First of all, there isn't much of a free market in health care. There is much regulation, and the current model of requiring corporations give their employees health insurance is flawed. Contrarywise, prices have fallen in cosmetic surgery, the only medical field mostly left to the free market.
(And where did you get the entire that free education means government education? There have been free schools in America since before there was a country called "America.")
Second of all, an economically free society would likely have taxes nowhere near 25%. That's higher than Hong Kong's income tax today, and much higher than America's income tax when income tax was legalized.
I've decided that the bare minimum of government that must be had are the courts (and the power to enforce their rulings). A libertarian society will be highly dependent on contracts; society could not function if you knew a powerful client could refuse to pay and ignore court rulings. I have trouble visualizing a fair, for-profit court system. If competing court systems exist, then how is the court system for a case chosen? Presumably, it would be spelled out in the contract, which gives a perpetual advantage to the vendor. Of course, the buyer could ignore the summons, but said court could force him to arrive and would then rule that it was justified doing so (as it was).
Everything that is not a court can belong to the free market, but that does not mean should. For example, you could purchase the privilege to drive on one company's network of roads, but, barring some major advances in scanning technology and some means of stopping trespassers, the need to enforce that only paid cars use the road would be extraordinarily cumbersome. The best private road system I could see would be to have a monopoly on roads in every region; road companies could then make deals with neighbors for interregional traffic and coerce developments into requiring residents to pay the road company, at the risk of having the road company block access to the development. However, I'm not sure I can trust a private monopoly more than a government monopoly.
Law enforcement is also a good candidate for government control; however, private police forces are not out of the question. There would probably be less overhead to hire police to protect an area rather than individuals, so police might not necessarily turn a blind eye to a homeless man getting mugged (not to mention that said criminal should be caught for the same reason Animal Control kills animals becoming accustomed to attacking humans). However, a system where every five feet is patrolled by a police force with different opinions of what an arrestable offense is is hardly ideal.
Fire protection, another commonly cited candidate for government control, could actually work pretty well privately. A computer can easily check whether a certain building is protected, and the benefits of competition will result. However, one problem is that a fire on an unprotected building endangers adjacent buildings.
Free education doesn't have to mean government education. A system of vouchers or subsidies could work. I'm not familiar with America's historical free schools. Were they charities?
The 25% number is completely arbitrary. I picked a number that is lower than what I pay today and gives the government a whole lot to play with. There's a good chance we'd be better off with a sales tax or transaction tax instead of an income tax, but it's not important for deciding what services the government should provide.
(And where did you get the entire that free education means government education? There have been free schools in America since before there was a country called "America.")
Second of all, an economically free society would likely have taxes nowhere near 25%. That's higher than Hong Kong's income tax today, and much higher than America's income tax when income tax was legalized.
I've decided that the bare minimum of government that must be had are the courts (and the power to enforce their rulings). A libertarian society will be highly dependent on contracts; society could not function if you knew a powerful client could refuse to pay and ignore court rulings. I have trouble visualizing a fair, for-profit court system. If competing court systems exist, then how is the court system for a case chosen? Presumably, it would be spelled out in the contract, which gives a perpetual advantage to the vendor. Of course, the buyer could ignore the summons, but said court could force him to arrive and would then rule that it was justified doing so (as it was).
Everything that is not a court can belong to the free market, but that does not mean should. For example, you could purchase the privilege to drive on one company's network of roads, but, barring some major advances in scanning technology and some means of stopping trespassers, the need to enforce that only paid cars use the road would be extraordinarily cumbersome. The best private road system I could see would be to have a monopoly on roads in every region; road companies could then make deals with neighbors for interregional traffic and coerce developments into requiring residents to pay the road company, at the risk of having the road company block access to the development. However, I'm not sure I can trust a private monopoly more than a government monopoly.
Law enforcement is also a good candidate for government control; however, private police forces are not out of the question. There would probably be less overhead to hire police to protect an area rather than individuals, so police might not necessarily turn a blind eye to a homeless man getting mugged (not to mention that said criminal should be caught for the same reason Animal Control kills animals becoming accustomed to attacking humans). However, a system where every five feet is patrolled by a police force with different opinions of what an arrestable offense is is hardly ideal.
Fire protection, another commonly cited candidate for government control, could actually work pretty well privately. A computer can easily check whether a certain building is protected, and the benefits of competition will result. However, one problem is that a fire on an unprotected building endangers adjacent buildings.