I can’t stress how disturbing it is to accept compliance with the police only for them to take advantage of your compliance in electrocution.
]]>“‘There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers-and then you cash in on the guilt.'” -Ayn Rand, ‘Atlas Shrugged'”
]]>“Beginning with its provocative title, Williams’ account of contemporary law enforcement argues that instances of police brutality in the U.S. are not aberrations but, instead, reflect the long, symbiotic relationship between those in power and the police hired to protect that power…
South End Press, 2007. ISBN 0896087719
]]>securityforces would still be dangerous in various ways, especially if not checked by a culture of defiance to authority and countervailing grassroots efforts (much like CopWatch, but not laboring under the extensive legal and cultural burdens that CopWatch is forced to labor under today due to the social and legal privileges extended to government goon squads).
On the other hand, as you say above, government cops are dangerous enough as it is, and anarchy, even with some professionalized security
forces, would be hard-pressed to find a way to get worse than the present situation. Under anarchy there would at least no longer be bullshit non-crimes like Failure to Obey a Police Officer
(a charge which is incomprehensible except as a supposed crime against the supposed authority of the State), and if some rogue security agency went ahead and tried to inflict this kind of jackbooted thuggery on an innocent man like Phil Sano, there would at least be the possibility of an effective recourse and for the violent creeps who attacked him to be held directly, individually accountable by competing agencies or by independent, grassroots alternatives.
For some more on both my skepticism about private professional policing and my optimism about the socialization of the means of defense, cf. my two comments in the thread on Roderick’s post about Jean Merola.
]]>The Libertarian celebration of the private over the public — though, the term “public” has been corrupted and generally means the state — misses the point though.
Sure, they make a good point when they say that cops whose “services” you can refuse might have more incentive to act responsibly, but it’s not true that everything private is necessarily good either.
Plenty of private schools out there that are modeled after oppressive “public” ones.
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