“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[Frank]

I'm talking about an organised private policing company, not some random officer working as a glorified bouncer on his day off.

The killer was a security guard, employed by G4S, the world's largest private security contractor:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/14/g4s-security-firm-orlando-attack-omar-mateen

[The Legendary Shark]

The killer was a security guard, employed by G4S, the world's largest private security contractor:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/14/g4s-security-firm-orlando-attack-omar-mateen

What's your point?

You can't be saying that all private security personnel are the same - that would be like saying that all comic fans are like Scojo. You can't be saying that all private security firms only employ killers, either. Or that the G4S model is the only way to run a private security firm. Maybe you're saying that his training helped him commit the crime or pointing out that his employers failed to investigate his behaviour?

[Satanist]

What the actual fuck am I reading here! 

A discussion about how such tragedies might be avoided in the future.

Ah ok as for a moment I thought someone was suggesting that the answer to US gun crime is MOAR GUNZ!!!

[The Legendary Shark]

Some people think that's the answer, I don't. I think the answer, at least part of the answer (it's a very wide-ranging social question covering and interconnected with many areas), lies in the direction of smarter distribution of guns and better education.

[Frank]

The killer was a security guard, employed by G4S, the world's largest private security contractor:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/14/g4s-security-firm-orlando-attack-omar-mateen

What's your point?

You can't be saying that all private security personnel are the same - that would be like saying that all comic fans are like Scojo. You can't be saying that all private security firms only employ killers, either. Or that the G4S model is the only way to run a private security firm. Maybe you're saying that his training helped him commit the crime or pointing out that his employers failed to investigate his behaviour?

You can't be the same guy who was complaining about others using straw man arguments just one hour earlier.

You seemed to be arguing that a private security provider was inherently better than a publicly funded police force just because it was privately funded and operated.

The link I provided illustrated that the recruitment practices and operational efficiency of private security contractors are no better than the public model. Here's another.

[The Legendary Shark]

So the option, "...pointing out that his employers failed to investigate his behaviour," was, in essence, the correct one.

There seems to be some basic misunderstanding about what I mean by "private security companies" and, by extension, all private companies. I am not talking about the government protected fascistic (in the way Mussolini defined fascism as the marriage of state and corporate power) entities we suffer under today - entities which lobby governments for special rights, legislations and protections. I'm talking about private companies from the Misesan, Austrian Economics school of thought in which private companies rely entirely on the free market. That is, the market of pure economics as opposed to the market of  government controlled economics.

In the government controlled market, profits are determined by subsidies, protectionism and cronyism. In the free market, profits are determined by supply and demand. In the government controlled market, waste and bad practices can be positive boons - in the free market, waste and bad practices lead to failure.

Take as an example the current private rail companies. If they fail to make profits they are subsidised through money stolen from you (in taxes). It does not pay these companies to be efficient because if they claim less in subsidies this year they will be given less next year. The more inefficient they are, the more subsidies they can claim. (This happens in most, if not all, pseudo-privatised industries.) (In the late 19th Century, Leland Stanford, a former governor and US senator from California, used his political connections to have the state pass laws prohibiting competition for his Central Pacific railroad, and he and his business partners profited from this monopoly scheme and also from government subsidies paying so much per mile of track laid, which led to long and inefficient routes. Conversely, James J. Hill built the Great Northern Railroad without any government aid, paying for the right of way through hundreds of miles of private and public lands (even Indian lands)in cash and laying shorter, more efficient routes.)

In a proper free market, a rail company failing to make a decent profit from providing a decent service would go out of business to be replaced by a company or companies who could do it.

The same is true of all companies, in a proper free market.

You might say that only "government" can provide such a national service (rail, hospitals, police, etc.) but this is patently untrue. Imagine, for example, that since the invention of cinema the "government" had been in charge of making and showing all films through the Ministry of Cinematography and Public Cinemas. Then somebody comes along and says, "why don't we let private companies make all the films instead?"

The nay-sayers would immediately scoff and put forward a torrent of questions. Who's going to make the film stock? Who's going to make the cameras and the lighting rigs? Who's going to write the scripts? Who's going to operate the cameras? Who's going to write the music? Who's going to distribute the films? Who's going to advertise the films? Who's going to act in the films? Who's going to direct the films? Where will the films be shown? How will the poor get to see the films? Will only the rich be able to make films? Will only the rich be able to see them? All of these questions are obviously easily answered and the same is true of all government monopolies. There is nothing the government does which cannot be done, and be done better, through true free market economics.

[Modern Panther]

On your train example, Sharky, it might be worth taking into account that the inefficient train company would only be replaced in the free market if:

1) people stopped purchasing the essential service which they provide, which most customers would not have the option to do.

2) another company was willing to invest a huge sum in competing with an established company, and was willing to invest in providing a better service despite the easy profit to be made in providing a poor one.

What you need, mate, is a regulator.

[The Legendary Shark]

3) Government subsidies cease, forcing the established companies to innovate.

what we need, mate, is fair economic competition.

[Modern Panther]

They don't have to innovate.  A train company, by its very nature, pretty much has a monopoly over how a whole bunch of people get from A to B.  If they stop making such a huge profit, they can just charge more or drop the quality of their service, slash their staff numbers, cut the amount of seats.  Most people have no choice but to buy their service.

There is nothing the government does which cannot be done, and be done better, through true free market economics.

Provide essential services to individuals who cannot afford them.

[Dandontdare]

In Quito every bar has an armed uniformed security guard - they will react to trouble on the premises but will happily watch you get mugged and stabbed in the street outside because they're privately hired and policing the streets is not their job.

Give me police over hired goons any day

[IndigoPrime]

Opposition to state-run trains (or a centralised trust-based system) makes me furious. Any privatisation should be about effective competition. There can be no effective competition with trains. It's either a national monopoly or a local one. The same goes for water. You only really start getting into murky territory with electricity and gas, for which there are arguments in both directions.

[The Legendary Shark]

Panth, if you want to look at it like that, every business is a monopoly. MacDonald's has a monopoly on Big Macs, Switzerland has a monopoly on Swiss watches and my local newsagent has a monopoly on the stuff it sells from its little corner of the village.

This view that businesses are all evil with no other goal than the rape of the public has grown up because that's what a government controlled economy encourages. Which sane business person would run a railway service in the way you describe if it didn't have a coercive state safety net? How many investors would put money into a service designed to shaft people? Such a business, in a truly free economy, would not make any money and better, more savvy businesspeople would be itching to pounce. Local coach services would be champing at the bit to offer a competitive service, for example. The main thing stopping them now is government regulation - the demand for license fees to make fair competition impossible, local laws preventing coaches parking to pick up passengers and so on.

A good businessperson knows that it's better to charge 1,000 passengers £1 each than one passenger £1,000 because, if one out of the thousand passengers doesn't turn up you've lost a pound, if the one rich passenger doesn't turn up, you've lost it all. Profits don't have to be huge, they have to be steady. It is, again, the existence of state subsidies which encourages greed, encourages cutting staff, encourages charging high fees - encourages all the things you fear - because the subsidies and protectionist legislation all but guarantees profit no matter what is done. Take away those subsidies and protections and the companies will innovate or go under. Investors will still invest but will switch to whoever is going to give the most reliable return. Investors invest to make money, not to screw people over. It's just that, at present, the system encourages screwing people over to make money - change the system to one where pampering people makes money and investors will invest in the best pamperers.

IP, why would opposition to state-run trains make you "furious"? The state is nothing but a bunch of lying, cheating, hypocritical bullies acting together like a mafia mob to keep their position, privilege and power. Why on earth would keeping such a useful system out of their hands make anyone anything other than relieved? Privatisation should be real privatisation in a real free market, not the dog's breakfast we have now which is neither one thing or the other but still manages to propagate the worst aspects of both. Of course there can be competition with trains - companies could invest in and run anything from nationwide lines to individual engines and carriages. Stations can be privately owned by countless different companies. Tracks can be owned by specialised companies, as can level crossings, signal systems and even embankments. It wouldn't be impossible to organise by any stretch of the imagination even though it would be comprised of countless sub-units. The food industry manages to feed just about everyone in the country on a regular basis and that's a much larger and much more fragmented operation.

The state doesn't have some magical power to take all the disparate pieces of the railway system and make them work in unison - the system basically organises itself, like just about every human system, and all the state does is take credit (and taxes) for it. The state, as I've said before, is an illusion - nothing more than an irrational superstition. It's the people on the ground, the human beings doing their jobs, who make it all run properly. The same goes for water, electricity, gas, air travel, the roads, policing, hospitals, schools, universities, newsagents and everything else. "Government" is not needed in order to make any system work - except government itself.

DDD - that's a narrow view. As I've mentioned before, it would make more sense for local businesses to club together to hire security for a specific area. What would be the point of operating the safest nightclub in a war zone? Who's going to risk walking through a street lined with muggers, rapists and murderers to get to a club that's safe inside? It makes no business sense whatsoever. Wouldn't you rather go to a nightclub in an area with specialised and localised visible security services, dedicated to patrolling, upholding the law and protecting the customers than one in which you might see a state police car passing through now and then if they happen to have nothing else to deal with elsewhere in the town/city/county?

[Dandontdare]

Private ANYTHING has only one loyalty - money. I know accountability isn't always perfect but state provided services are theoretically designed to work for us and even if it takes years justice can eventually be won. British soldiers have faced courts for murdering Iraqis for example, but Blackwater et al operate under the radar.

[Modern Panther]

if you want to look at it like that, every business is a monopoly.

No, they're clearly not.  But some are.  And without regulation, the is no limit to the control they hold.

This view that businesses are all evil with no other goal than the rape of the public has grown up because that's what a government controlled economy encourages.

Wait...what?  Companies do evil things because...government regulation? 

How many investors would put money into a service designed to shaft people?

If it made them money?  Literally millions.

Investors invest to make money, not to screw people over.

No, of course they don't invest to deliberately shaft people, but its often a side effect.  Look at the largest and most profitable companies in the world and you'll soon find a list of the dead they leave in their wake.  Are people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation? Do many companies regularly abuse their staff because of democracy?


The thing I find worrying about your view of the world, Sharks, is that everyone seems so unusually....nice to each other.  Cast free of the terribly burden of having to contribute towards the healthcare and education of the nation, free from the horror of equality laws and health and safety, free from any sort of democratic control and in a world were property rights are supreme...everyone seems to genuinely care for their fellow man and wants only to act in a way which will benefit society.  It's like conversing with someone who holds a devout religion.  You have your vision of the perfect world, and despite how utterly unlikely it appears, despite the vast flaws in logic which everyone else can see, you are unshakable.

[IndigoPrime]

Of course there can be competition with trains

There just can't. However a system is set up, you end up with some kind of regional monopoly. There is no effective competition in such a system.

The food industry manages to feed just about everyone in the country on a regular basis and that's a much larger and much more fragmented operation.

I have no idea what you're talking about here. In terms of supermarkets alone, there are five in my town. I can pick and choose between them. I can also visit a restaurant or buy groceries from smaller stores. In other words, there is competition.

In my town, there is one train station, where I can take trains west to Basingstoke or East towards London. There. Is. No. Competition.