we wouldn’t even need the federal government if it weren’t for national defense

And vice-versa.

Plans and procedures are already in place (have been since the beginning) to shut off civilian access at the flip of a switch. The GPS system is for military use, and they’re kind enough to let civilians tag along as well. They can exclude ALL civilians, I’m pretty sure they could just exclude some.

Other examples include movie theatres and access to copyrighted media.

So the people that get found by EMS who use GPS are excludable?

Excludability has a specific economic definition and refers only the ability to prevent people who have not paid for the service from using it. GPS is a “club good” (other examples include cable television and telephone lines). GPS, like CATV, is non-rivalrous (meaning that one person using it does not diminish another’s capacity to consume), but excludable (those who don’t pay for it cannot use it).

My understanding is that GPS was created for military purposes, to keep detached units from getting lost and to improve the accuracy of indirect fires, aircraft bombing runs, SSBN missiles, cruise missiles, etc., and national defense is clearly a public good, to the extent that we wouldn’t even need the federal government if it weren’t for national defense.

Once you have GPS for the military, the cost of making it free for everyone else isn’t very high.

Love this! A slight rewrite is needed tho’…

GPS was created by the US government at a taxpayer expense of billions of dollars along with thousands of other research projects costing billions of dollars (most of which never returned anything significant or were obsolete once completed). They then claimed GPS could not be made publicly available (for security reasons) until lobbyists bought massive amounts of blow and hookers for politicians to force it to be released to the public. Don’t even mention that R&D isn’t a function of government.

So they spent more money on GPS than anyone in their right mind would (because they don’t care about ROI…every budget is blue sky). Take a million from each grandma and give back a shiny new toaster. Claim victory because we’ll never get to see the free market alternatives that the government stomped out.

GPS supports one of my favorite sayings: “Who will fund a service no one cares enough about, wants, or is too expensive? Government!”

Who’s going to now post that NASA is the greatest invention machine in the world because there’s no way private enterprise would’ve put a man on the moon in the 60′s. Ahhh…the cost of national pride!! Who’s up for a man on Mars saluting the flag?! No cost is too much!

NOTHING the government provides is for “free”.

“…I am curious about how you don’t believe in natural rights, unless you mean that one must constantly defend them or lose them.”

I mean rights only exist if one is able to defend, provide, or enforce them. You and I can declare the right to not be eaten by tigers (even pass a law), but that tiger is going to eat us and that’ll be the end of that debate.

You asked about Taoism. Libertarianism (and anarchy…IMHO), free markets, Austrian Eco, Taoism (more so than Buddhism and Confucianism)…all have dramatic, consistent similarities. I urge any libertarian/anarchist/Austrian to also investigate Taoism.

ATM’s were almost magical money machines for a while. It seems logical to expect more magic from something that seems that way already.

Yeah, you’re right. GPS is signals coming out of the sky and blanketing the earth. To make it excludable, you’d need to encrypt the signal with a key that changes periodically, and then you’d need an encrypted channel to distribute the decryption keys, and you’d need the key decryption mechanism hidden inside each GPS receiver so people couldn’t share, and you’d need laws to prevent people from reverse-engineering the key decryption…it’s a mess, and it greatly complicates the system, so I figured it was too complex to be feasible. But I forgot that this is how satellite radio works, so yes, GPS can be made excludable…although if satellite radio is our model, it’s not a raging success…

So the people that get found by EMS who use GPS are excludable?

You will.

Just ask MacGregory!

I wonder why?

[You will: lose all the money in your 401K, etc.]