Anyone who’s been paying attention to the economic news has seen this announcement coming from a long way out: Vallejo, California, Officials Vote for Bankruptcy. If that is the start of a trend—and there’s good reason to think it might be—I think it could be a “making lemonade” opportunity for voluntaryists.

An excerpt from the article (all emphasis mine):

Vallejo, California's city council voted to go into bankruptcy, saying the city doesn't have enough money to pay its bills after talks with labor unions failed to win salary concessions from fire fighters and police.

The city council's unanimous decision makes the San Francisco suburb the largest city in California to file for bankruptcy and the first local government in the state to seek protection from creditors because it ran out of money amid the worst housing slump in the U.S. in 26 years.

The city of 117,000 is facing ballooning labor costs and declining housing-related tax revenue that have left it near insolvency. The city expects a $16 million deficit for the coming fiscal year that starts July 1. Under bankruptcy protection, city services would keep running. ....

The fiscal strains afflicting Vallejo are reverberating across the U.S., as a housing slump and slowing economy curb revenue for states and local governments. U.S. state sales-tax collections fell in the first quarter for the first time in six years, according to a study by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, New York.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's office predicted the state's budget deficit may reach $20 billion, more than twice the size of previous estimates and enough to account for nearly one-fifth of the budget.

I know the article states that if the city does get bankruptcy protection, city services would keep going, but it isn’t a certainty that it will get it (I have no idea how likely it is for this specific case). Also, I know Commiefornia is probably one of the worst places to attempt to sell this idea, but it’s an idea that could be implemented in several steps.

Particularly in the current “Security/safety über alles” atmosphere we are steeped in, the thought of losing these “vital” services is frightening to many individuals. Toss in the additional fact of escalating police abuses of citizens, and it seems this is a good opportunity to start discussing the alternative of private services. There are many ways to play up their appeal without slipping into hyperbole, especially when compared to the current situation. I don’t know about police, but if memory serves, the first firefighters were private and voluntary. Sure, costs are higher now, primarily because of technological advances (and probably liability issues too), but they don’t automatically make that kind of structure impossible.

I am not so naïve as to believe that a city would think of and take such steps on its own; the push would have to come from a municipality’s residents—or maybe a few of them would pool their resources and just start offering services. Is that naïve? Possibly. But to transform coercive, statist governance to voluntary self-government, a start needs to be made somewhere. This seems to me to be a good opportunity to at least begin to get some pro-freedom rhetoric going—to plant the seeds of this idea in individuals’ minds.