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Essential services should be socialized, and privatized services should be regulated.

Please note that my basic argument is against socialization of any privately produced goods or services and so my examples of capitalism will only be those which are strictly free market examples and that otherwise I shall use logic to support my virtually laissez-faire position as there have not yet been any completely laissez-faire economies to draw from and the only nation that came close was the early U.S which was still ripe with cronyism (http://mises.org...). To begin with your first premise, I must disagree with what you consider essential services. Essential services should be services which protect the individual rights of personal property, choice, and justice thus meaning that essential government services would be those of the police (domestic protection), courts (justice), and military (protection from foreign invasion). This definition of essential services should not be extended to services which can and should be provided by private industry such as healthcare, education, food/housing, and transportation. There are plenty of private healthcare companies in the U.S. that not only provide good healthcare but can also profit from it including Cleveland Clinic (http://en.wikipedia.org...), Mayo Clinic, and others (http://www.forbes.com...). The reason that this should be handled by private industry and free markets rather than the government is that the free market system encourages competition for the patronage of the market thanks to profit incentive and self interest. This competition results in private industry trying to provide the best possible good or service for the lowest possible price. This is why people in the U.S. today are much healthier and live much longer than we did in the 1700s, it has not been because of big government, if government could realistically and effectively provide socialized healthcare, it would have happened by now and vast numbers of people in the U.S. would be flying to places like Cuba and Canada for healthcare. As it is, at least in Canada"s case, they"re coming here for their healthcare (http://www.forbes.com... page 3). Private industry can also cheaply cover education. Of course, currently, private schools are very expensive while public schools(K-12) are not from an out of pocket point of view. However, the reason for this is that public education exists. Because the government has set up a public education system which from an out of pocket perspective is virtually free, that has driven the lower cost private schools off the market leaving only the high rate private institutions. Now one would tend to wonder, "If it"s so cheaply provided by government then why shouldn't"t it stay public?" The answer is that it is not really as cheap as it appears. For public schooling, you don"t have to pay out of pocket for the education of your children, it is paid for by taxes. These taxes however don"t just come from the individuals who send their children to school, but also from those who do not have children, or whose children are not old enough to attend school. Also, just to get a sense of the cost on U.S. citizens from the federal level, the DoE spent about $72.8 billion on K-12 education (http://www.downsizinggovernment.org...) and when factoring in dead weight losses, or the taxman"s fee as I call it, which range between 20 cents to 1 dollar more taxed for every dollar spent (http://www.downsizinggovernment.org...), then the actual cost in terms of money taxed is between $87.36 billion and $145.6 billion which figures out to about $276.46 per person at the low end, and $460.76 at the high end (http://www.census.gov...). Of course, not all of this comes from taxes because quite a large portion of all federal spending comes from deficit spending which can also be harmful as explained by Salim Furth of the Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org...). As to food and housing, it should be quite obvious as to how private industry can provide those as this area of the market has likely been privately run since the founding of the U.S. and when we compare nations in which the free market is allowed to produce and distribute food and housing to those where it isn't, we find that the free market societies have more higher quality of both than socialist societies, the U.S. when compared with the USSR is a perfect example of this. Transportation also belongs in the free market. Examples of successful privately run transportation systems include Heathrow Airport in London, air traffic control in Canada, and some highways in France (http://www.cato.org...). Another reason that free markets should run transportation is because if the government can control transportation, or any market really, it acts like a permanent monopoly on the good or service and when someone has a permanent monopoly, then competition disappears and inefficient production and distribution as well as poor quality products result and the monopolist can use its power to control people as a quote from Leon Trotsky revealed In a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle, who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. As to my opponent"s second premise, I agree in that the mentioned services should be part of the free market. As to the third premise, legal regulation is not necessary because it is not in the best interest of a business to defraud its employees or customers because of competition. By defrauding them, the employees and customers will begin to look for another more competitive source of work and products leaving the business who defrauded them to fail. Also, environmental regulation would not be necessary in a free market society because there is still the court service, which I mentioned above in my answer to premise 1, to help to determine if property damage was incurred and how much compensation must be provided for the damage. This is one of the beauties of the capitalist system, property rights. As long as a business continues to do property damage by harming the environment, it will continue to face lawsuits which even if not all successful, will still raise operating costs by having to divert capital to corporate lawyers and court fees thus creating an incentive for the business to look into ways of preventing environmental damage and creating a new market in more efficient and more environmentally sound producer and consumer goods. The last regulation you mention is regulation against monopolies which also is not necessary because monopolies are unlikely in a free market where little other regulation exists and taxes are low because of the constantly growing wealth and the changing face of the market due to new innovations and investments. This changing market thus results in frequent destruction of old industries and markets and creation of new ones forcing businesses to continue to adapt and keeping competition alive thus preventing monopolies naturally. Also, even in the unlikely event of a monopoly forming naturally on the free market, it is not certain to last for too long because of this changing market. This monopoly of the old market will still be threatened by the potential competition of the current one and the innovations of tomorrow"s market making it difficult to sustain a monopoly and if they can sustain it through producing innovations which make their products better or cheaper, then there is no need to worry about the monopoly.