I know on this blog I often write about topics dealing with how society could function without government. With a little bit of imagination and critical thinking, it’s not often too difficult to think of situations where the market could find a way to solve the problem.
Today, though, I thought of something. How would you prevent someone from kidnapping another person and keeping them a prisoner for, I don’t know, ten years? How would you catch these criminals without government? People could just snatch up a young teenage girl and keep her locked up in the basement for years and years.
Without a government-sponsored police force, how would you protect your children from these predators? Do you think there’s even any way you could protect yourself? With government, there are laws that prevent someone from kidnapping and holding someone as a slave. And if you try, the police will come and arrest you. Then you’ll be tried in a public court and put in prison for a long time.
If we didn’t have all of that, there’s no disincentive to kidnapping. Without the police, no one could stop me from picking up off the street. And then there’s no court to punish me for my wrongdoing.
It’s clear—take away the police and other protective services that the government provides and we’d be left to fend for ourselves. We could never cooperate with others and solve these issues voluntarily.
I’d be very interested to see what Amanda Berry, Georgina DeJesus, and Michele Knight think about this.
Lately I’m getting down on courts, and I’ve always been down on cops.
First, while the cost is not clear, we can be certain that its more than we think. Back in Phoenix (where the bookmarks live) it seems there are about 3.5 million people here, or about 1% of the US population. Does the annual budget for cops and courts exceed 100 million dollars? Add 1% of the CIA, FBI, BPS, ATF, DOJ, PDQ, and WTF, and where is the bill now? I have no idea, and I’m sure I will never know. But I bet its a pile.
Secondly, the efficacy is marginal at best, in the recent case, it took 15 or so years to find the guy. So its not like cops + $ = safety.
Back in the wild west, there were mobs with pitchforks and juries lived in books. Today, there is a mob from the BAR, and juries still live in literature.
I watched a movie yesterday about Japan. They didn’t have courts, they had the samurai. A old dude once told me that he toured his grandparents home town in Poland, and the locals pointed out where all the historical buildings were located. He asked, “Where is the old Police station?” They said, “We didn’t ever need a Police station.” And in fact, I think in America it was Edison who suggested the first.
Do we need them now? If so, I’m not so sure why. Did people suddenly turn bad? Or do we just need to learn the ways of the samurai and again focus on taking care of our selves.
Maybe we just need to get to know our neighbours. And maybe without so much government, we may actually NEED to know our neighbours. For reasons just like this.
Welcome back, Lance. Thanks for the comment.
I completely agree with your assessment. While the police and court might get it “right” sometimes, if my neighbor is beating up on his wife, should I really sit back and call the police and wait the 7 minutes for them to show up or should I intervene myself? If the police are late by two minutes and he kills her, did I do the right thing by letting the cops do their job? According to the “law” and the “rules of society,” I did what I was supposed to do.
The more the police and courts involve themselves in our lives, the less we feel responsible to act and get involved in our neighbors and communities. Your neighbor is making noise late at night…how many people would actually talk to their neighbor to let them know that the noise bothers them. Instead, it’s perfectly acceptable to just call the cops. I think that’s really lame.
I think an overwhelming majority of cops (based on no statistic, just my personal experiences) get into the profession for the right reasons. They want to serve the community and protect the people. Of course there are corrupt cops, I’d bet there’s at least a few in every precinct, but that should be expected and predicted based on the set up. However, I do think there is a need for the police, or a security force or whatever, and there is no doubt they would still exist even if they were not funded by the government.
Rollo, while you or I might be able to break up a domestic violence dispute next door, what happens if it is my fiancé who sees the fight? There aren’t too many fights in the world she is capable of breaking up, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to call to make sure everything is ok? It would certainly give me peace of mind to know that if there is trouble, someone would be there to help if I’m not around.
I also bounce at a bar on weekends. The local cops have been extremely beneficial when we ask for extra help during promotions that bring larger than usual crowds. I have not once seen them overstep their bounds and their presence definitely helps keep the peace amongst drunken idiots.
The point I really want to make is that I know the setup we have with police isn’t perfect, but I don’t think our ire should be directed at the individual cop, generally speaking. Even if we had a totally private police force, that same cop would most likely be working for the private policing company with the same intention to serve and protect his clients.
“Rollo, while you or I might be able to break up a domestic violence dispute next door, what happens if it is my fiancé who sees the fight? There aren’t too many fights in the world she is capable of breaking up, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to call to make sure everything is ok? It would certainly give me peace of mind to know that if there is trouble, someone would be there to help if I’m not around.”
This is one of the many reasons why, like you said, we’d still have some sort of police without government. And heck, while I am capable of breaking up some fights, I really don’t want to…I’d rather pay someone to do that.