And why should I leave? Why don't you go live on an island with others who enjoy taxes?
I already live there. You're the one who wants to change it. But, that wasn't my point. My point is that there are no urban societies anywhere with a decent standard of living where you don't have to pay taxes and don't have to live with a mixed free-market/socialist economy.
BTW, the American Frontier-- vacated by Native Americans who were removed or died, (largely, died of contagious diseases), was actually rather libertarian. Which might partially explain why some Libertarians I've known loved
westerns. Ask yourself what happened. Private property versus open range. Overgrazing on open range. Railroads exercising monopoly power over freight transportation. (Oh, and, a high murder rate in ranching and mining areas, too.
src) Eventually, as population density grew, people felt the need for more
regulation, policing, public health (still a big deal when/where I was small), public education, and so on. Paid for with taxes.
If your system is so great, let it run in parallel with mine.
We
already have public roads, public fire departments, public police departments. Tell me how that works alongside an untaxed private system. What stops you from using public roads? If there is a fire, does the fire department let your place burn down? What if it is adjacent to my place? I don't know how it could possibly work unless there is geographic separation. Like, if you live in Texas or Tennessee, and, I don't.
That is an interesting way to look at it, but it also reveals some fallacies I think you've absorbed, and you're making assumptions based on that.
I don't give personal health details here (some folks are comfortable giving personal details; I'm not), but, it is actually directly based on my personal experience. You can make up your own realistic examples. It is a fact that if you have a serious medical problem, it is a seller's market, and, some hospitals will abuse that.
you go for auto service, you don't have to negotiate your price in real time. The negotiation has actually occurred over years, decades, as the auto business as a whole has discovered based on market signals what people will pay. You choose off a menu for common procedures, or you review an estimate for larger ones. You're not negotiating in real time, for the first time each time, just because your standing in the middle of the free market.
And, if my car breaks down in Podunkville, I can walk away from it if I have to. If my SO's health breaks down, I pay what I have to.
This did not spring up overnight. It happened over the past 100 years, organically.
You still haven't acknowledged how some industries are very different from others, and, that makes a difference. I don't have to buy any particular cell phone today or tomorrow. I can shop for the phone with the best LTE radio, the carrier with the best coverage, the phone with the best security (at least today I can), etc. It is always a buyer's market, because I can live without a cell phone if it is too expensive. If I don't have the money, I don't "need" a new phone. Healthcare is very different from this in almost every aspect. That is why there are no examples of true libertarian healthcare markets in any developed country-- healthcare just doesn't fit the libertarian model. And, the reason I brought up the cost/life expectancy data (again) is that we have many countries demonstrating that socialized medicine is both cheaper and reasonably effective-- because, if that were not so, people would not live longer than the U.S. But, you can't show a single country where the pure Libertarian model works better for healthcare.
Something a little closer to health care would be the scuba diving industry.
I don't follow your analogy. If I don't trust the compressor/air quality, I can walk away. That isn't true if you are bleeding out. In healthcare, the people who need the care most urgently can't walk away and can't negotiate, and the people who need the most healthcare can afford it the least.
A good thing to bring up, but not for the simplistic reason you're stressing here. You're pointing out that one statistic and using it to justify government health care as if that is the sole reason those people have longer life expectancies.
No, the reason for bringing it up is to demonstrate that socialized medicine can be effective for its purpose.
You're making the grand assumption that the life expectancy is a direct result of the government health care in each country.
No, I'm not. I'm making the grand assumption that government-sponsored health care can't be
that bad-- in almost every developed country!!
So... in the absence of those grants and think tanks and universities, you're insisting that none of those things would happen?
I never said that, either. But, the U.S. research university system became, and, still is, the envy of the world, through a quite modest (% of GDP-wise) government investment.
You have a poor understanding if thats what you think libertarianism is about.
I was exposed to Libertarianism very early in life -- and, it didn't add up then, or, now. I've heard all these arguments since I was 8 years old. And, you know what -- I agree with part of what you say-- that people should control themselves, to the maximum extent possible. The problem I have is with the insistence on purity. I have the same problem with any variant of fundamentalism. We actually know that pure socialism and pure free markets never, ever exist, yet some folks insist that their chosen way "should".
Why?
As I said above, people who seek to push people away instead of debate over issues are exhibiting religious zealot tendencies. The next greatest free market bastion after private property rights is the exchange of ideas. You tell me to go live on an island, and then later proclaim "Libertarianism" to be a religious belief. I'd say its you who is looking at these issues in a religious context.
I'm not telling you to go live on a desert island. I'm telling you that is the only place you can find without taxes and without a mixed free-market/socialist economy. And if you believe that 100% pure free-market society can exist, then, that is a religious belief, unsubstantiated by reality.