Fixed Cross Tower
Posts : 7307 ᚠ : 8696 Join date : 2011-11-09 Location : Acrux
| Subject: Pros and Cons of Private Police Thu Apr 12, 2018 6:19 am | |
| I just posted this on ILP, more of a topic for there but to archive. :: I'm reading this article here that makes a weird point. But I felt it is an interesting topic of contention. - Quote :
- Abolition of the public sector means, of course, that all pieces of land, all land areas, including streets and roads, would be owned privately, by individuals, corporations, cooperatives, or any other voluntary groupings of individuals and capital. The fact that all streets and land areas would be private would by itself solve many of the seemingly insoluble problems of private operation. What we need to do is to reorient our thinking to consider a world in which all land areas are privately owned.
Let us take, for example, police protection. How would police protection be furnished in a totally private economy?
Part of the answer becomes evident if we consider a world of totally private land and street ownership. Consider the Times Square area of New York City, a notoriously crime-ridden area where there is little police protection furnished by the city authorities. Every New Yorker knows, in fact, that he lives and walks the streets, and not only Times Square, virtually in a state of "anarchy," dependent solely on the normal peacefulness and good will of his fellow citizens. Police protection in New York is minimal, a fact dramatically revealed in a recent week-long police strike when, lo and behold!, crime in no way increased from its normal state when the police are supposedly alert and on the job. https://mises.org/wire/privatize-policeGiven that Manhattan is absolutely not crime-ridden anymore, (where does this person live? Alaska probably), it is rather proof of an almost diametrically opposed case; namely that, due to government presence, there has been built a public consensus against crime, a conviction that crime doesn't pay in Manhattan. New York is a rather emasculated city since Giuliani's sweeps, it was a hell of a lot livelier and city-like with all the crime, but that is not the point. The point is that public ownership is what allows for a big-city situation, where omni-privatization causes scattered gated communities connected by economic dead-zones, more like LA and what one sees in South America. The idea that private police would not be inclined to harass is not really well considered, since it would mean different parties control different police forces, which would then naturally compete, and case trouble for each other. This would result in a Damascus type of situation. Government is required for our standard of culture. | |
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individualized Tower
Posts : 5737 ᚠ : 6982 Join date : 2011-11-03 Location : The Stars
| Subject: Re: Pros and Cons of Private Police Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:07 am | |
| Yes I agree. All this anarcho-capitalist stuff you see from places like Mises really pisses me off, for how willingly stupid it is. | |
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