> If they turn your water off unreasonably, they risk losing clients
No, they risk getting sued. If my water company decided one day to turn off my water based on some bullshit claim of one of my neighbours, I would sue the shit out of them.
There are such things as contracts and consumer protection laws you know.
As a disclaimer, I live in Romania, Europe and what you're describing wouldn't be possible here. But it's funny how we've got less problems with drugs, even though Europe on the whole is more relaxed about drug usage than you are. More than 50% of incarcerations in your federal prisons are for drug offences and you've got the highest incarceration rates of all countries. To me that's a sign that you've been fixing the symptoms, rather than the real disease, making it worse in the process.
And really, I don't think that placing such power in your insurance companies would do any good. In theory abuse would be prevented by competition. In practice however, monopolies / oligopolies happen and insurance companies are primarily focused on minimizing risk, so you'd better have a good story when going from one insurer to the next.
I'm from Russia and live in France. I don't care about drugs, I care about people not bullying each other over unproved made-up values and ideals.
When I talk about insurance, I talk about voluntary agreements. About giving as much "power" to insurance company as you want. If they suddenly begin carrying guns and threatening people instead of having peaceful arrangements, customers will go away and all the funding for weapons will quickly end (or they won't, it's their choice). Also keep in mind that any enterprise needs savers who will invest their hard-earned money. They wouldn't like to gamble with a risk of losing all their money and customers by doing something people wouldn't like. Like shooting, killing, spying.
If you say that your ideal is being able to "sue" someone, what you are really saying is that you wish to use unilateral violent power to be directed on someone you disagree with. Now you have a problem. Because you won't be able to control that power. You'd either have to become part of that power (and fight hard with other such ruthless guys), or stay away from it and watch it being used upon you too whether you like it or not. Courts, police and politicians are not enterprise: they didn't have voluntarily invested private money that feeds them. They first take the money from every person by force, then decide what they want to do with it. This makes the whole motivational structure reversed and inherently abusive.
So fuck that shit. As I mentioned many times again on HN, pro-government or pro-law rhetoric is no different from religious bullshit that one group of people uses on another group of people at the expense of someone else.
"Without religion and church there's no morality" => "without government we'll have anarchic chaos"
"You must trust pope because he's set here by God" => "You must trust mr. president because there is society that elected him"
"If god does not exist, who created everything?" => "Without government how would we build roads and fly to the moon?"
"The Bible says what's good and what's bad" => "The constitution defines our rights."
"If you are against religion, you are against morality" => "If you are against government, you are against society".
No, they risk getting sued. If my water company decided one day to turn off my water based on some bullshit claim of one of my neighbours, I would sue the shit out of them.
There are such things as contracts and consumer protection laws you know.
As a disclaimer, I live in Romania, Europe and what you're describing wouldn't be possible here. But it's funny how we've got less problems with drugs, even though Europe on the whole is more relaxed about drug usage than you are. More than 50% of incarcerations in your federal prisons are for drug offences and you've got the highest incarceration rates of all countries. To me that's a sign that you've been fixing the symptoms, rather than the real disease, making it worse in the process.
And really, I don't think that placing such power in your insurance companies would do any good. In theory abuse would be prevented by competition. In practice however, monopolies / oligopolies happen and insurance companies are primarily focused on minimizing risk, so you'd better have a good story when going from one insurer to the next.