Spencer-1

[Apollonian]

In this world, who makes the laws that government enforces? Who repeals laws?

To make this a little more workable, I'd define government as the organization that maintains a monopoly on legitimate violence. For whatever reason, this organization provides no other services beyond law enforcement. Does that include enforcing contracts between private parties?

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I'm not looking to create an unworkable or dystopian world any more than I want a hand-waved utopia which works because I said so.
.

Since your premise is fundamentally unworkable, you're kind of out of luck there, I'm afraid.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

In this world, who makes the laws that government enforces? Who repeals laws?

To make this a little more workable, I'd define government as the organization that maintains a monopoly on legitimate violence. For whatever reason, this organization provides no other services beyond law enforcement. Does that include enforcing contracts between private parties?

Yes of course. And at least in the English common law countries the governments would be the typical legislatures, probably with a franchise still restricted by property ownership. Liberalization just took a different course.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Elsewhere I was answering a question about what things would be like if governments stuck strictly to law enforcement as their only allowed function when it occurred to me that it would make a workable alternate universe to visit. So here's a bit of cut and paste:

So let’s look at things government does that aren’t regulatory in nature:

Road building and repair: This is a big deal. The only paved roads outside of cities would be toll roads for high traffic corridors between relatively close cities. Railroads would be much more important as the only practical way to ship cargo cheaply over long stretches of land. Cross country driving in North America would be an adventure in the worst sense of that road. Planes would probably be smaller and less cost effective because private airports would be smaller with shorter runways on average. Maybe dirigibles would be more competitive. What’s an alternate universe without dirigibles? Cities would be only partially paved where merchants and home-owners associations ponied up for it, meaning that low income city neighborhoods would probably be immediately identifiable by their dirt (or exceptionally stinky mud) roads.

Speaking of stink you can forget about sewer systems and sewage treatment. They’d be rare and limited at best. Flush toilets would be an attribute of the affluent. Lower income life would be pretty deadly. We’d need much larger families to compensate for high levels of infant mortality.

Education: With the only education being private and religious schooling, illiteracy would be much more common. Religions would dominate schooling for the lower economic strata creating a much less secular culture rather closer to the religious culture of the middle east.

Welfare: With a significant proportion of the population reliant on charity for survival, the streets outside of gated communities would be filled with beggars (not to mention prostitutes and pickpockets)

Probably the best place to live for the working class would be company towns. Not being strictly government would mean that companies who ran their own towns would be free to provide things like sanitation, paved roads and schooling.

Mind you taxes would be really low without government having to pay for all that stuff.

The first government to break the rule and field an army conquers the world.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

The first government to break the rule and field an army conquers the world.

I cut the questioner some slack and assumed that border defense was included in "law enforcement"

[PK]

<MOD>

Just a quick reminder to keep everything here on the topic of building this specific Infinite World. This is the sort of discussion that has the potential to spawn political debate tangents, which would immediately equate to a closed thread and generous handouts of infractions.

No one's broken any rules here; this is just a friendly reminder.

</MOD>

[(E)]

One thing, decentralized systems would come into play. Using sewers for an example, rather than a municipal sewerage system you would see septic tanks every where. Possibly resulting in a lower population density as a result of the larger land requirements.

Education if decentralized would be more the province of large employers who choose or require a minimum level of education in their work force.

What's to stop a group of community forming a trust or foundation to fulfill a function like road building? You might have a situation where roads are common but of wildly fluctuating quality.

Some of the issues may be dealt with by laws. All new house subdivisions must have roads of X quality to each property etc?

Water based transport would be big too. Would railways be as big without the many cases of government subsidies that kickstarted the local industries in various countries?

Implementation of big dollar value projects would be stunted. Power and telephone networks, power generation and maybe scale based efficiencies too.

Depending on the laws and their enforcement, the environment may get a hammering.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Yes of course. And at least in the English common law countries the governments would be the typical legislatures, probably with a franchise still restricted by property ownership. Liberalization just took a different course.

I don't see any particular reason to set the franchise one way or the other.

Property owners have just as much non law enforcement things they would like the government to do as the lower classes - that road building, coin money, dredge the harbors, impose tariffs, break unions, chase down the runaway serfs, crush new competitors to their existing factories, evict everybody from that slum I want to build on, whatever. It's just a somewhat different set of stuff.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by (E)

Some of the issues may be dealt with by laws. All new house subdivisions must have roads of X quality to each property etc?.

Once you start down that route, I think you've violated the premise. After all everything a modern regulatory state does is authorized by (and enforced in accordance with) some law or other.

[(E)]

Another thought, emergency services. Some would be run by charities (ST Johns amulance) others would be funded by insurance (fire brigades). Disasters would be more devastating without central resources to call upon.

Edit, additional thought.
With the reduced number of educational institutions who does the research to see if a product is safe (and therefore legal)? Who decides that heroin isn't a fantastic soft drink additive? And all the rest of the research required while formulating laws.