Police Forces and Courts of Law

[syrakusos]

Over on RoR, I have a Topic in Dissent called "Police Forces and Courts of Law." I believe in the privatization of protection and adjudication. While others argue about medieval Iceland, I take my data from the real world here and now. I do not theorize about what could be. I demonstrate what is. Public police are about one-third or one-fourth of protection: about 70% of all patrol officers are privately employed. If you want a government monopoly on force, you are going to have to make a special case for it because it is evaporating.

If you want to discuss this, I am not going to quote David Friedman. I will cite the U.S. Department of Justice which studies the markets for private security. I can point to the www.ADR.org, the Alternative Dispute Resolution website of the American Arbitration Association which employs thousands of jurists in global markets. They are only the largest. Look in your own local Yellow Pages for arbitration, adjudication and mediation.

Before you say that there must be one agency which... ask yourself how many organizations you belong to and what sanctions will be applied if you transgress the rules you agreed to.

Is government justice even workable? I have a binder with cases of injustice. They are all too easy to find now with DNA evidence. Epistemologically, metaphysically, morally, what is there about an adversarial argument in front of 12 ignorant people that ensures truth or justice? (Why not 13 or 11 people? Is this number 12 written in the stars? We have juries of six now. How about seven or five?) Jails as more than holding cells are a recent invention based on religious ideas of the 18th century and "philosophies" (if you want to call them that) of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Criminal justice runs on the same model as Soviet agriculture: we all pay into it; some people take out as much as they need; policy decisions are made for political, not market, reasons. We know that in most locales generally 80% of the police calls come from 20% of the addresses. "... to each according to his need..."

1. Do you have a right to hire a private guard service?

2. Does your neighbor have a right to hire a private guard service?

3. If you and your neighbor have a dispute and you each call your guard services, do they have a right to discuss the matter and offer a workable arrangement that makes everyone happy, or do they have to shoot it out so that the governmentalists can maintain their mythology?

Believe what you will, I am an Objectivist from A is A to Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. Ayn Rand was a human being with flaws and foibles, but she was brilliant and insightful. Her fear of civil war was based on her own personal experience. That much is unarguable.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Remember, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

B)

(hat tip to Billy Beck)

[BaalChatzaf]

Before you say that there must be one agency which... ask yourself how many organizations you belong to and what sanctions will be applied if you transgress the rules you agreed to.

Is government justice even workable? I have a binder with cases of injustice. They are all too easy to find now with DNA evidence. Epistemologically, metaphysically, morally, what is there about an adversarial argument in front of 12 ignorant people that ensures truth or justice? (Why not 13 or 11 people? Is this number 12 written in the stars? We have juries of six now. How about seven or five?) Jails as more than holding cells are a recent invention based on religious ideas of the 18th century and "philosophies" (if you want to call them that) of the 19th and 20th centuries.

What do we do about de Crip and de Blood? Shall we form private Death Squads?

Disputes between decent folk can be handled privately (for the most part). What about the jackals and the hyenas who dwell among us?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

What about the jackals and the hyenas who dwell among us?

Boycott collateralized debt obligations, short Bear Stearns and sue their asses into bankruptcy!

Oh, those gangs. Sorry. I thought you were talking about huge problems affecting all of us. Okay, let's talk about inner city urban crime. Police failed to stop Al Capone, and police haven't stopped drug traffickers after 50 years of aggressive interdiction. Urban gangs thrive wherever government erected public housing and handed out free money every week, free schools, bonus cash for children born to single mothers. True?

W.

[syrakusos]

Oh, those gangs. Sorry. I thought you were talking about huge problems affecting all of us. Okay, let's talk about inner city urban crime. Police failed to stop Al Capone, and police haven't stopped drug traffickers after 50 years of aggressive interdiction. Urban gangs thrive wherever government erected public housing and handed out free money every week, free schools, bonus cash for children born to single mothers. True?

Not quite.

A bad idea is internally inconsistent and is not supported by the facts of reality. Following a bad idea inhibit clear thinking and prevents the actions sought. Some newer government housing has improved designs, but the fact is that the mainstream of subsidized housing ("the projects" as they are called hereabouts) was designed carelessly, which is typical of any government project. One my professors last semester was a federal probation officer he hates those long hallways in highrises. They are traps. And he doesn't have to live there, just get in and get out and not only is he armed (of course) but he is a combat instructor -- and he hates those buildings. Rape, robbery, murder and worse take place because the physical environment encourages predation. Newer designs mitigate violence: open plazas, direct accesses, the designs are now all known.

Also, crime can be fought on a "broken windows" theory of keeping the neighborhood up. The people who live there are generally disenfranchised and not empowered. Making them into a community is a tough row to hoe, but the cops on the beat can identify the abandoned houses and being in and of city hall they can get them condemned. If that does not get the landlord's attention, the houses are torn down and the lot sold. As for those community groups, they exist, but they often need help that does not come from rolling past them in a squad car.

Drug dealers spread money in the community because they know everyone hates them for their drugs and the violence that kills innocents, often children. (See Freakonomics by Steven Levitt.) Crime is a small part of what happens in a poor neighborhood, but it gets a lot of attention -- and no real remediation -- and certainly no prevention.

Government is about changing the past. Business is about making the future. So, the cops deal with crimes after the fact instead of preventing them. That is chaning... or was... the "community policing" initiative of the 1970s fell apart under the "war on drugs" of the 1980s and here we are. It gets reinvented in this town or that because it is the only thing that works, government policing being what it is. Given the context, cops walking beats and being social workers (with guns) does prevent crime.

Most people on welfare are white.

Most people on welfare are single mothers with small families (1,2,3 kids... not 5 or 10) who are on family assistance for about three to five years until they get their lives back in order after getting rid of an abusive "other."

We all suffer from free education. Even parochial schools typically have state-certified teachers and public schooling sets the pace and defines the playing field. In 100 years we have gone from the steamship to the spaceship and education still consists of a teacher standing in front of a blackboard lecturing to a passive array of listeners. It so happens I have a "computer based" class now. It totally sucks. These people have no idea how people learn because they lack an objective epistemology. Free education has poisoned the business community, the scientific establishment, and every other sector of the economy by stunting our ability to perceive and solve new problems. The classroom is designed to train people to work in 19th century offices. That changed. Education did not. Now, it has dragged us back... back before 1930... maybe farther...

But do not blame people on "welfare" except as millions of middle class Americans are lined up at the public trough. Right now, today, the "economic growth" (so-called) is in Washington DC. Read this.

I confess, I am going to a public university with tons of federal aid and government-subsidized loans. My only claim to morality is that my career is the sine qua non of government. I argued against this, actually, but my Objectivist friends on SOLO cum RoR argued me down and convinced me that Ayn Rand wanted me to do this. It was for me a convenient truth. My point is only that there is hardly a free market sector left. For 25 years I worked in computering. I didn't need a degree or certification; all I needed was to work hard and be smart. After the Dot Com meltdown, I could hardly complain that I had right to a career, so I looked around and am trying to make myself socially useful at a level of trade equal to my mind. In a perfect world, I would have applied to the Pinkerton Academy or Tannehelp or something else that does not exist in our collectivized society.

Don't blame the victims. Get the government out of our lives and their lives will improve.