mattnewport comments on Open Thread: June 2010 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Morendil 01 June 2010 06:04PM

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Comment author: mattnewport 03 June 2010 12:28:05AM -1 points [-]

Municipal services are generally provided by a local government but this is largely an artifact of the way modern democracies are organized. Private arrangements are fairly rare in the modern world but cruise ships, private resorts, corporate campuses and on a smaller scale large managed apartment buildings provide examples of decoupling the idea of provision of municipal services and government.

Comment author: Houshalter 03 June 2010 02:24:45AM -1 points [-]

What if you had a dozen different companies that provided services like that. They would have a monopoly in different areas, however, the local governments would still be able to choose which one they wanted, and at any time they were displeased they could switch. Actually, this is a good idea!

Comment author: mattnewport 03 June 2010 04:11:17AM 1 point [-]

You can probably go further than that. Municipal services can be unbundled and can operate without a geographical monopoly. This is already widely done for cable and telecoms in the US and UK and for electricity and gas in the UK. Some countries do it for water and sanitation services. There are examples worldwide of it being done for transportation, refuse collection, health and education. Arguments that such services are a 'natural monopoly' are usually promoted most strongly by those who wish to operate that monopoly with government protection.

Comment author: CronoDAS 03 June 2010 12:52:49AM -1 points [-]

Allow me to rephrase.

If the "municipal service provider" has the power to enforce its edicts on noise level (because it has the power to exile those who violate them), then doesn't that mean that it has exactly the same power over noise that a government would - and the same potential to misuse that power?

Comment author: mattnewport 03 June 2010 01:06:58AM *  1 point [-]

I tend to think that the right of exit is the ultimate and fundamental check on such abuses of power. This is why I favour decentralization / federalization / devolution as improvements to the status quo of increasing centralization of political power. I think that on more or less every level of government we would benefit from decentralization of power. City-wide bylaws on noise pollution are too coarse-grained for example. An entertainment district or an area popular with students should have different standards than a residential area with many working families. Zoning rules are an attempt to make such allowances but I think private solutions are likely to work better. I'd at least like to see them tried so we can start to see what works.

Comment author: CronoDAS 03 June 2010 01:36:55AM 0 points [-]

So the issue is that of scale, then?

And the right of exit is conditional on there being somewhere to go. Finding such a place can sometimes be difficult.

Comment author: mattnewport 03 June 2010 02:08:45AM *  0 points [-]

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

It worked out pretty well for the US.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 03 June 2010 10:29:38AM 0 points [-]

It worked out pretty well for the US, but a distressingly high proportion of Americans don't seem to know that.