link to original reddit post by /u/MonarchistLib
(Im a minarchist not an ancap so I think courts should exist to settle damages and contract violations)
- 'Without a government body like the FDA, businesses could just put bad chemicals in their food and kill people.'
Well sure they can and that has happened even with the FDA and other regulatory boards existing. But why would a business want to kill off its customer base? It cant make money if all their customers died.
Also if its customers were harmed by the business, their customers would tell other potential customers to not shop there anymore meaning the business loses out on revenue and profits due to less consumer traffic. Vote with your wallet. The government doesnt force companies to give customers better benefits for staying with them like loyalty cards or better exclusive deals - but they still do it because the customer is the most important part of their business. You can also sue businesses
- 'Without the government, what's stopping businesses from becoming monopolies and overcharging everyone?'
Many things. One of them being the lack of government and excess regulations. When businesses grow, they gain more power and money and therefore are able to exploit this power by lobbying local and federal governments to give them more power and influence in areas. Without the government there would not be lobbying meaning businesses would not be able to use the government to restrict smaller businesses as is currently done through raising the cost of entry, tax breaks for larger companies and subsidies for larger companies.
Larger companies would then have to focus on properly competing with new start ups and retain their customer base through schemes and programs instead of artificially keeping the industry empty of new start ups. Companies that become complacent lose market share as has been shown by multiple companies over the last hundreds of years. Government intervention didnt shut down JCPenny, competition from other retailers like Amazon did. IBM wasnt forced to decrease its market share by the Federal Government. Companies like Intel and Microsoft competed against IBM. Blackberry lost against the Iphone and Apple. Sears lost against Amazon. Yahoo against Google. And many more examples throughout time.
- 'What about poor people or disabled people? Why are you selfish?'
Charity. Its all about cooperation not coercion. Why is not selfish when they demand stuff from me because they're poor or disabled. I am able to give but I should be able to choose who to give to and how much. The middle man, the government shouldnt exist. The War on Poverty didnt decrease poverty rates. It was already decreasing it and about a decade after, when the policies start to have any effect, poverty rates actually stagnated.
Charity from NGOs and some foreign aid helped poor people in poorer nations along with opening up of the economy with free trade not the government. Bureaucracy takes up more money in most nations than the actual cost of projects. Remove the middleman. Charities are also way more accountable to donators than the government is to taxpayers.