> That article doesn't seem to give much sway to the issue of transaction costs in letting people organise to provide a public good, which is really central to the issue..

There are transaction costs for Government action too. In general they are higher. Government has no special ability to keep transaction costs low.

> Surely as argued above, contagious disease prevention would qualify as a public good

It has excludable ("public") and non-excludable aspects like all goods. It's certainly possible, in theory, to make a profit off it. But today no such thing is organized, meanwhile the Government does have it under control, and the total cost isn't very high relative to the country's wealth. So there's much, much higher priorities to privatize like the postal system or social security.

I think reform needs to go one step at a time. Do I predict that contagious disease control will and should one day be done differently? Yes I guess so, though the far future is quite hazy. Let's not worry too much about that because by the time we get closer to doing something it will be a lot clearer what works or not.

But when you bring up something like education, where we already have many private educational institutions, and public schools are widely regarded as largely failing, no I don't think the Government is good at this and no I don't want to spend billions in taxes on throwing money at stuff with institutional problems other than underfunding (e.g. teacher's unions and the wrong epistemology).

A good transitional proposal is vouchers. In this way the Government can subsidize poor people or any other favored group while not actually running any schools. So if what you want is access to education, paid for by the Government, you can still have that without Government actually running schools. I think that'd be a good step forward.

Transitions are important because if you cut off aid to some group overnight then they are going to get fucked in the meantime before alternatives are created. And transitions are also important in that alternatives are not created before some sort of transitional steps are implemented to allow alternatives a purpose and ability to be useful.

It's important to keep in mind that economists consider things cetibus paribus - that is, as they are at the time, in isolation and in the real world. Whilst I have no particular problem with market based solutions (e.g. publicly funded vouchers should be provided for schools rather than public funding per se) I'm interested in seeing some kind of current, market based solution to issue of contagious disease prevention (how do we make everyone who benefits from protection against contagious diseases pay the value of their protection, for instance) and education (how do we make everyone who benefits from an educated populace pay a fair price towards the education of the next generation) --- when I do, perhaps the libertarian approach will persuade me more. Keep in mind that approaches which require future technological advances or infringement of civil liberties aren't allowed.

> There are transaction costs for Government action too. In general they are higher. Government has no special ability to keep transaction costs low.

Of course they do --- it's called fiat. When a variety of beneficial options exist but a lack of cooperation prevents an overall resolution, the government has the power to step in and dictate what should be done. If you don't like it, other options are still available --- there are other countries to migrate to.

Fiat isn't saving on transaction costs. It's basically just failure to do due diligence (enough to persuade people to participate voluntarily) and therefore acceptance of high risk.

I don't consider proposing emigration as a reasonable response to proposed reforms of our country.

I have no particular ideas about changes for dealing with contagious diseases. It's low priority and I haven't thought about it. If you'd like several examples (but not that one), I suggest the book The Machinery of Freedom, now free: http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

> how do we make everyone who benefits from an educated populace pay a fair price towards the education of the next generation

I don't understand the necessity of making everyone who benefits pay. The real problems, as I see them, are getting stuff to happen and be paid for in such a way that everyone directly involved mutually benefits. If someone else benefits to, that isn't hurting anyone and is not a problem.

What actual problem do you want to solve? Having schools and having them paid for? I don't see that as terribly hard. We already have schools, public and private, people already pay for them (both types), it works. I don't see any fundamental difficulty in getting the Government out of the education equation unless your goal is redistribution of wealth (for educational purposes) to poor people or other groups, and you want to redistribute more than voluntary charity will do (in other words: you want to redistribute wealth from people who think it's best used on X, for purpose Y, against their best judgment).

If you want to do that redistribution you need Government because it has the special power of using force against innocent people who disagree with you. But vouchers are still adequate.