16 posts tagged “security”

I.

Libertarianism applies the general ethical code, which the majority of man believes as it relates to their personal activities and the actions of other private persons, consistently. It goes without saying that most men find things like robbery, rape, murder, and so on something that is hostile to any kind of "natural" code of ethical behavior as it relates to private interactions. We can rationally say, then, that this code is generally in the intuition of man because if this were not the case we could expect that the condition of the world would be something different than it is today. That condition would be a world where man would be nothing much more than an animal beast. Civilization as we know it could not exist anywhere.

This is why the majority of mankind finds it appalling, and rightfully and thankfully so, when man B goes out and kills his neighbor man A for no other reason than B hating A. Undoubtedly a civilization that found this acceptable would not last very long. On the contrary, most men believe that A has every right to defend himself from the invader, B. The only reason that this is so is because it is natural that A has a right to himself; since if he did not there would be no justification for his self -defense and -preservation, but that would be contradictive, not the least of which would include the fact that it would imply that B somehow has given rights that are not considered rights for mankind.

It is in the self-interest of mankind to recognize private property. This is because it allows mankind to earn the great awards and benefits from social cooperation in a division of labor. To trade X and Y implies an understanding of the principles of private property and how coercion is against those principles. As the great, late Murray N. Rothbard, one of my heroes, writes:

Man is born naked into the world, and needing to use his mind to learn how to take the resources given him by nature, and to transform them (for example, by investment in "capital") into shapes and forms and places where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement of his standard of living. The only way by which man can do this is by the use of his mind and energy to transform resources ("production") and to exchange these products for products created by others. Man has found that, through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange, the productivity and hence the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously. The only "natural" course for man to survive and to attain wealth, therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production-and-exchange process. He does this, first, by finding natural resources, and then by transforming them (by "mixing his labor" with them, as Locke puts it), to make them his individual property, and then by exchanging this property for the similarly obtained property of others. The social path dictated by the requirements of man's nature, therefore, is the path of "property rights" and the "free market" of gift or exchange of such rights. Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the "jungle" methods of fighting over scarce resources so that A can only acquire them at the expense of B and, instead, to multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange.

This, as Rothbard explicates, is what Franz Oppenheimer called the "economic means" to procure wealth. It is this method that adds to the overall wealth, meaning it is not parasitic on or subtractive from the overall wealth. This, unlike versus forms of socialism and aggression against private property, makes it meet the Pareto-criterion.

To iterate, a world without recognition of self-ownership and private property would be a world of chaos. Man would be in the jungle. There would be man constantly trying to take another man's possession of tangible property and the other man fighting to take it back. A civilized world, in contrast, could not stand for this. There is only one principle that works, and it works from the very beginning of mankind on, without running into contradictions and irresolvable conflicts; conflicts which are possible because of the reality of scarcity making any ethical theory by necessity a property theory.* This is the principle of self-ownership and the first-come principle of homesteading tangible property, i.e., taking a state of nature and transforming it into one's control and thus ownership. Implied in this is the right to voluntarily give away (or contractually rent-out) tangible property to others.

*If there was no scarcity, then conflict would not be possible. My usage of X would have no impact on my future supply of it or on anyone else's present or future supply. It is when X is scarce that conflict is possible and when there is, as a result, a need for rules in regards to X.

II.

Man A has every right to his physical body. He is the first direct user of it (and the only possible direct user), and therefore just owner, whose spirit is "fused" into his body. In the case that man B attacks A, A has every right to defend himself against B because A has self-ownership and therefore has the right to deny B's attack. (Just imagine the logical consequences if this were not the case!)

The same private property rights are at play with A's tangible and alienable property he acquired either through homesteading or contractualism.

Good X is taken away from A by B. Is this necessarily theft? It of course depends on who has the real title ownership (A or B?). Assuming that A has the actual title ownership the answer would be that this would be a case of theft. A would have every right to take back X from B. He would also have the right to hire C to take back X from B.

Recovering stolen property does not mean, however, that A can go out and kill and/or rob C and D, as "collateral damage," to get X from B. This would make A either just as evil as B or perhaps even more evil than B. Nor can A take E and F and involuntarily draft them to go after B. Drafting, when we take away Orwellian language, being nothing more than slavery.

Neither is it acceptable for and ethical for A to engage in a "preemptive attack" against B because A feels B looks bellicose, muscular, and so forth. It would be evil for A to aggress against B because A just thinks that B will attack him sometime at an unknown date and time in the future.* This idea would allow for everyone to attack anyone else if they just think that another given person will attack them sometime down the road. All that this would infer is that everyone can attack everyone else whenever they feel like it. Clearly a man who thinks and feels that another man will attack him in the future does not imply that it will actually happen. All a preemptive attack is, is a form of unjustifiable aggression. He who engages in it should suffer the same consequences as he who does violence against another man for other reasons.

The world with the "preemptive attack" rule being acceptable would make it that if A feels that B will attack him in the future, he will consequently start planning to attack B before that might happen. B will likely feel the same thing and get ready to attack A first. A, following the preemptive attack rule, would likewise keep the fact that B would be likely thinking about such a thing and as a consequence try to beat B by attacking him even sooner. And B would do likewise and so on. This madness would turn man into a savage and bring him to the jungle.

Preemptive attacks would not prevent conflicts or lower them. All that would be done is an increase of conflicts. Only the insanity of the modern age would think otherwise.

We can call a "Just War" one of private institutions and individuals who directly target their aggressing enemy, say made up of outlaw private (or State) institutions and individuals, who let us also say took by force a large amount of goods and land property. This Just War would be one of high discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Killing innocent people** who had nothing to do with the original aggression would be considered murder. (See above.) A Just War would be voluntarily funded and the forgotten conservative laws of war from the past would have to be upheld.

*Now obviously there is nothing wrong with A arming himself, hiring private security guards, securing his house in one way or another, or something like this in case his emotional feelings turn out to be accurate.

**One might reply with an example from Walter Block and ask what about a terrorist armed with a bomb who has a hostage that is about to blow up a hospital. If a security guard killed the terrorist and was forced, by necessity, to do the same for the hostage, should this be prohibited? Dr. Block would reply that this is a case of "negative homesteading." For example, A grabs B. A threatens B and tells him to kill C. A tells B that if he (B) does not kill C he (A) will kill him (B). The libertarian answer appears to be that B must not kill C. He cannot "spread the misery." In the case of the hospital, if it is impossible to kill the terrorist without killing the hostage, Dr. Block would argue that this would be acceptable in this "extreme" case because the "misery cannot be spread."

III.

The very legitimacy of the State itself relies a great deal on the estimation that the solitary way to provide and supply security, law, and judicial services is with this institution. An institution that is unique compared to all other societal institutions in that it maintains itself by coercion as a monopoly and has the ability to unilaterally without permission to tax men over a certain geographical territory.

Unmistakably all States must share these defining characteristics. Competition over the ability to tax others would produce a situation where everyone could tax everyone else. There would not be much of a society left after that. A State must eliminate all competition, if taxation is to happen. Therefore the only way for a State to maintain itself is if it is in a monopolistic position. It is a monopoly of violence. Officials in the State must tell others that what they (qua State officials) do is acceptable and approvable but not for anyone else. For anyone else it is unacceptable and un-approvable. It is, actually, a great evil. They must be locked up.

And what does this say about the State itself? It exists in contradiction to the laws it makes because it, itself, does not abide by them.

The injustice of taxation (and related things), which all States must have to maintain themselves as compulsory institutions, generally will not persuade the ethical and moral relativist to reject statism as an evil enterprise.

So libertarianism is unique in the fact that it applies the ethical code consistently. Robbery or slavery is not just wrong if a man in a dark alley commits such an act against another person who has the misfortune to meet him. It is also wrong for an organization or institution called "the State." We would not give a pass to Wal-Mart if it robbed people that entered its store; anymore than we would give it a pass if it went house-to-house to do likewise. Strangely enough, though, most people give the State a pass.

But it is said that the only way to have peace in society between persons is if there is a sovereign, otherwise man will live in the jungle. Firstly, the first main section of this blog entry seems to suggest that the idea of peace between private persons is generally a "natural" thing, more or less, that most men have, even though we will always have a small minority of thugs, con artists, murderers and the like. Mankind would probably have disappeared if this were incorrect. Secondly, in times of the Middle Ages, for example, the idea of sovereignty did not exist. It was then thought by all that everyone was under the law and that there was no "sovereign" above it. Thirdly, the idea of a sovereign creating peace or being the fountainhead of peace is illogical for several reasons.

For the second, we can turn to Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottiri. They write, in The Myth of National Defense, that the modern State is an example of modernity because in feudal times it did not exist. There was a libertarian "polycentric juridical order." Plus It was something very much compatible with old style conservatism.

there was no single source of law and order: the production of security was never considered a distinct institutional affair, but rather a concern of the while community. For several centuries, customs, traditions and ancient Roman laws worked together in assuring a juridical order. Law in the Middle Ages was a way of resolving conflicts, but it was kept a more or less private business. There was no organic conception of the "social body," and thus crime remained a private matter to be taken care of with well-defined rules. In other words, crime was never considered a social problem, a wound inflicted on the collective body. This, in turn, implied that the victims were the center of any lawsuit; redress was done from the point of the view of the victims, never of a supposedly wounded collectivity.

...Prior to the rise of the State, law and its interpreters had to recognize the existence of traditions, ethnic and family ties, and customs and culture. Law was mostly unwritten; it coincided with customs, and therefore it existed in a series of concrete cases that were outside the control of any political authority.

For the third, if Hobbes was correct, then a sovereign State could never itself come into being.* For peace to be made between persons it is claimed that there must be a sovereign legally-binding force which would come about through agreement with the public. But how did the State come into being? There would have had to be some outside binding force to make the agreement happen to create the State, with Hobbesian logic. This assumes a State before a State. Hence, to have first created a State implies that peace is possible without a binding force. Moreover, all States exist in more contradiction to this claim of the need for a State because they all exist in internal anarchy. Sovereignty is made between subjects under a State but not for those in the State. Internal rule is nothing more than a kind of "vigilante justice." This is because there is not another external binding making the binding within the State anarchy free.** There is also external, international anarchy between different States because there is no World State.

In the attempt to get rid of international anarchy, for instance, would require a World State, or at least approaching one. Nonetheless getting rid of this anarchy would produce a greater chance of internal corruption within the World State and a greater chance that it will be more aggressive to its subjects. The latter is because no one can "vote with their feet" and move to less aggressive States as one can with international anarchy. The greater number of States, and the smaller they are, produces a tendency for them to be less brutal to their subjects and requires them to avoid implementing protectionism. As there are less and less States, which get larger and larger, the incentive to be less brutal lowers and the incentive for protectionism increases. The same goes for moneys. A greater number of moneys means a greater competition and pressure for sound, commodity-based moneys. By lessening international anarchy there will thus be a tendency for more aggressive and brutal States. Greater international anarchy must then produce a tendency for better conditions than less international anarchy.

And just like there is anarchy between different States in the world, there is anarchy between subjects of different States in the world. Conflict can happen between two subjects under one State and it can happen between subjects of different States. These kinds of disputes happen in international anarchy and are generally resolved, which again is in contradiction to Hobbes. (Below we will try to explore this more and relate it to how a natural order of private property would resolve disputes.)

Hopefully as you can see, one of the big lessons that should be learned from all of this is that a sovereign, monopolistic institution of security production is really only possible because of public and internal support of opinion. Furthermore, looking through the various holes of the State's existence and the various anarchies that by necessity exist helps show how a pluralistic system of private property agreements, free business enterprises, firms, voluntary associations, groups, covenants, localities, intermediate institutions, and things of this nature could fill the role of security provider and producer. I would also point out that this system is not based on the notion of some pseudo-idea that individuals are atoms. Instead it fully sees that they are a part of family and that their interactions in society are based on an institutional framework (which is anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian).

*It is funny that one would say this because it forgets that man is not an atom and is born into a family. How is peace possible there? Robert Nisbet writes: "The awful power that Hobbes gives to his Leviathan, as the only means of combating the forces of disintegration and anarchy, which, Hobbes thought, dominate man's life outside of Leviathan, has for its necessary consequence an elimination of all the differences and inequalities which compose the social order." Rousseau and his "General Will" was only the next natural thing after Hobbes.

**There might be a hierarchy to this, true. But this is the case with everything, and therefore the point remains accurate.

IV.

"It is in war," says Murray Rothbard,

that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale – as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it – of an "army on the march."

As Rothbard writes, war is without question the worst display of statism. It is mass murder on the grand scale. Nothing should be clearer to the genuine libertarian than this.

"Just War" and the State do not go together, for the State is an institution that monopolizes aggressive violence. Not only does it apply it on its "given" territory, i.e., "vertical violence," it many times even goes beyond its given territory to apply it on other places and other people, i.e., "horizontal violence." State rulers no doubt like the idea to expand their territory because they can then control a greater amount of people and tax them. The same is true with those in the business world that are connected with the State. We call this the military-industrial-complex.

Increasingly in modern society there has been the idea, by both left-liberals and neoconservatives, that there is some kind of collectivist "world community," like the United Nations (or the United States, for that matter), that is supposed to organize States to police the world to freeze the status quo. State A attacks State B and then States C, D, and E are supposed to come to the defense of B.

There is an attempt to make this analogue to private persons by classifying these States as the actual just owners of the territories they occupy. The area a State occupies, however, is parasitic on the natural owners of private property. It is they that "own" the territory, not the State. On top of this, it should be pointed out that State territories are not something that is written in stone. It is something that is arbitrary and fuzzy. State A might have, in the past, had its control over the area that State B now has. In addition, in most of these wars who is the greater aggressor is ambiguous. (E.g., Japan's attack on the U.S. government was the result from previous provocation from the U.S. There has never been a legitimate case for U.S. warmongering with other States.)

What is more, if States C, D, and E do get involve, this will then increase aggression vertically in those respected areas with the people that live there, because taxes will have to be increased (if not directly, then indirectly through, e.g., inflation). Aggression would as a consequence expand. The idea of the world collective holding together the status quo would set into motion an ever enlarging amount of peoples getting forced into the conflict either directly or indirectly. It is for this reason that this must be opposed.

State wars, also, generally imply mass, democratic wars. When State A is fighting B the rulers know that B is dependent on its citizens in productive civil society. B knows the same is true for A. (I.e., that the funding of the war comes not from the State but those under it in the market.) Therefore statist wars produce a tendency for war against all and lose discriminatory features. This means that wars start to increase the number of mass bombings. These war measures are not targeted and will almost always imply the mass murdering of noncombatants. Because everyone is forced into paying taxes for the war, everyone becomes a target from the frame of reference of the opponent.

Given that States and wars do indeed exist, the most important thing that must be done is to limit war as far as possible. No State should be allowed to expand their monopolization of violence for the reason that this would only expand violence both for the given subject's tax payers and for those private citizens who would be caught in the war outside that group of tax payers. Subjects of a State should always put as much effort possible to prevent war or, if it has occurred, to end it.

If war sadly breaks out, then it must be limited as possible. War must be as discriminatory and "conservative" as possible. No other State should get involved in the war by following "laws of neutrality." This implies that no State should ever give foreign aid to other States (because that would expand aggression in the given State, give more power to another State to be aggressive to their citizens, and will have other unintended consequences, viz., probable resentment and blowback).

"In condemning all wars," writes Rothbard,

regardless of motive, the libertarian knows that there may well be varying degrees of guilt among States for any specific war. But the overriding consideration for the libertarian is the condemnation of any State participation in war. Hence his policy is that of exerting pressure on all States not to start a war, to stop one that has begun, and to reduce the scope of any persisting war in injuring civilians of either side or no side.

Certain weapons, especially nuclear, must be condemned which imply the mass killing of innocent, since they cannot be targeted weapons. For this reason, as Rothbard says, getting rid of them must be high on the agenda. As the great conservative Richard Weaver said, the past use of these weapons "are so inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built that they cast into doubt the very possibility of recovery." A civilized world must do its best to get rid of them.

Zero tolerance can exist for any kind of imperialism or empire. This implies that if a private man, from State 1, goes to another State, he then takes the risk of going to S2. In the case that trouble happened in S2, S1 cannot come to his rescue.

Additionally this means that if during war State S1 invaded and now occupies part, P, of what was previously in control by S2, S2 has no right to take over P. On the other hand, those in P can have a targeted revolution (i.e., a vertical conflict) to unite with S2. Private groups in S2 could voluntarily help the revolutionists in P. Such vertical revolutions can theoretically be justified because they can be targeted against actual aggressors and be voluntary, whereas horizontal conflicts cannot be.

Also, S3 and S4 cannot target P for "liberation," for reasons covered above. Just as important, we cannot call "liberation" S3 getting rid of S1 to then put those previously under S1 under its own rule. Freeing another implies that man A frees B from the slavery of C. It does not mean that A frees B from C only to take B for his own domination.

V.

Rothbard explains in "Society without a State," a classic 1974 essay/speech, that we can look to both historic and modern day examples of how law and order can be handled without a State. To this end Rothbard turns to William C. Wooldridge and his book Uncle Sam, the Monopoly Man.

For example, a body of private law for merchants in the Middle Ages was developed that only used social ostracism. And, for modern examples, today we have seen the rise of many private insurance companies turning to private arbitration services through the American Arbitration Association (AAA). The advantages of the development of private law here is clear: the cost of time is lowered and arbitration, working in a division of labor, allows for specialization.

The very nature of States is aggressive violence and for this reason it seems that war is in their nature. There is no reason to blindly trust human goodness and incorruptibility, but this is what most do with the State. Since all States can externalize the costs of war, States will be more likely to engage in war than other institutions. Any institutions that provide defense, law, and order voluntarily on the market (and accordingly are non-monopolistic) cannot externalize the costs and will, hence, be less likely to engage in war or any other kind of aggression against innocent persons.

One only has to think about Iraq. Imagine if individual and family households could withdraw paying taxes. How likely would the U.S. government still be in Iraq? The question answers itself.

The classical liberal minarchist, as Rothbard elucidates in Power and Market: Government and the Economy, who is both a supporter of the free market and the State as protector is "caught in an insoluble contradiction" because the minarchist "sanction[s] and advocate[s] massive invasion of property by the very agency (government) that is supposed to defend people against invasion!" This is what libertarianism avoids. Man and his family have a right to private property or they do not. Free markets are supreme or statism is.

In addition, Rothbard goes on, they are confused and tangled because they normally do not push their own logic to its ultimate conclusions. As we covered, there exists international anarchy. But if these minarchists complain about the "anarchy" of statelessness, surely they must then want to get rid of the anarchy between various nation-States. Nonetheless, "limited" State advocates hardly follow their own logic.

Conflict that happens between A, from S1, and B, from S2, is done through this anarchy without an ultimate sovereign. Both go to their respected courts. If both courts reach the same conclusion, then the verdict is in. If they reach different conclusions, they then go to arbitration and the case is resolved there.

Under a natural order of private property this is what would be resembled. Man A can be with private defense agent X and man B with agent Y. If X and Y disagreed, then what? What would result is the development of independent, third party arbitration services. Customers and private institutions knowing this possible situation, would work out these details in their contracts (generally) beforehand.* (This will happen as long as the majority of the public is not made up of warmongers. However, to repeat, with whatever level of warmongering ideology, the chance of battling out is more unlikely under the free market because it is very costly and it is impossible to externalize the costs of aggression. See this.)

These third-party arbitration services would have to remain independent and fair because otherwise people or other protection agencies would not go to them in the future. This means there is a great incentive for fairness and independence. And, if the individual protection agencies become corrupted or whatnot, people could go into relationship with one of their competitors.

One reason that this is better than the current system is that arbitration in the free market really is a third-party, independent service. There exists no true arbitration service within a State controlled area. All such services are part of the same monopolistic institution. It is preferable to have competitive market conditions than to have a society stuck with one agent. One agent is an agent that can get away with more corruption. You cannot end the relationship. Everyone is forced into a relationship with it as agent, and because of this it can act more aggressively and at the same time need not worry about acting in an economic manner to cut costs. That is to say, it will tend to be less competent with judgeship and economically inefficient creating lots of extra expense for its "customers." What's more, a State provided law system gets to deal with cases in which directly involve itself. The outcome of which will be to award itself in these cases. Thus, statist management will then tend to be even more aggressive.

Oppositely, private defense agents, courts and arbitrators, like all other goods and services, would work on the open, free market and would be in constant competition with each other. The voluntary setting and the market competition would award those private enterprises that performed this best for the public and the others would be driven off the market. Earning profit and staying in business would require serving the needs of consumers, viz., sound judgment, impartiality, expertise, efficiency, low costs, etc. Under statist monopolistic conditions, we see the quality go down and the prices go up. But under free non-monopolistic conditions, we can expect to see the quality go up and the prices go down.

Complex societies, as you know, heavily rely on insurance and credit reports. It can be pretty much predicted that a free society would have develop private insurance defense companies. Being insurance companies they would insure one's property from outside aggression. This means that, if one is the victim of a thief, the insurance company would pay the victim. This is obviously not something that the insurance company would want to do. Consequently insurance companies would do their best to prevent aggression. They would have to do this to remain financially viable. These companies would also have great incentive to go after the thief and force him to pay the victim, so they do not have to.

Contrast this with the State: Do they lose money if they do not prevent crime? The answer is no. (Which is then better?)

The State is not only bad at preventing crime and recovering stolen property, it has progressively outlawed gun ownership making people helpless and more vulnerable vis-à-vis private criminals. What this has done is increased the State's power relative to civil society and greatly increased man's dependency on them (the State) for protection.

With private insurance companies: The better protected their customers, the better they are off as well.

For that reason private insurance would have the exact opposite incentive because a better protected customer is less likely to get attacked and thus less likely to be indemnified. (So those better protected---who, for example, own a gun---will be offered lower premiums.) Moreover, they would require their customers to engage in peaceful rules of conduct. This is because the only way to insure something is if it is more or less random and uncontrollable. To insure someone who engaged in aggression against someone else would be equivalent (as Hans Hoppe says) to insuring people from burning their own house on fire; an impossibility that would make the insurance company go bankrupt.

We have to remember that State courts do not provide or guarantee impartiality. There is nothing magical about them. Instead what they do provide as impartiality is for the State monopoly, as consumers are stuck to deal with them and only them. A free market is what provides real "checks-and-balances" because there is competition. Instead what we have today under a statist system is no checks-and-balances because the court is one monopoly. That is, all courts are part of the same institution. While corruption is possible in both a statist system and a non-statist system, since there is competition and market checks we can say that there would be less in a non-statist one.

To quote Patrick Tinsley in "Private Police":

In fact, it is the public police that stands to profit from look-the-other-way law enforcement. After all, arriving at its funding, as it does, from (coerced) tax revenues, the public police will not endure economic hardship if and when it fails to arrest the onslaught of crime. Therefore, it pay for its officers to accept bribes from the perpetrators of crime, offering in exchange clemency.

*Hans Hoppe says: "On the one hand, [this] system would allow for systematically increased variability and flexibility of law. Rather than imposing a uniform set of standards onto everyone (as under statist conditions), insurance agencies could and would compete against each other, not just via price but in particular also through product differentiation and development. ... There could and would exist side by side, for instance, Catholic insurers applying Canon law, Jewish insurers applying Mosaic law, . . . all of them sustained by and vying for a voluntarily paying clientele. . . . That is, no one would be forced to live under 'foreign' law . . ." And  "On the other hand, a system of insurers offering competition law codes would promote a tendency toward the unification of law..." in "foreign" conflicts.

VI.

In conclusion, the path to peace and good defense is a path to a stateless society. It is not the answer to all problems nor is it perfect, mankind always being what it is. But, Rothbard writes,

in a stateless society there would be no regular, legalized channel for crime and aggression, no government apparatus the control of which provides a secure monopoly for invasion of person and property. When a State exists, there does exist such a built-in channel, namely, the coercive taxation power, and the compulsory monopoly of forcible protection. In the purely free-market society, a would-be criminal police or judiciary would find it very difficult to take power, since there would be no organized State apparatus to seize and use as the instrumentality of command.

Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912)

Molinari was a French-Belgian economist who in 1849 proposed in a paper, "The Production of Security," that security be out of the hands of monopolistic governments and into the hands of voluntary consumers on the free market. His reasoning was that (1) labor and trade should be free to competition in order to minimize costs to consumers, whereas monopolies [in the traditional, coercive sense of restricted entry] do the opposite, and (2) that consumer interests should win over producers.

These two principles, he wrote, are the most well-established truths in the social science. And that following these principles leads one to see that security, like all other goods and services, should be left on the free market. Molinari went on to say that "Either his is logical and true or else the principles on which economic science is based are invalid."

Conventional Wisdom: Goods that are Public

One way to avoid the above conclusions is to declare that security is a public good and is not compatible with capitalism and its advantageous position in contrast to socialism's monopolistic, economic inadequacies.

Public Goods: Are said to have distinctive characteristics that make them impossible or difficult to produce on the free market and accordingly must be provided by the State. This is because the benefits of these goods cannot be limited to those that directly pay for them, unlike private goods.

Ambiguity is the first problem with public goods theory. Just what qualifies a good as public and not private is subject to debate. Many of the goods that are normally referred to as public have just as many people who would say otherwise. What goods are and are not public is highly disputed.

Is it a Private or Public Good?

Here are some examples from Hoppe...

• Home Garden: Neighbors benefit from it without contributing.
• Street Performer: Those not giving money can benefit.
• Deodorant: Those around benefit without contributing.
• Developing a Nice Personality: (ditto)
• Home Improvement
  

All fit as being called public. Does this then mean they must be nationalized or socialized? They all appear to fit the parameters of public goods but are nonetheless produced on the market as private goods.

What is more; all labeled public goods have at one time or another and to one extent or another been produced privately: e.g., mail, roads, lighthouses, police, detectives, arbitrators, charity, and so on.

The Public Nature of a Good

--- Can be "Good" or "Bad"
--- Is Not a Fixed Constant

• A public good can not only have "positive" but "negative" results on people. E.g., the neighbors might think the home garden is unattractive.
• The "positive" and "negative" value of a given public good can be different with different people.
• This evaluation of "positive" or "negative" can change.
  
• Technology can change a good. E.g., cable television works fine as a private good.
• Changes in law can do likewise. E.g., lighthouses can easily be private if parts of the ocean were opened to homesteading (private ownership). Lighthouses could then effortlessly exclude nonpayers.
  

Goods becoming Public: Subjective Evaluations

All goods, even very "private" ones away from other non-owners, can be seen as something public as long as one person sees it that way.

The viewing of a good as public or private can change through time based on the "changing values and evaluations, and with changes in the composition of the population."

Furthermore, this viewing is only of degree. As can be seen there is no actual "clear-cut dichotomy between private and public goods."

How is Something Viewed as a Good (private or public)?

• A person must view something scarce as having some subjective value to be owned.
• Otherwise the thing in question would not be considered a good.
• There is no "physico-chemical" test.
• Hence: "goods are goods only in the eyes of the beholder."
• There is thus no objective test to say something is a public good or a private good.
  

A Private Good Becoming a Public Good (and back again):

In a like manner, any private good can become a public good once someone subjectively values it as such. This public good can furthermore change back into a private good. It could also change once again into a public good. And so on. The perception of a public good, too, can change between being seen as a positive or a negative. Different men can perceive it in different ways.

So it seems clear that because of this it is not possible to truly classify a good as intrinsically one of the two. Just as man's value of goods is subjective, and value cannot be intrinsically inherent in goods, objective distinctions between public versus private goods is illusory.

Logically following a public goods theory would require asking everyone what their own subjective evaluations were. Everyone would have to be asked if they saw the given good as a public one and if so whether or not it was a positive one relative to them. This would be the only way to classify all goods as either public or private.

This information would determine who profits from each and every good----viz., if a good in question profits, in addition to those that directly pay for it, those who do not directly pay it----and then what goods are to be private and what goods are to be public. ("And," notes Hoppe, "how could one know if they were telling the truth?!")

Doing this would also require constantly monitoring the public because the public's evaluations of goods can change. Every action in regards to production would require permission in the attempt to determine the public-ness or private-ness of every good, but society would literally die out if such futile attempts were actually made.

State Production of "Public Goods"

For the sake of argument assume that there is an objective way of determining if a good is public or private. [Perhaps every good has a label on it.] But why should the State produce these goods rather than the private sector?

Again, it is said that public goods either would not be produced at all or would be produced little because there would be men who would profit from them without paying for them, and that therefore they should be produced by the State. These goods "are evidently desirable, but would not be produced otherwise."

There are two problems: (1) ethical and (2) utilitarian

(1) The only way to reach the conclusion that these goods should be produced is to move beyond the field of economic theory and into ethics. These economists "must smuggle a norm into [their] chain of reasoning."

Public good theory just makes the jump without a theory of ethics. By their own standards and writings they have "no authority whatsoever."

So they take a leap into this norm: If a good that would have some kind of positive impact on people would not be produced in adequate quantity, then aggression is allowed to force people to produce them. Pushing this to its logical and ultimate conclusion would be this: "everyone can aggress against everyone else whenever he feels like it."

But could this norm be justified in argumentation? The answer seems to be a clear no.

(2) It is a fact of existence that there is scarcity. Production of X must be produced at the price of the possible alternatives that exist (i.e., there are opportunity costs). It may well be that consumers value "private" goods more than "public," but the only possible way to find out is to let consumers go after what they value more highly in a free market.

X good that is valued lower to Y is valued as such because they value it lower. A public that valued so-called "public goods" would produce them on the market to the extent that they wanted them. It is the only objective test that exists. The public good theorists must use this test and this test will force them into adopting the view that all goods be private. And as previous examinations have shown, goods produced privately have all the advantage of the market versus those that are not.

Hoppe then moves into the final topic, the production of security.

Liberty Demands Anarcho-Capitalism

Minarchists believe there needs to be a "common body of law" before the market can come into being. Hoppe replies that this is true but it does not follow that there needs to be a monopolist in charge.

Language is also something presumed on the market, but it does not follow that a monopolist, like the State, be in command of it. Instead it is a spontaneous feature of the market and can be explained by self-interest, i.e., it is in the interest of men to have a common language to reap its awards.

Law does not seem to be different. A division of labor, which is in the self-interest of man, requires "common rules of conduct." And the basis of this law is aprioristically linked in man's action and argumentation. [There is nothing mysterious or out-of-the-blue about it.]

[In replace of classical liberalism, libertarianism offers a consistent, coherent, and non-contradictive defense of liberty. It pushes it to the logical and ultimate conclusion.]

Classical liberalism, with Ludwig von Mises being the "foremost representative in this century," was a political philosophy based on the natural rights of private property. At the same time, however, it advocated that private property be protected by a monopolistic, and thus coercive, agent that by its very nature violates private property rights in the name of supposedly protecting them.

But, writes Hoppe: "Either the principles of the natural property theory are valid, in which case the state as a privileged monopolist is immoral, or business built on and around aggression—the use of force and of noncontractual means of acquiring resources—is valid, in which case one must toss out the first theory."

Logic and morality forces us to adopt a political philosophy of libertarianism, with its foremost representative being Murray N. Rothbard.

The Free Market Production of Security

• A libertarian society would consist of freely competing agents who would be in the business of security (defense and arbitration).
• There is no way to say a priori how it would exactly work. Anymore, says Hoppe, than how hamburgers would be produced "if up to this point hamburgers had been produced exclusively by the state."
• Meaning one cannot describe the exact structure, number of agents, the relative size of this industry versus others, the sorts and differences between the agents, etc.
• This is amplified by the fact of change and its relationship to such an industry: change in demands of different consumers, technology, prices outside the industry that affect the industry indirectly, etc.
• Even so, given that a demand exists much can be said about the overall industry.
  

The Economics of Security Production

• Security, as a good, must compete with all others on the market. I.e., what is spent on security cannot be spent on something else.
• It is not a homogeneous good.
• There are "numerous components and aspects" to it.
• Its supply has marginal units.
• Men value security differently, both in regards to security by itself and different components and aspects thereof.
• These differences can arise from the different personalities, past histories in regards to (in)security, the location they live, etc.
  

The Problems of State Production

The State collects its revenue via taxation and therefore the amount of funding to the ends of security is not determined by consumers on the open, free market. Instead all funding is independent of them. Not only is the overall amount arbitrary and independent of consumers but so is each component and aspect of it.

The State will not be able to answer these questions without answering them arbitrarily...

• How much to produce overall.
• How much to produce for each subclass of security.
• Where (what location) it spends or puts its resources.
• To whom.
• To what specific subclasses should it fund.
  

Overall, the State will not know how much to produce, how much to produce of the various different subclasses of security; where it should put its security, how much, to whom, and what kind of security exactly.

To quote Hoppe: "Do we need one policeman and one judge, or 100,000 of each? Should they be paid $100 a month, or $10,000? Should the policemen, however many we might have, spend more time patrolling the streets, chasing robbers, recovering stolen loot, or spying on participants in victimless crimes, such as prostitution, drug use, or smuggling? And should the judges spend more time and energy hearing divorce cases, traffic violations, cases of shoplifting, murder, or antitrust cases?"

He goes on: "Clearly all of these questions must be answered somehow because as long as there is scarcity and we do not live in the Garden of Eden, the time and money spent on one thing cannot be spent on another."

Results of State Management

Because there is no profit-and-loss, management will not be in terms of actual consumer demands, and there will necessarily be misallocations of these scarce resources and hence waste.

State production and management (again, since there is no voluntary relationship and no profit-and-loss) will be done on "what they like" and not consumers. They will be increasingly intent on doing easier work and lazing about than not. [Compare this to a free system: Producers would be dependent on consumers financially.] And with their power they can be more abusive and brutal. They would likely put more effort into victimless crimes than hard crime, unlike consumers since consumers generally would want to spend their own money on crime that can directly affect them.

When it comes to hard crime (robbery, murder, rape, ..) there will also be problems. Statist judges are independent of consumers and their wants. [Again, remember, no one can fire them and there is no competition.] The judicial process will be slow in the allocation of services: there is no price signals to allocate economically and efficiently for the consumers.

There is no "service contract" that is "laid down in unambiguous terms what procedure the consumer can expect to set in motion in a specific situation." Rules and procedures are thus in the air. They can arbitrarily change, without one knowing it as it would be known if there were market contracts. This creates uncertainty. [And, by the way, makes the expensive and overly inflated lawyer more important.]

Perversely, any disputes between a State court and a citizen are not handed to an independent third party arbitrator but are assigned to another State court working under the same umbrella.

The production factors of security cannot be sold, and capital value will lessen and overutilization will result. Accordingly police stations and courts will be in relatively poor shape.

All of this will occur because they are not left to the market and competition. The solution is hence to be found there.

The Free Market Solution to Faulty State Management

No "perfect" solution exists, of course. "But," Hoppe writes, "in terms of consumer evaluations the situation would improve to the extent that the nature of man would allow..."

All security agents, in a free and competitive market, could only legally obtain income from voluntarily paying customers. These relationships, one could fairly predict, would most likely be contractual ones where customers pay their agent each month.

The private property ethic in a free market would require and push agents to define their contracts to their customers clearly and unambiguously. There would as a result be no void that is produced under statist conditions.

Because these private agents are dependent (not independent) on customers there would be an improvement over the attitude of the providers, the quality (and consequently speed) of the services, and the lowering of the costs to security operations.

They would be subject to profit-and-loss.

The goal of increasing income could only be done by either improving services or lowering prices for consumers----again, unlike socialist enterprises.

A private agent that failed in providing for such demands would, in the long run, be put out of business.

Agents would also have to work within the below reality....

Given the diversity of man, private agents would have to provide for a diverse crowd of different wants and needs. Consequently, there would not be a single or uniform "security packet," but a "multitude of service packages [that] would appear on the market."

These packages would have to account for the fact that the following kinds of things require different levels and kinds of security...

• Different occupations.
• Different "risk-taking behaviors."
• Different things need various levels and kinds of protection and insurance.
  
• Different locations and different time constraints.
• Etc.
  

Every single consumer would count to the operation of a given agent, no matter how small his single impact.

Market-based security would make it not possible for this industry to increase its position vis-à-vis other industries without consumers at large placing more value on security. Therefore, there would not be overproduction (or under).

Insurance would also appear, since they want (safe) property to ensure. Insurance agents in protection would pool people's risks. In a competitive free market it would not be possible, unlike a statist market, for these pools to engage in any kind of redistributive measure between those insured because consumers would see such unfair policy and competition would punish these insurance companies for being inefficient and uneconomic.

The Possibility of Outlaw Agents --- First, a Quick Look

Firstly, historical evidence seems to suggest otherwise.

Hoppe: "Systems of competing courts have existed at various places, such as in ancient Ireland or at the time of the Hanseatic league, before the arrival of the modern state, and as far as we know they worked well."

The Ancient West in America had private police and, despite what is seen at the movie theater, a relatively low crime rate (per capita) compared to today.

[For example, see these essays: "The American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism" by Terry Anderson & P.J. Hill and "Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law" by Joseph R. Peden.

And listen to this mp3 Hoppe lecture on pre-state feudalism.]

Another reason that it seems unlikely that an outlaw agent would become some kind of normal happening is if you look at the international anarchy that today exists. Commerce commences successfully without a single world monopoly State.

Plenty of private security is around right now: "private investigators, insurance detectives, and private arbitrators. Regarding their work, the impression seems to confirm the thesis that they are more, not less [efficient] ... than their public counterparts."

And, finally, a deductive analysis leads one to see that a competitive system would actually have a greater incentive for a stable society of order and law. (More on this soon.)

Resolving Disputes in Anarcho-Capitalism

Man A and man B get into some kind of conflict...

They could belong to the same company. In this case there is no conceptual difference than what we have today. They could also belong to different companies. It is possible that both companies would agree with a single verdict. But what if they disagree?

Statists often reply that the companies would just start killing each other, or something like this. Now any reflection shows that a default reaction of killing each other is silly. It would be both very costly and very risky. This would make it unlikely.

Since a company that grew to a good size depends on a large clientele, stability and order would be a key feature to it to have gotten to where it has gotten.

More importantly is the fact that if a battle occurred between companies X and Y, they both would require continued voluntary support from their customers. Even one person who withdraws, because he does not believe a battle is necessary, would put economic pressure on the given company to seek another solution.

---Contrast this with the State: In war, with a State, no one can drop out and stop paying taxes. Would war be more likely or less without this ability to tax? The answer seems clearly less. [Imagine if people could stop paying their taxes for the Iraq occupation! Let's see how long this imperial occupation would last under that possibility.]---

This economic pressure would obviously multiply many times over with a larger number of withdraws. It is because of this fact (because of this possibility) that any company would have to be cautious when engaging in any kind of violent action.

If the majority of the given population wants peace, then this is what will be reflected in the companies. Each company, for mere self-interest alone [and thus there is no need to trust in human goodness and incorruptibility, like we do with the State], will thrive to work out in its contracts with its customers how such cases would be resolved.

What would develop then would be independent third party arbitration services.

These services would arise by agreement between different defense companies and their respected customers. With this would come economic pressure to find the most "universally acceptable" law.

• Arbitrators would be fully dependent on continued financial support between (disagreeing) defense companies. These companies, supported by their customers, would only go to arbitrators who carried out their jobs in the best way possible.
• Economic pressure would therefore exist for arbitrators to find "solutions to the problems handed over to them which, this time not with respect to the procedural aspect of law, but its content, [which] would be acceptable to all of the clients of the firms involved in a given case as a fair and just solution."
• If they did not do this, they would lose clients to other arbitrators in the future and would ultimately go out of business. Ones that grew and found a large set of followers (so to speak) would be the ones that performed their job as it was indeed to be performed.
  

But, still, Would Not "Anarchy" and War Break Out?

I.e., could a defense firm, supported by its voluntarily paying customers, become an outlaw organization?

• Obviously it is possible.
• But any order, statist or not, needs public support for it to continue to be what it is.
• E.g., given public opinion it is today unlikely that a fully "Russian-style" socialism could be implemented in the U.S. [Or, say: Is it likely that given public opinion that the 50 states of the U.S. will develop their own armies and start bombing each other?]
• So the question must be put into this context: given the current public opinion is it likely to see large outlaw organizations develop?
• The answer is: It depends on the population. Are they more socialist (meaning bloodthirsty warmongers) or not?
• But given the opinion would a free society be better off or not?
  

Hoppe: "Thus, the first reply to those challenging the idea of a private market for security would have to be: what about you? What would your reaction be? Does your fear of outlaw companies mean that you would then go out and engage in trade with a security producer that aggressed against other people and their property, and would you continue supporting it if it did?"

• In a free society there would be a "change in the cost-benefit structure" when making decisions.
• Under a statist system it was considered legal to participate and finance State aggression.
• Under a free system it would be considered illegal.
• It would thus be more expensive, under a free system, than before in participating in and financing an agent that became an outlaw aggressor.
• Hence the number of individuals, with any given frame of mind (and even those who would generally be inclined to support State aggression and war making), would increase towards directing their participating and financing into legal, peaceful agents.
• And, hence, the number of individuals who would direct towards exploitation would fall.
  

The push on the market would thus be a push for stability, order, and peace, as long as the majority of the public valued those things in the given nation.

Those benefiting from the older, statist, order would lose. They might still have an interest in a system of aggression. But it seems unlikely that they would have the upper-hand to the rest of the public and their defense companies. On the other hand, if they did win, then a State would be back again.

In any case, says Hoppe, even if there were just too many in the public that valued a society based on coercion and aggression, society would still enjoy, for a period of time, a system of unheard of economic prosperity.

The Market for Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill, a giant among libertarian literature, is now (for free) on audiobook from Laissez-Faire Books. It was put together by Mr. Ian Bernard, host of the talk radio program Free Talk Live. As someone who read this book, and which has a good spot in my freedom library, I can tell you that this book will open one’s eyes to the possibility of a stateless, libertarian society. It will make the incredulous skeptic think twice before instinctively reacting that the free market could not produce police, courts, and law. Go, and click here.

(Via the Mises blog.)

See Also: I typed up an entry that was based on this book here.

Small Question: Do you see anarchism as a path to human beings living with zero government but with a common law, or as 90%+ of people living under a voluntarily chosen government+common law? [posted with permission, reply here has been formated as a general blog entry]

Small questions do not always produce short answers. There is no way to say a priori how the free market would work out. One can only say why economics and natural law is on its side.

The State is an evil; in fact, the greatest evil in society. It is a gang with a flag all dressed-up. It has no more moral and ethical legitimacy than a street corner gang that says Your Wallet or Your Life. The "path" I see is a path to a free and just society. A path that minimizes violence and maximizes liberties, even if it sorts out differently than what I envision. But through some deduction one can understand basic tendencies.

I understand what the gentleman, who has become an anarcho-capitalist, is asking and how these terms are being defined in the question, but I personally reject the use of the words "government" and "anarchy."

Most define what exists now as government. It has little to no relationship to how any private company would work in terms of private police, courts, and arbitration. Private enterprise cannot tax you, for example. Nor is it a coercive monopolist. Calling any business a "government," in my view, is a very poor choice of words. The answer is not to "privatize" government, but get rid of it. Capitalism and the free market is not the result of statism. It is the absence of statism.

Men of the Old Right, like Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov, differentiated the terms "government" and "State." This is true, but see it of no use.

Secondly, I question the use of "anarchy." This neither serves the purposes of (paleo)libertarians. So I agree with Mr. Rockwell that we cannot use the word. For most people it means chaos and/or no laws. To others it means some form of communism.

As for the answer to the question, I do not believe the answer is as clear-cut as one might believe.

Security and law is a dividable thing. Hence it will be more "spread out," so to speak. A second factor, and equally important, to answering this question is in regards to how the current statism has amplified its coercive apparatus and authority vis-à-vis the individual by atomizing him, and in an egalitarian spirit "equalizing" him, to be helplessly connected and attached to it, the State. This therefore produces the picture of a society based on atom-like individuals with no attachments to each other and a communistic or democratic view on all men having "equal" authority vis-à-vis each other. This creates an image that private security and voluntary authority is as clear-cut as the question suggests. But it is not.

We, after all, grow up in a family. Children are under a kind of private patriarchal law. They are under their private authority. (But, of course, this law and authority cannot contradict natural law. In addition, in a free society children have the freedom to runaway if they so choose.) So a nuclear family has a sort of voluntary law and patriarch authority. There is an "internal" law to property; to all of private property. Voluntary authority also arrives from familial relationships in the extended family. For example, the extended family use to be a sort of large interconnected "insurance policy." This market-familial insurance policy, however, has been taken over and replaced by social security. Many of man's natural connections have as a result been shattered by the State. Results of which include diminishing many social and cultural constraints. This partially helps explain why under statist conditions man shifts into a more playboy lifestyle.

Covenantal, proprietary, and gated communities would also produce a private, voluntary law of another kind. As I have explained elsewhere on this blog, there are many reasons these arrangements would be formed. Economically speaking, they would bring economic stability as to keep property values from falling due to bad neighbors. There has always been a strong connection between private property and family. Thus it is to be expected that many of these relationships would actively promote such and discriminate against contradictory values, but the types of relationships or "packs" would be diverse. Furthermore, it can be predicted that these relationships would not typically be "democratic." They would be more hierarchical; just as private property, markets, and family are hierarchically structured. So they would be more aristocratic.

Voluntary authority and law outside would come from many competing, and loosely inter-networked sources. For example, you probably would see at least some communities with concordat relationships. Churches and their hierarchies would/could help provide a stronger role for society in the absence of the State.

Beyond this, it is my personal view that a natural aristocracy is required for freedom. Again, they would help provide voluntary authority and active judgeship in natural (libertarian) law. Man is content to go along with almost any current order. The mass-mind, the mob mentality, is easily deluded. If there are not natural market "elites," if you will, then freedom could collapse and society would move back to statist and democratic ideas. I am in the camp of people like H. L. Mencken.

But would people subscribe to private insurance companies as a more "external," so to speak, law enforcement agent? Yes, most likely. This renders law and security less costly than going to a private court or a private police company when one is in trouble. So that probably answers the question. And also, most people want more than to rely on self-defense as a method of protection and security. They want an agent to come by and check on things and so forth. To subscribe to such an agent, for the same basic economic reasons as is being discussed, the companies would want their clients to engage in peaceful activity. That is, they would require their subscribers to adopt such attitudes. They would also want them to be well secured from any attack by a criminal. Already, insurance gives premiums to clients. It is not hard to imagine that such defense insurance companies would give lower premiums to those who, for example, could show them by a private certificate that they own and know how to operate a gun in self-defense. Since this method, versus complete self-reliance, is less costly and is an actual form of insurance (i.e., it is economically compatible with insurance), and because people value insurance services in a free market, it would encourage those more hesitative to subscribe to subscribe or otherwise find themselves increasingly isolated from others. Either way, there would be great economic pressure for non-subscribers to adopt a non-aggressive life. Criminals, it certainly seems from this kind of system, would have a very difficult time----at least more so than now. Companies would want to have good crime statistics. And the companies would have an incentive to share them.

Consequently, due to the more heterogeneous or dividable nature of this scarce good, security and law would not just fall into one agent for a given person or family household. There would be a more complex, and even hierarchical, anarcho-"network." I do not think, though, that people would just go to a (unsubscribed) law enforcement agent when they are in trouble. Most people would subscribe. Outside of that subscription there would be "common law" (libertarian law) in "foreign" affairs with conflicts between men of different agents.

This is another entry to The Paleo Blog which will give partial summaries, or highlight points of interest, of a few articles originating from the Journal of Libertarian Studies. (Subscribe to the journal here.) I encourage you all to download the articles, read them, and study them.

Some of my own comments have been added in parentheses.

Here are the articles we will be looking at:

• “Private Police: A Note” by Patrick Tinsley
• “Order Without Law: Where will Anarchists Keep the Madmen?” by John D. Sheed
• “Anarchism and the Public Goods Issue: Law, Courts, and the Police” by David Osterfeld
• “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West” by Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill

Frank Chodorov, of the Old-Right, in his terrific book Out of Step spoke of his love of Westerns. One thing only touched upon in these Westerns was the fact that it was private enterprise that brought law and order to the land. Capitalism built the West. He wrote that:

"Incidentally, the factual books on the West underline a fact that the script writers only touch upon: namely, that the West was cleaned up----meaning rid of outlawry----not by officialdom but by private enterprise. The public enforcement agent, even as today, was more interested in keeping his job that in doing it. He was quite averse to risking his life for the good of the community, at the going wage. Far more effective in brining some sort of order to the West was the fact that every man carried his own government with him----in his holster. That was private enterprise with a vengeance.

"Supplementing the private gun were the Pinkerton operative and the railroad police----private enterprise. It was they who did what government is supposed to have some competency at doing, namely, the protection of life and property. Then, even as now, those who had something of value to protect were more likely to entrust the job to a professional policeman than to a political policeman. Which brings up a thought: would not the persons and the property of the citizens of New York be more secure if entrusted to a private police force? And would not the job be done at less cost to the citizenry?"

We will be exploring this below...

“Private Police: A Note” by Patrick Tinsley
Download PDF Here.

Tinsley wrote a short and sweet article. Its shortness is not a weakness, though. There are many good things to learn from it. Here they are (as I understand them)...

Those who say the police can’t be private see “enforcement of law” as “a unique and singular commodity.” But this, he writes, is not true. The author then goes through all the different ways a store secures itself from potential robbery. These methods do not “rely exclusively----or even primarily----on the majesty of the state’s enforcement of that law for its own security.”

Take a jewelry store:

it takes out an insurance policy on its gems, which are kept under a locked glass display case, which can only be opened by an employee, who is under the ever-vigilant eye of video monitoring equipment, and who watches the customers with the aid of convex mirrors, and keeps the store’s cash in a locked vault, which is in a back room, which is in turn locked at closing time, and the store’s alarm activated as the employees leave and the armed night watchmen arrive.

Security, then, is not completely in the hands of the State. Plus it is a ‘something’ that is dividable. It has marginal units.

If private police were to come into being in society, one might wonder how this would affect the poor.

The poor generally rent. They seek to rent from landlords who offer good amenities and keep the place well-maintained. Landlords would also have to have security on their minds as well. To maintain their property they will have to secure it and go to an agent to watch over it. “[O]r else,” Tinsley writes, “he will be quickly out of his property and even quicker out of his tenants.”

When such poor (or non-poor) folks are not at home, they are on other property. Businesses want a secure area. They want their customer to be safe and they want their property to be safe. Just as we get “free” usage of their private restrooms, we would get “free” security/protection at their location. Likewise, private roads, like other businesses, want to attract customers and keep their property safe. Thus, the poor would get “free” security on roads as well. That is, they would not necessarily have to pay (relatively speaking) for their own security at such locations. Loosely speaking, they will be “participants in the so-called free rider problem,” the author notes.

Today we already enjoy the security of being at a shopping mall. We certainly feel safer there than on public property!

To illuminate the difference between the public and the private enforcement of law, simply imagine the rate of criminal activity at Central Park as prevailing at, say, Macy’s.

A third point the article goes into is how a victim of crime “could be rewarded by the (private) courts a claim for damages in an amount which corresponds to the gravity of the crime. Such a claim would be transferable property.” They can sell (part of) that claim to a private agent. This is similar to how lawyers can agree to help a poor man: In a contractual agreement, claims awarded to the plaintiff partially go to the lawyer, so that the poor customer does not have to pay a large up-front bill. Etc.

Another major concern is corruption (as if the State solves that!). It is argued that since market or capitalistic organizations work “within the parameters implied by profit-making, [they] would be susceptible to bribery and corruption.” He replies that this reaction “is manifest in ... a fundamental failure to comprehend the workings of a free market.”

To begin with, a competitive free market of private police companies cannot (versus States) force people to become clients. Agents would have to convince people to become their customers for good protection and good & fair relationships.

It is also likely, Tinsley says, that to ensure this they would insure their customers properties. (That is, they would become insurance agencies.) Thus, they have an incentive to protect those properties, almost as if it were their own.

This is the opposite of the State public police. He writes:

In fact, it is the public police that stands to profit from look-the-other-way law enforcement. After all, arriving at its funding, as it does, from (coerced) tax revenues, the public police will not endure economic hardship if and when it fails to arrest the onslaught of crime. Therefore, it pay for its officers to accept bribes from the perpetrators of crime, offering in exchange clemency.

So we see that bribery is relatively more likely under statist conditions. This point from Patrick Tinsley, for me, has good perception on the State’s collectivism and inferiority to the market. It creates conditions in which manifest corruption and inefficiencies. Now, no one is saying that problems cannot arrive in the free market. (They will.) Problems arise in life. That should be clear to anyone reading this. But problems are exponentially increased as State power takes control over more areas of society. We must understand that society is not a homogeneous robot. It cannot just be programmed and controlled at will without (bad, very bad) consequences.