Spencer-1

[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 (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.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight...Highway_System

"One of Eisenhower's enduring achievements was championing and signing the bill that authorized the Interstate Highway System in 1956.[136] He justified the project through the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 as essential to American security during the Cold War. It was believed that large cities would be targets in a possible war, hence the highways were designed to facilitate their evacuation and ease military maneuvers."

It is argued that prussia restricted child labor because conditions in factories and mines impacted the health of future conscripts negatively, and the army complained.

In other words, if the government does "defense" you can justify anything. Public Health ? Defense against biological weapons. Public schools ? Needed to get literate conscripts. Welfare ? Protection against foreign agitators. And so on.

OTOH, defense requires money, infrastructure, an educated population, production capabilities, etc. If you skimp on them too badly, other countries will be/get stronger, and after some time you may be in trouble unless you compete.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

In other words, if the government does "defense" you can justify anything. Public Health ? Defense against biological weapons. Public schools ? Needed to get literate conscripts. Welfare ? Protection against foreign agitators. And so on.

A government that "enforces laws" can justify anything too. "We only have one law - all persons are required to instantly obey any command of the king, or those he has delegated his authority to, on pain of summary execution or any other punishment the authority may choose to impose. What could be simpler?" That's not what anybody means when they talk about "rule of law" though. One of the hidden complexities of these things is what the laws actually are.

[Anders]

What you need is an ideological compass to guide you to what the state should and shouldn't do. Otherwise you can motivate practically anything, yes.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The only paved roads outside of cities would be toll roads

Nothing prohibits a construction company -- or a "non-profit" corporation -- from taking up a collection to build the road, either at once or over some time period, and then allowing any traffic on the road, without having toll gates and per-vehicle stops. In academic theory, free riders would destroy the system, as everyone (not just a few) mindlessly follows one optimal ridge, without any consequences absent guns and jackboots to enforce a law. In practice, though, such schemes can often work tolerably well.

You can quibble that this would be "government", if merely local government, but in that case, every group action is always "government" at some scale. One road-building entity with a single cause, no particular monopoly of force, and not connected to all the other functions we lump under "government", can't really be called "government" without assuming that the setting is impossible by definition.

It's probably also worth noting that even traditional real-world government often builds toll roads of the pay-per use type. The current trend is to convert old, existing lanes of freely accessible highway to some form of pay-per-mile or pay-when-congested access. Electronics are making it possible for governments to add even more individual tolls, rather than continuing the collective public-good system -- and they do. Tolls aren't a necessary consequence or unique marker of private versus public funding.

Similarly, someone could build long-haul roads. Railroads have no special advantage that makes them more amenable to private construction than concrete and asphalt. And note that in the US, while the Interstate highways were certainly a big government project, the transcontinental railroads were also built with government money. Whether you build trains or trucks is more a matter of the technology of the time than of the constructing organization, as well as what material you have to transport. (Moving coal for industry a different problem that moving people for business or tourism.) If you simply want railroads in the setting because you're a railroad fan, it's a plausible-enough excuse. But it could just as easily go the other way, or both ways together (as in our world).

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Nothing prohibits a construction company -- or a "non-profit" corporation -- from taking up a collection to build the road,
....
Similarly, someone could build long-haul roads. Railroads have no special advantage that makes them more amenable to private construction than concrete and asphalt.

As MA Lloyd already wrote, the problem is eminent domain. Without a government using force to take private property for road or railroad building, you can be sure that somewhere some landowner will either say "no" or demand so much money that the project becomes unfeasible.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

As MA Lloyd already wrote, the problem is eminent domain. Without a government using force to take private property for road or railroad building, you can be sure that somewhere some landowner will either say "no" or demand so much money that the project becomes unfeasible.

Although the idea of eminent domain is itself linked to a specific set of property laws. If in your model society relatively little land is in private hands, or owning land does not grant the right to stop roadbuilders (just like in Canada owning land does not give you the right to forbid overflights or people travelling along waterways up to the high water mark), then things may be different ...

This is not too exotic, in many cultures land is owned collectively, or people resettle on a regular basis so don't get attached to exactly this field. Land ownership is a big philosophical and policy problem.