A hypothetical question, pls, if I may... All these slogans and theories about "people deciding what views to accept individually" are fine and dandy. What if people voluntarily decided to get together (in order, for instance, to increase their bargaining power) and delegate some decisions to experts chosen from their ranks? Wouldn't this in itself be an expression of their individual free will? Is that allowed?
Of course! The key thing is the word VOLUNTARILY. The people you mentioned may be coming together, but it is the same thing since they INDIVIDUALLY decided to do that. The problem with single-payer or any other government intervention is that one group IMPOSES/FORCES something to the other, in other words: it is NOT VOLUNTARY. It is by definition based on the "collectivist" principle, which is the basis of communism. But in order for that to work, a central power has to administrate all that. That, by definition, is a monopoly and a monopoly is always equal to: low quality and high prices.
Hold on a moment, please... Hypothetically, let's take a small community, like a township. The people there come together and decide to elect a mayor or a council, which would deal with the various everyday issues that the community faces (e.g. policing, courts, education, etc). Also, in order to enable and fund the operations of the town's communal infrastructure (including the mayor's/councillors' salaries), residents agree to make regular payments. It seems, based on your comments above, that you're OK with such a setup, correct?
Sure... No problem. As long as ONLY THE PEOPLE who agree to make this payments actually do it. Let's assume that 90% of the town's citizens agree that they want to be a part of this. NO PROBLEM, as long as the other 10% may simply not pay anything, because they don't want to. The point is that in this setting, the government system is no different from a private enterprise since people can opt out and choose alternative services. Which means that the "government health insurance" will have to compete with the private. But if that is the case, as in a free market, even the governments health insurance acts as a private one and even though in this setting I would have no problem with this "government" company, it makes very little sense to build one. Then same applies for education that you mentioned.
So how do you intend to deal with the "free rider" problem then? Let's say 90% of the townspeople vote to pay for daily garbage collection in public spaces. The holdout 10% get to enjoy clean streets without paying anything. Does that sound reasonable to you?
Nope, just as I wrote on my last post(I added a part), the ones who opt out, simply will hire another service to collect their garbage. The problem is that you're still held up in the principle that if a maggiority votes, then it makes sense to impose this on others. That doesn't work and should be held to a minimum. The criterea is: if it can be self regulated by free markets, it doesn't need and IT SHOULD NOT be put to vote, since private enterprises competing in a free market are the best way to handle these. Police, justice department, national defense can't be regulated by a market, so they are a necessary evil (even though there is a great proposed alternative even to these systems, except national defense, in the book called The Machinery of Freedom - David Friedman).
Arguably it's reasonable if it's what the 90% who voted for it accepted as the outcome in their voting? Even agreeing that monopolies tend, overall, to lead to low quality and high prices - which doesn't seem contentious to me - if you advance the argument you've stated above enough, you can use it to contend that any democratically-arrived-at decision by a big majority is, by definition, "communist" (and you virtually have). Not to mention international relations - kind of relevant, in these days of anti-terrorism co-operation, and maybe climate/energy policy, too? (I say "maybe" for climate policy to allow for the fact that some extreme Libertarians are also global warming deniers).
Not virtually, I literaly stated that. Democracy is simply a tiranny of the majority. It is admitedly slightely better then "typical tirannies", but it is still a horrible system because it incurs in the same errors: forcing people(normally a vey large group) against their will. 10% of a 300.000.000 people country is 30.000.000 people. Only an idiot would believe that forcing 30.000.000 people to act against their will is "right" just because the other 270.000.000 voted so. As Hayek said: "Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship." An interesting view from a true libertarian(in the literal sense of the word, not related to the Libertarian Party) that does not "deny" global warming, if you're interested.
Let's say I am one of the holdouts that just doesn't want to pay anything for any service? What happens then? As to your broad comment, "held to a minimum" is a rather vague statement. Can you please explain to me how you think it should work in the specific hypothetical example I've given? How can "private enterprises competing in a free market" help in this particular case? As to the choice of areas that are perceived by a particular community to be "necessary evils", isn't that something that should be left to the citizens to decide? For instance, in the most famous example of a direct democracy, people in Switzerland hold pretty regular referendums on a whole variety of subjects. Agreed, but do you really think people are happy to accept widespread "free-riding"?