Sans Authoritas wrote:
And all police forces should be privatized.
Guitargod1985 wrote:
Sans, what is your rationale behind this? Just wondering. I happen to agree with much of what you have to say in many threads, but I'm just curious as to why you think this would be a good idea.
Guitar, it comes down to a concept known as the "public choice theory." It's essentially a branch of economics, but in relation to governments, in particular. Here's a very brief summary, in my paraphrasing for this particular topic: When a number of people vote for a few people to run parts of their lives, they tip the first power domino in a series of thousands, whose paths will eventually intrude into every conceivable facet of people's lives. Government will continue to grow as long as it has the ability to tax and to force people to fight for its continued existence. While it's easy for a group of people to vote for someone . . . once that person is in office? Well, it's very difficult for them to stem the tide of what they have unleashed.
When you keep as many government operations as you can at a local level, it is less dangerous in the short term. (Note that I did not say "better." Small tax-funded governments turn into big ones.) It is less dangerous because at the local level, your political voice (a vote, perhaps) carries more weight than a vote for someone on the national level. You are
nothing to the Federal government. You are worthless to it except as a drone bee that supplies its honey. Similarly, you are
nothing to your local government, qua local government. But you are a drone bee that can more easily vote to oust the fat queen that currently rules the hive (in favor of another fat queen.) For this reason, the queen has a more imminent, convincing reason to at least pretend to care what you think.
Accountability. It's not there on the Federal level. There's more at the local level. But when you turn the police into a contracted company that isn't joined to the body politic as a political member, you suddenly have an agency that has a much greater monetary incentive to please its customers. Its customer, in such a case, is still the government, albeit chosen by people whose voices are louder, but still not strong enough to stop the government's growth. Such "privatization" as this has been done with EMS, municipal water supplies and other formerly "public" goods, with excellent results.
A full privatization, however, would mean a police force that is bound to no tax-based government. It would be bound only to laws accepted as sane by the vast majority of people. (Protection against traditionally and universally known violations of life, liberty and property.) Such a business would be not unlike an insurance company: you subscribe to police protection, but you can pay for an emergency use fee, as well.
It seems almost everyone considers a tax-based government to be the watcher of the sheep. Who watches the watcher? The sheep need to be convinced that the only laws they need are laws that prohibit manifest violations of life, liberty and property. They need to scorn laws that exist so other sheep can feel good, or laws that merely serve to make the shepherd stronger, and his staff more burdensome and cruel.
-Sans Authoritas
