Even in a lot of the more mainstream libertarian literature [1] most law enforcement and the justice systems are treated as exactly the type of stuff that doesn’t make sense for a market and should be handled by the government. This should apply to prisons for much of the same reasons.
Besides, most of these sorts of private/public relationships are unlike other true markets anyway with very little competition and only one customer to appease. We end up with a system with even more opaque responsibility/liability chains and encourage crony business deals.
Without any discernible benefit for the private nature and creating negative incentives that encourage more violence by correlating the success of an industry on the greater imprisonment of people, I can’t see any net-benefit for them to exist.
I tend to be a fan of markets in a practical sense but I wish we had clearer distinctions between these public/private operations that are spun as being more “efficient”. Plus a ton of people use these failures of public/private organizations to disparage markets. So it’s not doing anyone any favours to support these half baked pseudo market arrangements, even if you are pro market. In most situations we need purely public or market solutions. I’ve seen few examples of mixing the two that left us better off (the US health insurance ‘market’ is the shining example).
[1] as opposed to the more fringe absolutist anarcho-capitalist stuff ala Mises which does push for private everything
I agree, I've been thinking more and more that we need to spend some serious time on defining what is and isn't best handled by markets and drawing clear bounds around those areas. I'm positive that there are enough real world examples out there to draw up the general structure of a system that would incorporate what we've learnt over the past few hundred years. I feel like most attempts to do so so far have been rather dishonest, naive, and/or biased in one direction or another.
Creating the public/private distinction would also help solve some legitimate political issues and provide a much more consistent framework. Politics is mostly a game of compromise. You could give in on already gutted half markets, such as public health insurance, while using the leverage to push harder to keep most other industries open.
Ideology often gets in the way of providing the best solution to the greatest amount of people. I personally don't see much value in keeping a broken half-market like health insurance putting along in the name of "free markets". That just makes people blame markets for the failures of the public/private arrangements, which hurts them in other areas where it does make sense, where markets should be the default.
Others like private prisons and private military contractors makes the public lose trust in public institutions. Having a trustworthy justice and government system is critical for all markets to succeed.
Additionally a harder public/private distinction will put greater weight in these decisions and more responsibility. It's very easy for a politician to grab the half-measure public/private mix while pretending to appease both sides.
most law enforcement and the justice systems are treated as exactly the type of stuff that doesn’t make sense for a market and should be handled by the government. This should apply to prisons for much of the same reasons.
FWIW, one should also consider that in a Libertarian system FAR fewer people would be in jail in the first place - perhaps as few as none, since Libertarian ideology is not big on forced imprisonment in the first place. The typical Libertarian view of justice is rooted more in the idea of restitution for damages caused (where applicable) than "punishment".
Does Libertarian idea of a penal system not rely on the idea of discipline? I'm curious as the western world has moved on from the previous system where a crime was considered a personal offence to the sovereign. In which case, criminals were displayed in public and tortured. To a system where criminals are to be reformed and disciplined into a normalized individual. An eye for an eye seems to be a regression back to the systems before we had a state and where the penal institution was no longer a extension of politics.
At best, describing the (common) Libertarian approach to justice as "an eye for an eye" is over simplified to the point of absurdity. For example, the vast majority of Libertarians are opposed to State sanctioned executions for crimes, even in the case of murder or a crime where financial restitution isn't obviously applicable. Of course there are debates in Libertarian circles about exactly what the nature of restitution should be in cases like that.
Are they against capital punishment? That's different from rejecting disciplinary and penal institutions as a whole. Is there a reason why restitution is considered the only mechanism for punishment? How do Libertarians disagree with the idea that a penal institution can be a source of social reform as well as political stability?
Just to note, "libertarian literature" is a very broad phrase, and there is certainly plenty of reasonably prominent literature from both the left and the right that describes itself as "libertarian" and would also oppose the idea of centralized state law enforcement and justice systems.
On the right you've got some varieties of anarcho-capitalism that support systems of polycentric law that emerge from markets for law enforcement and criminal justice. On the left you've got anarchist movements like anarcho-syndicalism which propose a decentralized or federated system of social institutions that would be determined by direct action and direct democracy.
Yep, that’s another distinction I wish would enter public perception. Much like how socialism vs communism distinction was made to try to separate some of their better ideas from a long legacy of negative baggage.
I think libertarians would benefit from creating a clearer spectrum within their own community between the more practical (and popular) small government/minarchist side and the more extreme anarcho-capitalist privatize everything group. Too often they seem to be happy having these lines blurred. Plus I don’t think there is any contradictions or significant compromises in doing so. If anything pushing for pipe dream imaginary economic systems or half solution public/private stop gaps isn’t helping anyone.
I'm not attempting to prescribe a definition or usage of any terms. I'm simply describing a very common way in this these terms are already being used, and pointing out that your usage should probably be further clarified. If you wish to use "libertarian" to refer to something very specific, like perhaps the Libertarian Party in the USA, you're free to do so. I just think you should make that clarification, because people will understandably be confused by an unqualified usage of the term "libertarian." It is a term that is used very broadly by many different groups.
I also made no claims regarding the viability or merits of any of the viewpoints I was describing. That's not a conversation I'm interested in having in this context.
Besides, most of these sorts of private/public relationships are unlike other true markets anyway with very little competition and only one customer to appease. We end up with a system with even more opaque responsibility/liability chains and encourage crony business deals.
Without any discernible benefit for the private nature and creating negative incentives that encourage more violence by correlating the success of an industry on the greater imprisonment of people, I can’t see any net-benefit for them to exist.
I tend to be a fan of markets in a practical sense but I wish we had clearer distinctions between these public/private operations that are spun as being more “efficient”. Plus a ton of people use these failures of public/private organizations to disparage markets. So it’s not doing anyone any favours to support these half baked pseudo market arrangements, even if you are pro market. In most situations we need purely public or market solutions. I’ve seen few examples of mixing the two that left us better off (the US health insurance ‘market’ is the shining example).
[1] as opposed to the more fringe absolutist anarcho-capitalist stuff ala Mises which does push for private everything