Yesterday I spent part of my morning getting a building permit. We plan to remove our old backyard shed (pictured above) and replace it with a new, larger shed. The old 8’x10′ shed is 25 years old and getting rather dilapidated (the floor is beginning to give out and it’s starting to become a habitat rather than a workable shed). The new shed is quite similar but is 10’x12′.
For some reason or other doing this requires a building permit so I trundled down to our Neighborhood City Services Center about ten minutes away to meet with the Department of Construction and Permits people there (I’d made an appointment a couple of weeks ago). Twenty minutes later and after paying a rather exhorbitant fee I walked out with my permit. It was all relatively painfree (excluding the fee, of course).
The office, located in a strip mall on the Northwest Side, was bustling—mostly with people paying parking and traffic fines. The bureaucrat who issued me the permit was courteous and businesslike but, like bureaucrats the world around (as best as I can tell—I’ve dealt with ’em in 6 or 8 different countries at this point) was somewhat beaten down and defensive. Since she no doubt deals with a lot of angry and/or frightened people every day, I’m surprised she holds up so well.
So now we can call the shed folks and tell them to deliver and install our new shed.
Such busywork is a pain in the arse but, sadly, required to maintain a decent urban environment. Contra the anarcho-capitalists a livable urban environment won’t just spontaneously arise. That means that some rules are required, somebody to administer them, and somebody to enforce them.
“Contra the anarcho-capitalists a livable urban environment won’t just spontaneously arise.”
And you have something other than opinion to demonstrate this?
So we *need* somebody to make rules, administer rules, and enforce rules? We’ve come so far and this is the best we can do?
Despite the various systems we’ve been forced to endure in the last 100 years or so, are we really better off than if we had no specific “system?” No one telling us what to do, no one telling us how to do it, and no one coming round to make sure we’ve done it? We *need* this intervention? That sounds more like facism than freedom, at least to me.
You’ve got greater faith than I.
I don’t believe we’re living in the best of all possible worlds, jimbo, just a possible one. And improvement is certainly possible and deserves to be worked for.
If I were asked to point to a republic or a monarchy or a federation or a dictatorship, I could do so. If I were asked to point to sample anarchies, I couldn’t. The lack of examples is prima facie evidence of the unworkability of anarchy.
Dave, I tend to agree with you on this. But the argument by lack of example is not definitive. I have the impression there have been various times in history when you couldn’t point to a democratic republic. The William Tell story is about a time when switzerland had a tyrant, for example. And the norse relative democracies got replaced by kingdoms sometimes. Pick the wrong year to talk about it and the impression might be that democracies are naturally unstable and devolve into dictatorships. Which might in fact tend to be the case. The US run has lasted far longer than most.
Democracies survive when enough citizens are ready to do what it takes to preserve democracy. Maybe anarchies might survive if enough citizens were ready to do what it takes. We won’t know whether it’s possible unless it happens.
But it clearly isn’t the ground state.
Nice historical shed. Lets see, did the cost of the permit exceed the cost of the new shed? Anyway, you were patient and did things right. On the other hand, it is a shed for Pete’s sake, not a pool or house, it is all about money and how much salary does the local muncipality pay that poor woman to process these permits, not enough I bet.