Nicholas Wapshott, British journalist and author of an excellent new book on John Maynard Keynes and Friederich Hayek, ponders what life would be like in America if Ron Paul was elected president and his libertarian ideals became the law (or lack thereof?) of the land.
Paul’s policies would mean turning the clock back two centuries, to a time when the United States was a trading nation but otherwise blithely cut off from the world. It would mean an unregulated free-market economy that Charles Dickens would have recognized, where big businesses would rule the roost.Most public services, including city governments, would be run by private companies, and representative democracy — the U.S. system that libertarians deride as “the tyranny of the majority” — would be cut to a bare minimum.
This is a fun exercise, especially since several of my Facebook friends have recently become Ron Paul fans. Libertarianism and maximal personal freedom are en vogue it seems.
But how would such a system work locally, here in the SCV?
Kinder, Friendlier Libertarianism (Statist)
This type of libertarianism isn’t so dissimilar to what we have now in the SCV. Libertarians in this school of thought recognize the value of having a government, a government that builds out, protects, and makes available public goods such as roads, parks, and other infrastructure, provides police and justice services, and enforces contracts (schools aren’t run by the City now, so let’s exclude them from this discussion).
But government would be limited in so many other areas, we’d see a radically different SCV. Perhaps fire, earthquake and other safety codes would find their place in this theoretical Santa Clarita, but no others. One Valley One Vision smacks of central planning and would have no purchase here. Codes limiting density or the height of buildings? Gone! Those heavy-handed government regulations shoved down the throats of enterprising massage parlor owners recently? What business is it of the City’s what two consenting adults do in privacy? Efforts by the city to promote local businesses probably wouldn’t remain because tax rates would be much much lower; after all spending $60,000 a year to promote Auto Row means that $60,000 was taken from local taxpayers.
Getting a little scary now (Minarchism)
So, under this school of libertarianism, we’d still likely have a real, authentic, City of Santa Clarita government. Its role in the SCV would be drastically minimized, however. We’d probably only have a police department and a court system whose function would be to protect “individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract and fraud.”
Notice what’s missing. No more City Parks. Private individuals would pool their capital and (hopefully) buy up land and charge a fee for park use. Maybe we’d get better parks, but we’d have to pay to use them. Naturally the best parks would be in wealthier areas. Sorry skater kids, your days of persuading the City to spend $100k on a temporary skate park while they build you a world-class skatepark are gone! The same goes for roads, which would all likely become private or owned communally by HOAs or neighborhood associations. Think Placerita Canyon and its Power Posse here.
No public transit service. It’s possible under this scenario that private transport companies would spring up and offer service to those who have no cars or who choose not to drive, as this was the model early in the 20th century. But unless there was sufficient competition among private carriers, it wouldn’t be as affordable as a service subsidized by the City. We might see an exodus of middle class people who depend on the Metrolink and an influx of poorer people who take buses to get to jobs in the SCV. Demand for housing would change, in other words.
The planning commission- what’s that but a tool of government to limit the freedom of property owners? We’re entering pure free-market territory here; imagine Canyon Country/Hamburger Hill style chaos writ large; ridgelines gone, oak trees demolished, and canyons plundered. That is, if the demand was there. Ironically, local environmentalists might pine for the days of Newhall Land’s Master Plan, in which at least some open space was spared and some thought was given to organized development. But such firms would be few and far between; we’d essentially be returning to the bad old days of pre-City rule. If we didn’t like it, it’d be up to us to buy land on the open market and preserve it. Maybe that would work?
On the plus side, maybe we’d finally get faster, world-class internet access. There are no cable franchise agreements in this system; if I want Verizon FIOS, I just find a bunch of neighbors who want it too and we pay Verizon to trench our street (without a city permit!) and deliver 100mb of fiber internet directly to my house. Suck on that Time Warner!
Every man for himself (Anarcho-Capitalism)
In this system of libertarianism, there is no City of Santa Clarita at all. Maybe Newhall Land, Waste Management, the for-profit Water Retailers, and LSSI get together quarterly to coordinate things, then again, maybe not.
Police, fire, courts, justice and prison would all be run by private companies on an open market exchange. If Westridge wants police services, they’d contract with Acme Police, Inc. If Canyon Country wants fire service, neighbors in that area would buy individual or perhaps neighborhood-wide fire insurance. Perhaps the private courts would have an agreed-upon framework for laws, perhaps not.
Of all the schools of libertarian thought, this is perhaps the most murky and the most utopian, so let’s not spend too much time discussing it. Suffice it to say, you’d pay no local taxes under this scenario, but you’d be responsible for much more.
And that’s something that’s common to all these schools of thought. More personal freedom and less taxes, but more personal responsibility for the things we take for granted now.
Do local Ron Paul fans really know what they are advocating for when it comes to libertarianism? I hope some chime in here.
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