A Fresh Idea: Police Service for Those Who Can Pay for It

[Lydia Leftcoast]

W e have the best health care in the world! We don't let big government tell us what to do, and we give maximum opportunity for individual initiative to prove itself. Isn't it time to expand the lessons learned from providing health care to other basic services?

Let's privatize police departments! Why should we let big government tell us how our laws should be enforced? From now on, police services will be run by competing private businesses. Competition will provide better and more efficient results, as we have proved in our health care system. Employers will include police benefits as part of their fringe benefits, with moderate deductibles to discourage workers from calling the police unnecessarily.

Police insurance companies will use the same principles that have been used so successfully in health care. They will target their marketing to those least in need of police services and actively discourage those covered from using police departments. As with health care, those who can afford additional coverage will be allowed to get it -- the more they pay, the more they'll get...

http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1072788997183050.xml
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If you have someone who extols the "virtures of the market," show them this article, written by a Portland physician.

[liberalhistorian]

1. WOW!

I love it, thanks! I've been fighting the growing "privatization fever" not just among the repukes in the government, but among family, friends, co-workers, etc., as well. This says it a lot better than I could, and makes them think because they can't imagine not being able to get police services if they didn't have the money.

[bemildred]

2. I was thinking we could hire CEOs from India at much cheaper rates.

And competing governments that we could choose among to
send our taxes to would be a bit step forward. A market-based
solution to government corruption, ineptitude, and lack of
innovation.

[liberalhistorian]

3. We could also hire doctors, nurses,

management staff, police officers and police management staff, from India, China, etc. THAT would finally get people aware and get the ball rolling against the ridiculous corporate outsourcing, wouldn't you think?

[bemildred]

4. That is actually happening already, has been for a while.

It's the big shots that have been immune so far.

[liberalhistorian]

5. Well, maybe it's time to

make them "un-immune"!

[bemildred]

8. Agreed. nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. We already do hire doctors and nurses from China and India

Someone beat you to it.

However, I DO like the idea of outsourcing CEO functions to some guy in China or India who will do an excellent job for $100,000 a year.

My other idea, directed especially at companies that reduce their full-time workers to part-time in the interests of "flexibility" is to put all executives on an hourly basis, so that they get paid only for the time they're actually in the office doing real work, not schmoozing. (Because that's all the much-touted "contacts and networking" are, folks, schmoozing.)

[bemildred]

7. Capitalism without the capitalist.

I like it.