaranteed
only by mutual scrutiny and regulation…..Unless taxpayers’ money and public services are available to repair the destruction it causes, libertarianism destroys people’s savings, wrecks their lives and trashes their environment. It is the belief system of the free-rider, who is perpetually subsidized by responsible citizens. As biologists we know what this means. Self-serving as governments might be, the true social parasites are those who demand their dissolution." *
Epicureanism cannot be a variant of libertarianism. Epicureanism at its best is benign.
George Monbiot in The Guardian Weekly, November 2nd, 2007
There will always be parasites upon the human race – – criminals, swindlers, benefit cheats, people who want something for nothing – – but we don’t have to listen to them or vote for them. Some of the supercargo of civilization can be safely tucked away in prison, but it is more difficult to rid ourselves of what appears to be legitimate political parties, who don’t want to pay tax , but expect others to pay for roads, bridges, law courts, schools, prisons, unemployment benefits, mortgage insurance, road sweeping and a thousand other services of civilization.
Epicurus, were he alive today, would look at the services and advances made over two and a half thousand years and (with reservations that we all have) applaud. He would not want a reversion to the 19th Century.
Wherever privatization has been pursued the taxpayer has been defrauded to some extent or other, and the friends of the politicians have benefited. Surprise! Surprise! There are privatized organizations that are genuinely better run by the private sector than by government. Cement plants should never have been government owned, for instance. But the privatization of natural monopolies like railroads and water owe more to ideology than common sense. Everywhere in the world these have been privatized the consumer loses in massive price hikes to allow for profit, without any noticeable improvement in efficiency.
There I agree. Verizon in the US is a good example of a natural (private) monopoly whose monthly charges are way more than in the countries per phone call. Its customers don’t realize it’s behind the international ball when it comes to the internet and DSL, for instance. Its strength is its strong “links” to the party in power. It might as well be a government department. And its pointless talking about the cable companies giving Verizon competition. In their own way the cable companies are geographically monopolies, too, and very inefficient. But who cares?