Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

> if they are collecting $50 million per year, why are my fees still so damn high

Because they have a monopoly and can enforce it with violence. If you go with the competition (e.g. register your cars in Arizona, or overtly try to live off an out of state ID while being a resident) they will fine you and if you don't pay the fines they will send guys with guns to put you in a steel cage. Sure you can forgo the DMV's primary service if you're lucky enough to live in one of the few areas where public transit is a reasonable option but you still all but need an official ID for day to day life and the DMV is where you get it from.

Without fear of competition entities (be they states, cities, corporation, your local church or even a street gang) feel free to do things to increase revenue extraction at the expense of the people they are supposed to be serving.

View on HN

I agree, we should dispose with the cops. Private security for those who have bootstrapped themselves into the means to pay for it, sure, but that's it.

I know you're being sarcastic but there's valid reasons for a municipality to just award a contract to the best value bidder for policing the same way they do for other services.

If the 3rd party screws up and gets sued the taxpayer isn't footing the bill so they have incentive not to screw up. Every time the contract renews you have an opportunity to go with a totally new organization whereas even the best efforts at refreshing a government department wind up as a sort of ship of Theseus. A 3rd party also has a damn good incentive not to treat people badly because they are the customer and they have a contract renewal hanging over their head. A 3rd party also has no incentive to spend big bucks operating MRAPs and other military toys that are not relevant to the job at hand. It probably makes sense to retain investigative work under the government umbrella (avoids some conflicts of interests) but for routine patrol duties, security and traffic detail there is no advantage to having official government police instead of private security, at least from the perspective of the people being policed.

A lot of societies current gripes with policing would be mitigated under the incentive structure that having a 3rd party contractor gets you. I'm sure other problems would pop up but I don't think they would equal or surpass our current problems so it would be a net improvement.

Private prisons seem to be a good counterexample here. Not only does the profit motive lead to inhumane conditions and perverse corruption, such as the Chicago(?) judge getting a kickback for every juvenile sent into the system. The outsourcing of that "monopoly on power" OP decried exaggerates any problems inherent in the government<->citizen relation: civil servants at least have a certain professional ethos, swear an oath, are usually invested in a long-term career, have pensions to look forward to (and not risk), are subject to far more rules (FOIA etc), can mostly not escape liability through bankruptcy, and so on.

Privatised security is an almost prototypical dystopian nightmare. Look no further than TSA. Millgram might have fudged his data, but the idea that giving someone a uniform and power over others tends to awry is still somewhat plausible.

Other examples: those rent-a-goons shooting civilians in Iraq for sport. (With, by the way, double the salary and many military toys not relevant to the job at hand). The US health system also comes to mind, only that you would have even less choice to chose your local police short of moving.

> Look no further than TSA.

I've generally had better experiences with airports whose TSA screening is contracted out to third parties (eg. SFO) than those where it's done by the government agency itself (eg. JFK, Boston Logan).

> such as the Chicago(?) judge getting a kickback for every juvenile sent into the system.

the "kids for cash" scandal was in Pennsylvania unless you were thinking of another case where that was going on.

I seem to recall similar stories from Louisiana and Florida, except the Florida one also involved digging up bodies from unmarked graves around the "boot camp" for delinquent juveniles. My memory is suspect, so maybe do your own research.

There's also the movie "Holes", the book it was based on, and the reality it was based on. "Boot camps" are plagued with corruption, abuse, and neglect all over the US. Wherever you are, if you dig deeply enough, you are likely to find someone profiting from children's misery.

BTW this sort of happened in Camden NJ. Continually crime ridden and poor, it's the East St. Louis of Philadelphia. They had problems negotiating with the fire department and police for years over budget cuts, contract negotiations etc. Eventually they fired the entire police force and created a joint one with the entire county of Camden. Things seem to be working slightly better since then.

Anyway I am sure I got some details wrong, it was fairly interesting news when it all went down.

Outsourcing risk to a third party contractor is an amazing way to get transparency, efficiency and responsive government.

Look at the US military procurement programs. By getting unaccountable soldiers out of the way, we have cost-efficient, effective contractors saving the taxpayer money every day.

Building roads, writing traffic rules or enforcing them just isn't amendable to optimisation using your preferred mechanism of free-market economics. Or, more accurately: competition only works for rather large competitive difference needed to overcome the natural friction introduced by the difficulties of moving.

It's painful to see that people seem to not even be aware anymore that our societies have yet another organising principle beyond capitalism, namely democracy.

Sure, you never agreed to be somewhat dependent on "society". But there just isn't enough land to live in the anarcho-libertarian fantasy where you don't have to find compromises. And the standard hyperbole of the "threat of violence" makes even less sense if you unquestioningly champion capitalism while rejecting democracy, because capitalism also relies on the ultimate threat of violence, as anyone not paying their rent will notice sooner or later.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com