RE: state vs. insurers (was: Libertarian theory breaking down)

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Mar 25 2003 - 07:34:34 MST

  • Next message: JAY DUGGER: "Re: Space Elevators Update"

    --- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal@smigrodzki.org> wrote:
    > On Mon, 2003-03-24 at 21:40, Emlyn O'regan wrote:
    >
    > >
    > > I still don't understand how all the smaller insurers wouldn't get
    > gobbled
    > > up into a big monopoly, which then has a monopoly on violence and
    > can decide
    > > to become a defacto government. How do you protect against this?
    > >
    > ### An insurance company has lower market entry costs than in the
    > case
    > of making a state (where you need to hack out a territory from other
    > states by force, keep the people from fleeing). This should be
    > sufficient to assure competition, especially since most people would
    > switch to new providers long before the old one could consolidate its
    > position. At least as long as there would be no major concentration
    > of land held by one insurance agency, since this would make
    > competition impossible.

    Given the prevalence of organized criminal syndicates in informal
    'insurance' rackets in the real world, what do you think will prevent
    insurance companies in a libertarian society from having linebackers,
    sharpshooters, and prizefighters for 'sales' agents and 'adjusters'???
    There would be, after all, no state insurance commissioner to keep them
    honest and non-violent toward each other.

    =====
    Mike Lorrey
    "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                                         - Gen. John Stark
    "Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
    "Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
    For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid

    __________________________________________________
    Do you Yahoo!?
    Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
    http://platinum.yahoo.com



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Mar 25 2003 - 07:41:47 MST