These modest proposals are offered to echo the spirit of the New(t)Age of Privatization, which operates under the principle: "All Power to the Invisible Hand". These proposals are based on the understanding that there is only one entitlement -- the defense of private property by the State at any cost. Everything else is up for sale.

Sell the public parks. Those who can afford to enter them will have nothing to fear from each other -- they know they'll be among fellow winners in the new competitive order. Parks without purchasers can be turned into parking lots.

Sell the public streets. The street-lord would pay for services (if any) and charge what the traffic will bear for its use. The price for using a street would be determined by what it and the users are worth. Charging user fees will let owners kick out freeloaders who cause congestion and bring down property values. With fewer poor people on the street, neighborhoods will be visibly upgraded.

End the near-monopoly the government enjoys in the protection business. Private police and fire companies will protect citizens with a speed and efficiency calibrated to the amount their clients choose to pay. Public sector protection services could then be reduced to a token presence.

Similarly, private courts and private prisons could take over most of the functions of the judiciary and penal systems. If you are arrested (by the private police), you can languish waiting for a turn in the public court system, as is already the case, or you can choose to have your case decided quickly at a private court. Similarly, when sentenced, you can go to an overcrowded public prison stripped of all resources, as is already the case, or choose a private prison which is bound by a performance contract to meet minimum standards.

The poor need income, not welfare. Restore the right of poor children to work a full-time job. The Constitution prohibits involuntary servitude. But it can be interpreted to allow enforcement of lifetime contracts by which the poor can sell themselves into slavery. This would end an imperfection in the human capital market, making it a wise investment decision for owners to train their property to do the most valuable work they are capable of doing. And owners would have an interest in making sure their investments are decently housed and provided with adequate medical care. Everyone would benefit over the present system of government-coerced involuntary free labor. At a minimum, the poor could be allowed to sell their votes, which would sharply increase voter turnout.

And why stop with selling their services? Why should the poor be prohibited from selling their children or their body parts, as people already do in many poor countries? This would provide income to the poor and productive services to their buyers at no expense to taxpayers.

The list can go on and on. The market system is the natural way by which the stronger capitalize on their advantage over the weaker. At first it may seem crazy to treat people like excludable and disposable things, but once the bonds of human solidarity have been dissolved by the acid imperatives of a profit-maximizing market, you'll soon find there is no logical limit to the pain that you're willing to have other people experience for your benefit. We all buy cheap third-world products without a lot of thought about the conditions under which those goods were produced. But when it gets closer to home, subjective (human) values may kick in. For example, some still believe that less human suffering is a good worth paying for. They lost the election.

As for marketing babies for food, it's already been proposed by Swift.