User:ThisFreedomFighter/Proprietary government

Proprietary Government

Proprietary government, a term used by astrophysicist and philosopher Andrew Galambos, is a structure of social organization that seeks to assure human peace and freedom. Proprietary government offers a replacement for the political state. In a society based on proprietary government, services that are traditionally provided by the state (e.g. the construction, operation, and maintenance of roads and highways, postal service, fire protection, police protection, education, and even national defense) are provided by private organizations. Individuals would choose to subscribe to such services the same way they choose to avail themselves of non-governmental goods and services: by comparing the quality and price of goods and services offered by a variety of competitors.

Proprietary Government versus the Political State
In his lectures, Galambos showed that the political state operates on a non-voluntary basis, even in democracies. For example, in the United States of America, those who are unsatisfied with the services and performance of the state are required nonetheless to pay taxes. Depending on income, leaving the country offers no cure for this dilemma, because high net worth individuals must pay a hefty exit tax.

In contrast, proprietary government operates on a 100% voluntary basis: subscribers can choose to stop subscribing at any time, just as they would with their mobile phone service, cleaning service, or any other service.

Nations
With Proprietary Government supplanting politics, the modern nation state would cease to exist. Using the example of France and Germany, author and Galambos student Frederic Marks explains what would happen to nations in a stateless society:

"France and Germany both have a unique culture and language that was built up over time by their people, not the state. Without a state the French and German people would continue to exist, as would every other people. States are not permanent. They come into existence, go out of existence, and change boundaries. Germany is an example.

Until the middle of the 19th century there was no centralized state authority in Germany. The German people lived in a number of confederated principalities and dukedoms that were united under the control of Prussia by Otto von Bismarck in the period 1864-1871.

The Prussian-dominated German state started five wars between 1864 and 1939. As a result of these wars the borders of Germany changed five times and the form of political state changed four times.

Furthermore, the aggressive wars of Germany cost the German people dearly in military and civilian deaths and injuries during World Wars I and II and in enormous damage to Germany’s cities and industries during WW II. The total German military and civilian deaths due to World Wars I and II combined was 7.3 million military deaths and 1.2 civilian deaths out of a population that numbered 65 million before WW I and 79 million before WW II. Yet the German people and culture survived the catastrophes caused them by the German state. In the 21st century the German people have a thriving society and a population of 82 million people despite, and not because of, the state. People and their culture are far more permanent than the political states that rule them."

National Defense
Galambos explained that national defense has been the monopoly of the state and that the constant wars in human history demonstrate that the state does a poor job of national defense.

In his system of proprietary government, insurance companies would work synergistically with private security companies to protect individuals and communities not just from domestic crime, but also from external attack. While insurance companies would exclude war losses from property and casualty insurance because they could not estimate the amount of such losses or protect against them, private security companies could provide defense against external attacks. If they did, Galambos explained, then insurance companies could provide insurance against losses from such attacks. In the insurance industry there is no such thing as a risk that is not insurable provided the payment for the insurance is adequate. Higher risks mean higher costs. Lower risks mean lower insurance costs. The more efficient the private security is, Galambos explained, the lower the costs of insurance against loss would be. The insurance companies would estimate the risk of loss; they would know the amount of insurance customers decide to buy against such loss, and would price the insurance to allow profitable operation. This profitable operation would be necessary for an insurance company to honor its commitments, stay in business, improve its service, and compensate its investors.

When his students asked how a private company could defend a large community, say the size of the United States, against external attack, Galambos explained that only private companies and individuals, in actuality, defend a country; the state has no money to defend its citizens other than the tax money it takes from private citizens and companies. This view is corroborated in Arthur Herman's book, "Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in WWII."

Anarchy
In response to the view that, without the state, a community would fall into anarchy, Galambos explained that since security is absolutely essential to human begins, anarchy is always a transitory condition. To accept the state as the only alternative to anarchy, he said, is to accept the enormous violence caused by states throughout history. He commented that more harm, death and destruction have been wrought by states than has ever occurred in all the conditions of anarchy that ever existed; that out of anarchy a new state has always come into existence; and that providing security without the state would be the role of proprietary, profit-seeking government. Galambos held that, in the long run, all states have led to the very condition from which they claim to be protecting their citizens. Given enough time, all states have collapsed, and the unfortunate people living under these conditions have seen their achievements and cultures disappear into oblivion.

Crime
To ensure the safety of individuals, Galambos devised a system whereby insurance companies, private protection companies, and the credit mechanism work synergistically to provide effective defense against crime.

Insurance companies make payment for losses from a variety of causes such as theft, robbery, physical injury and death caused by criminal acts. Insurance companies also make payment for loss caused by non-criminal phenomena such as automobile accidents, fires, storm damage, etc. Security companies guard against loss happening. Galambos explained that the two industries—insurance and security—are complementary: security companies seek to prevent losses that the insurance company would otherwise have to compensate. The more successful the prevention, the lower would be the incidence and cost of losses. Lower loss rates would, Galambos articulated, reduce the cost of insurance in a competitive market. Private security includes not only human beings acting as guards and protectors, but also includes the technology and apparatus of security, such as locks, alarm systems, sensors, surveillance systems, computer security, and many other forms of equipment and technology.

Preventing a New Political State
Galambos explained that market forces would keep a large insurance company from becoming a new state in the absence of the political state. And unlike the state, Galambos pointed out that a private company cannot compel anyone to pay for its services. That alone would be an impediment to a private company becoming a state. In Proprietary Government a private company that acted like a state would be committing crime. Such a company and its personnel, he explained, would be no different than any other criminal. With the possibility and likelihood of multiple competing insurance companies and security companies in existence, other insurance companies and security companies would have a huge incentive to protect themselves from any company that was trying to impose a monopoly of coercion, because that would put all the rest of such companies out of business. Customers of such a company would have a huge incentive to stop paying such a company because if it succeeded in becoming the state they would have no recourse to this new state attacking them and their property through taxation and the myriad other ways that states coerce people.

Galambos considered the question of multiple multiple insurance and security companies coalescing and cooperating to form a single criminal organization and thereby become a new state. In response to this, Galambos stated that out of the all too human desire for power over others, some people in such companies might consider this idea. However, he posited that the likelihood of success for such a criminal venture seemed extremely remote. The existence of such an agreement to commit crime could not be kept secret. The insurance companies and security companies that refused to join in the criminal organization would soon get all the customers of the insurance companies and security companies that had unified to commit crime. The offending companies would have no business left. He explained that such an outcome would fulfill the vision of the Declaration of Independence that

“Governments are instituted among Men [to secure Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… [W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”