The image for the current weekend edition at Mises.org is from “The Fight between Carnival and Lent” (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525–1569).

It might be my favorite painting. I blogged it here a couple summers ago.

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Today’s Onion Radio News:

Old lowercase liberty post:

what should not be privatized

Here’s a handy rule of thumb for what can and can’t exist as part of a free market: if it shouldn’t be done, then it shouldn’t be privatized; if it shouldn’t be privatized, then it shouldn’t be done.

A common form of sale of privilege, especially hated by the public, was “tax farming.” Here, the king would, in effect, “privatize” the collection of taxes by selling, “farming out,” the right to collect taxes in the kingdom for a given number of years. Think about it: how would we like it if, for example, the federal government abandoned the IRS, and sold, or farmed out, the right to collect income taxes for a certain number of years to, say, IBM or General Dynamics? Do we want taxes to be collected with the efficiency of private enterprise?

Considering that IBM or General Dynamics would have paid handsomely in advance for the privilege, these firms would have the economic incentive to be ruthless in collecting taxes. Can you imagine how much we would hate these corporations? We then have an idea of how much the general public hated the tax farmers, who did not even enjoy the mystique of sovereignty or kingship in the minds of the masses.

In our enthusiasms for privatization, by the way, we should stop and think whether we would want certain government functions to be privatized, and conducted efficiently. Would it really have been better, for example, if the Nazis had farmed out Auschwitz or Belsen to Krupp or I.G. Farben?

Making Economic Sense
by Murray Rothbard
Chapter 51: Government-business “Partnerships”

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To say that someone has the absolute right to a certain property, writes Murray Rothbard, but lacks the right to defend it against attack or invasion is also to say that he does not have total right to that property. Furthermore, if every man has the right to defend his person and property against attack, then he must also have the right to hire or accept the aid of other people to do such defending: he may employ or accept defenders just as he may employ or accept the volunteer services of gardeners on his lawn. FULL ARTICLE

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School. See his archive.

This article is excerpted from chapter 12 of The Ethics of Liberty. Listen to this article in MP3, read by Jeff Riggenbach. The entire book is being prepared for podcast and download.