2. What is the role of government regulations, and will the results be the same without those in place? Could we attribute a part of the reduction in child mortality to a possibility that, with private players, the regulations on water quality and sewage disposal were more stringently implemented?

3. What happens if the water/sewage provider(s) goes bankrupt?

I don’t think point #2 is addressed at all. [And raising it makes me a non-libertarian :)]

Statist, once again to Libertarian: “Your solution has never been attempted before. What proof do you have that it does work?”

Just tell me one thing: is there a role for regulations or just do away with them?

Defining property rights and enforcing contracts is “regulation”. Almost all libertarians support that.

Setting up laws which force you to ask a bureaucrat’s permission before you take any action is also “regulation”. Absolutely all libertarians oppose that.

Most of the arguments you people have with us libertarians is just word games. “Do you support some regulations or not?” you ask. Once you get us to admit that some regulations are necessary, you go around claiming that because we support government action in some cases, we have no moral standing whatsoever to oppose them in others.

How about getting your articles published somewhere - nope nobody want to publish you either.

So to recap libertarians:
- can’t get elected - anywhere.

- can’t get industry to accept their theories.

- can’t get published in any mainstream journals.

- can’t run organizations on a for-profit basis (have to sneakily run non-profits and get government subsidy via tax breaks and then tell everybody that the government sucks)

So before pontificating to the rest of the world on how to better run it - maybe the libertarians should first figure out how to run their own movement (in related news the libertarian party was evicted from their party HQ for not having sufficient funds to pay the rent).

I agree with a lot of libertarian principles but is obvious to anybody who hasn’t been completely brainwashed that its just not working. So consider changing your message/product to suit the demands of the market - thats what you would suggest to a business that couldn’t return a profit with a particular product. Hey if people aren’t demanding why do you keep supplying (in the market place I mean not on blogs).

Now with only a few libertarians, largely in the area of economics. F A Hayek, James Buchanan, Gary Becker, Milton Friedman and Ronald Coase. I suppose 5 would be enough. Please don’t make me point out the articles they’ve published in “mainstream” economics journals.

For those without a background in economics, allow me to mention that all the above 5 have won the Bank of Sweden’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

Anyway, I was talking about regulations regarding contaminants and their maximum limits, dissolved oxygen content, particulate content, etc. Or do these not fall under the category “regulations”? How are these standards decided? Should we leave them on the whims of the provider? Or should there be “someone” setting these standards? Isn’t this someone, really some form of a governing body?

It is at times like these, when I hog someone else’s comment boards that I want to come out of blogging-retirement. :-)

Personally, I prefer the method of solving problems by the intelligent design of systems, rather than getting into the semantics of any ~isms (libertarianism, communism, socialism etc). As we’ve seen quite often, one size does not fit all. :-)

Yes, there has to be an independent body that makes all the rules that govern the quality of water products. The challenge is to design a body while thinking of questions like the creation of rules and the enforcement of them. There is no consistent answer whether it has to be govt, quasi-govt or independent.

For instance, a body like FASB while independent, is still prone to the pulls and pressures of Congress and the lobbyists, while a govt body like the SEC has been reasonably successful, especially in the critical post-depression years.

Additionally, the design of these systems should be country/region specific. It has been remarked that while govt bodies in G7 (and Western European) countries are reasonably corruption free (even if they are inefficient), the ones in the developing countries are not.

Branding individuals with a generic term is quite fraught with danger. Not all communists are alike. Similarly, people who call themselves liberals (or libertarians) often disagree with each other over specific issues. Btw, liberal ideas are not the sole preserve of the ‘dubious’ libertarian party. In fact, you can find liberals in the Democratic and Republican parties alike.

Also note that some self-serving corporate lobbyists also like to drape themselves with the flag of libertarianism (similar to self-serving ‘activists’ who call themselves progressives). True liberalism is as suspicious of corporate bureaucracy as it is of govt ones.

I think we can have reasonably good debates without falling into this trap.