The Aquarian Agrarian: Municipal Services, the Fifth Amendment, and Government as a Business

Written on October 13th and November 22nd, 2011

Edited in April 2014

Because the right or privilege - whether monopolistic or competitive - to provide municipal public services is licensed by government to private enterprises, the provision of municipal public services is not a social welfare program, nor is it a right, nor should it be conceived of as either.

As such, an individual's use of a municipal service (if and when such an individual pays for that service to be provided) should not be interpreted as a capitulation or a submission to any and all regulations and processes which might be associated with or endorsed by the government having jurisdiction over whatever given municipality; even when the provision of a service is competitive, and especially when the provision of a service is monopolistic.

One of the most important functions of the libertarians and the Tea Party thus far has been to get Americans to start conceiving of their government as a business. My candidacy encourages this kind of thinking.

But not in a way that would recommend that we allow corporate welfare, or allow politicians to profit off of financial deals resulting from the legislation they help write, or allow silly things like the U.S. Department of Commerce to continue to exist, but in a way that requires all delegation of citizen power to their representatives in government to take place through contracts which were not signed under the duress of taxation and threatened imprisonment, and in a way that allows the government to be operated for-profit without fear that politicians who struggle to find legal ways to allow government to get rid of toxic assets like Amtrak and the Post Office so that the people will not have to bear their burden and inherit their debts to be ridiculed as privatization-pushers.

Those who believe that eminent domain and the Takings Clause should only be used to put private property under the management of the public, but decry the sale of public property to private entities as unconstitutional privatization for the benefit of special interests, are giving the government an unlimited license to grow, and to put its citizens in debt.

If a government does not practice both eminent domain and privatization, then it should practice neither.

For more entries on Fifth Amendment property takings, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/private-beachfront-property-takings.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/slavery-civil-war-and-fifth-amendment.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/questions-about-roads-eminent-domain.html

For more entries on enterprise, business, business alliance, and markets, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/enlightened-catallaxy-reciprocally.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/loss-of-public-planning-department.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-konkin-schulman-bastiat-and-agorism.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-is-social-libertarianism.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/10/comparative-economics.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/07/agorism-summary.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2012/08/panarchist-welfare-economics.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2012/11/on-market-anarchism.html