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But without Organized Crime “Government” What Would We do About Physical Protection, Policing & Crime?

by Etienne de la Boetie2, A Sample Chapter from our upcoming book: Voluntaryism – How the Only “ISM” Fair for Everyone Leads to Harmony, Prosperity and Good Karma for All!

Because everyone wants to be safe and secure in their homes, on the road, and when traveling, there’s obviously a market for personal protection. Right now this market is dominated by a monopoly provider. In the absence of a monopoly provider, there’s no reason to think that private companies wouldn’t be able to provide the same service, at lower prices, with more efficiency and without the abuses of the monopoly police.

How “Government” Ruins It

Legislating and Enforcing Prohibition and Victimless Crimes

The “Government” and their monopoly police inevitably make the problem of crime worse by trying to legislate morality and enforce prohibitions on peaceful people. Crime, by definition, has a perpetrator and a victim. If there isn’t a victim then there isn’t a crime. When “Government” prohibits something that people desire, that doesn’t get rid of alcohol, drugs, gambling or prostitution, it immediately creates a black market that is run by criminals that can now earn above-market profits that create a myriad of unintended consequences that aren’t the fault of the “drugs” or “gambling” but of prohibition.

Overdoses – Illegality forces both addicts and recreational users to roll-the-dice with potentially adulterated substances since they can’t buy pure drugs of a measured and certified potency.

• Violence and Crime – Prohibition raises the cost of addictive drugs astronomically vs the free market leading many addicts to turn to crime to finance their habit, AND because drugs are illegal, it attracts organized crime (vs. the local drug store) that settle their disputes with violence leaving the population in the crossfire. Currently the monopoly police engage in around $5 billion dollars a year in asset forfeiture where they are seizing vehicles, cash, property and real estate in the name of the war on drugs frequently without charges being filed.

• Creating Addicts – Perversely, the drug war actually creates a financial incentive for drug dealers to spend their own money to create addicts! If a drug dealer can give a teenager free drugs until they are hooked, then chances are that drug dealer is the only one the kid knows, so the drug dealer has a captured customer. Compare that with legally addictive alcohol where no similar financial incentive exists because it can be readily purchased anywhere.

• Creating Criminals – By arresting overwhelmingly peaceful people for non-violent victimless “crimes” and sentencing them to horrific prisons, they are simultaneously reducing the prospects that person will be able to find gainful employment while incarcerating them with real criminals and gangs.

Civil Asset Forfeiture – One of the ugliest, stone-cold truths of monopoly policing is that the police now steal more each year through civil asset forfeiture than all private criminals combined. Civil asset forfeiture allows police, federal, state and local, to seize – and then keep or sell – any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be stolen permanently by the government, and the Institute for Justice²estimates it cost $3000 to fight each case with no guarantee of winning. The ugly truth is that federal law enforcement and the government’s monopoly police frequently steal more each year than all private criminals combined.

Road piracy has exploded for law enforcement in 2019 (including the adjacent chart).

Road Piracy, Red-Light Cameras, and Photo-Radar Cameras – Equally as egregious as the police robbing the population through Civil Asset Forfeiture is the fact that the police are frequently robbing the population through inherently political, automated monopolies.

Victims of DUIs. Road Piracy is defined as local governments using their monopoly police to excessively fine motorists to raise revenue for the government and police force. See the example of New Rome, Ohio where the vast majority of the local and State government income was raising revenue on their citizens — further exacerbated by red-light cameras and photo-radar cameras that can be tuned to take nearly every single speeder as it goes by. In cities where the speed limit on side streets was 25 mph, these speed limits are artificially low to raise revenue.

While red-light cameras have been proven to reduce the number of right angle (T-bone) accidents within intersections, they have increased rear-end collisions. People brake quickly to avoid triggering the cameras. A study done by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute³ found that in areas where red light cameras were introduced, right-angle crashes were reduced from 14 to 40%, while rear-end crashes increased on Business/Primary roads by 169%. Needless to say, it doesn’t reflect well on a “safety system” when one type of accident is increased for the sake of decreasing another type of accident.

found that in areas where red light cameras were introduced, right-angle crashes were reduced from 14 to 40%, while rear-end crashes increased on Business/Primary roads by 169%. Needless to say, it doesn’t reflect well on a “safety system” when one type of accident is increased for the sake of decreasing another type of accident.

Finally the amount of corruption around these cameras appears endless. In Search Engine: “Red-light cameras and corruption” to understand the level of payoffs and bribes from companies to legislators and town officials to get these systems installed while bilking the motorists.

There have been dozens of cases where the systems have been downgraded in other nations due to yellow light not increasing light length overtime. In 2017 the city of Fremont, California pled guilty to shortening the yellow light from 4.7 seconds to 4 seconds in a scam to increase the red-light camera revenue in partnership with a private company Redflex Traffic Systems. A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2014 that the Rahm Emanuel administration quietly used a new, shorter yellow light standard that resulted in the city issuing 16,000 more tickets worth$8 million in extra revenue from 77,000 illegal red-light camera tickets that would not have been enforceable without the shorter times.

Victimless DUIs – While no one wants drunk drivers on the road, the average logic for punishment is that a person needs to commit the crime to be chargeable.
Anything else makes an inverse monopoly policing system where the government will convict people who have not actually committed a crime.
The ugliest fact of monopoly policing is that monopoly law enforcement police frequently wait outside of bars and restaurants and randomly pull over drivers if they suspect them of drinking, even if the driver has a blood alcohol level lower than 0.08.
Thus the monopoly police can now charge tens of thousands of dollars in fines, penalties, court costs, and mandatory driver re-education programs frequently run by cronies of the local government.

This author has a personal friend who received a victimless DUI and $10,000 worth of fees in her twenties for 0.08% breathalyzer times under the limit. When arrested she told the officer that she “needed the pressure off for drinking since she made the responsible choice to take a nap in her car instead of drive.
An officer who woke her up arrested her.”
Another (0.08) her car had no keys in the ignition. She had never recovered financially into her thirties.

Road Piracy and the Corruption of Small Town “Government” – The Case of New Rome, Ohio

One notorious example of road piracy that reveals the idiocy of monopoly “government” was the aptly-named New Rome, OH which had a population of 60 full time residents and a 15-person police force which wrote $377,651 ($658,045 in 2024 dollars) in fines in 2001 along a single stretch of 1000 feet of a busy local thoroughfare where the town dropped the speed limit from 45 to 35 miles per hour.

Before the town was dissolved for serial corruption, the average ticket was for 42 in a 35 mph zone BUT, according to the Car and Driver article Town Without Pity, “the real money comes from violations that elsewhere would likely merit a warning at most—no front license plate ($55/$95 in 2024 dollars), driving a commercial vehicle without a commercial plate ($105/$182), driving with headsets ($90/$156), with a cracked windshield ($55/$95), with a chipped taillight ($55/$95), without a rear-view mirror ($55/$95), with tinted windows ($105/$182), with dirt or anything obscuring a license plate ($55/$95), without a seatbelt ($60/$104), with loud mufflers ($55/$95), driving too slowly ($90/$156), backing up improperly ($90/$156), making an “unsafe” lane change ($90/$156), stopping past the stop line ($90/$156), no backup lights ($55/$95), a dim bulb over the license plate ($55/$95), making a U-turn ($90/$156), tailgating ($90/$156), and on and on and on. Pity the unsuspecting kid who hitchhikes ($135/$235). And many pulled-over drivers wind up with multiple citations (no seatbelts on passengers and kids without safety chairs are typical ones). “Court costs” can be tacked on, and there’s a $13/$22 charge for paying with a credit card.”

The makeup of the village council begins with Nancy Chapman, the wife of Charles Chapman, who had been mayor during the 1990s and ran the traffic court. The Chapmans’ son and daughter, Charles Jr. and Alisa Gibbs, have been on the council. Councilwoman Patricia McCormick is Nancy Chapman’s sister; and councilman David Tisler, who works for a towing service on Broad Street, is McCormick’s live-in boyfriend. Councilman Richard Plants is Nancy Chapman’s nephew. Christopher and Valerie Gamble have been on the council; Valerie is the daughter of Connie Tucker. Who is Connie Tucker? She’s the clerk/treasurer of New Rome.

Second, none of these council members were ever elected – they were all appointed, by one another. The last time a council member was elected by voters was in 1979, and even that involved a pair of write-in candidates.

… the village has a history of sticky fingers going back to its inception in 1941. Five clerks handling the citation money—much of it cash—have been convicted of theft. In 1989, mayor’s court clerk Patricia Kinder admitted to stealing $7000 of the ticket money. Then a police chief, Darwin Pelphrey, resigned after being accused of theft (including stealing a shotgun he used to go duck hunting). Not much later, a mayor and another police chief resigned after someone leaked documents showing they’d both used village credit cards to fill the tanks of their personal cars. Both were ordered to repay $2500.

As ticket revenue grew in the ’90s, so did the boldness of the thieves. A state audit for 1993 discovered $56,563 missing. The mayor’s court clerk, widow of the previously discredited police chief, pled guilty to one count of theft in office but didn’t do jail time. Then a state audit of fiscal ’95 to ’96—for some reason not released until 1998—showed another $56,456 unaccounted for. No one was ever charged, although two administrative staffers resigned. New Rome’s history has prompted the perturbed state auditor, Jim Petro, to call it “the per-capita corruption capital of Ohio.”

THE VOLUNTARYIST & FREE MARKET ALTERNATIVES

If the government’s monopoly law, police, and courts disappeared tomorrow, the overwhelming majority of society would not turn to a life of enslavement. Not because they want an “official law” prohibiting it, but because most people aren’t murderers or thieves. Most people steal safely every day without taking people’s property: they work for employers or get a check from their employer, from neighbors, from their neighbor’s property, from their neighbor’s homes and purses, but they don’t attack them. They might refrain from aggressive behavior because of religious beliefs, to strong personal codes of ethics, or reasons having nothing to do with any understanding of current law. The fact that a bureaucrat wrote code showing stealing wrong on an official piece of paper is not what’s on the bottom of the list.

An Armed Population is Already the Best Deterrent to Crime

A study by researchers James D. Wright and Peter Rossi showed that surveyed felons reported that they feared armed victims more than law enforcement and victims would run into armed victims than law enforcement. Absent monopoly policing, all these protections and deterrents would still be in place and, in fact, would be strengthened because the “law” that shield murderers and pedophiles would be off the books so the potential for legitimate retribution for getting caught in the act would be on the rise.

Private Defense Agencies

Because theft is universal, and because services are universal demand, neighbors therefore, have a universal interest for private protection services; much like other businesses. Overly aggressive behavior would fall out of favor in competition with a “peer” review system that works for the insurance and business communities. “Who harmed who” standards for judgments and armed response. Not only do these systems already exist even in the 21st century—everywhere from Orlando and NYC to gated communities—but they are safer and afford a greater protection of life, liberty, and property than the “one size fits all” minimal level of protection offered by police monopolies. When it comes to the aftermath of theft and murder, protection companies would be free to try actual solutions instead of the statist placebo, then they could be fired immediately.

Because you personally have the right to defend your life, liberty, and property, you can legitimately delegate that right to a Private Defense Agency (PDA) to act on your behalf when you may not be home or when you’re not able to protect yourself for whatever reason. But it is important to note that PDAs need not be “simple” or without the sophistication of modern protection companies. There is also the very real and legitimate right that would provide an effective protection zone: a private homeowner’s right to protect their private property. That alone would have a two-fold financial incentive for the new PDAs and the existing market for protection companies to compete or private insurance to compete as private security agents and adjusters.

When it comes to local criminals, vandalism, and civil harm, the list of monopolies and services that the unchecked government has provided have not only failed and deteriorated before our very eyes, but also morphed into rigged “protection rackets.”

Still, under a free market one is free to live in a new society by voting with their wallets, and they can choose to pay for a poor protection service or a great one. Though the problem with police monopolies is that people who like their services the way they stand must pay for their critics and either let the favoritism distort or threaten their Yelp reviews. Where monopoly police are frequently rude, oppressive and even violent and murderous because of their “qualified immunity” those issues go away as being rude and oppressive isn’t tolerated in the open market where businesses and PDA employees would be subject to the same retribution and penalties that everyone else in society has.
In areas where someone’s PDA is falsely accused and that person is prosecuted even after it has been made known with good evidence that the “principle of constant dealings” would ensure that the two companies and police/protection agencies would negotiate the rights of their clients and an agreed upon arbitration process with a true accountability system. This incentive could have 15 year successive chapters but the key point of both incentives is preferred over taxes where bad judgments of previous actions are applied with a consistent harassment of lower courts and police with whom they’ve been cordial with for over ten years without the fireable action applied to a “public” officer.
In an open marketplace “officers,” or plainly who are protected “qualified immunity”.

Road Piracy & Victimless DUIs

Without the monopoly “government” having the ability to criminalize things that aren’t really crimes, i.e. running a red light or driving over the speed limit, the motivation to steer people around avoids doing things like shortening yellow lights in order to write more tickets. Drivers would be incentivized to keep traffic flowing as fast and as safe as possible so they would likely eliminate arbitrary accidents like slower traffic and trucks staying left too long and keep “open passing” and “hammer zone” areas in between passing and faster drivers. This has proven safer than what we get with government-funded studies which see more drivers crashing thanks to gaps slower drivers.

What the market winds down as unfair, unsafe and unlawful situations is the best way of dealing with the issue of government “turbulence” caused by paper actions we believe are safe with apparent monopolistic polities. Private road owners can undercut the worse model of government run tolls and offer safer cheaper tolls. In every area private companies can outpace local police, handling drunk, stoned but harm free offenders.
Drunk drivers and repeat offenders alike can be fined for what one private contractor has done, and repeat offenders and their homes could be publicly shamed in their communities with pressure brought on their employers, landlords, churches, and universities.
Private Defense Agencies, including when in the employ of private road owners, homeowner associations or PDAs might call over drunk drivers and call them a cab or drive them home or have their employer pick them up. Harmless social offences have no public shaming; escorted home by the PDA, or morally deficient should pay for what a belligerent repeat offender who is TRO is habitually or be prohibited from using their roads. Until these measures may seem to be reappearance of the harsh justice and confiscatory regimentation imposed by the state, but the PDAs would only enforce these on the roads they own or under their influence contracts.

While the state has created the majority of DUIs so there is no aging formality, a mature or drunk driver may create harm that no company should process life.
The line is: if a drunk driver causes damage, injury or death, THEN Private Defense Agencies or individuals are then set responsible for the damage they have actually caused.

Detroit’s Threat Management Center – In a city where the average police response time is 5x the national average and the crime rate is skyrocketing the Detroit Threat Management Center is a private security company that provides security services for business and individuals ranging from walking people safely to their cars, responding to hostage and domestic abuse calls for $10 to riding shotgun on dangerous evictions with zero incident.The company will help local residents for free and also operate a kids safety class on television where they teach self-defense

Because the legitimacy of “government” is now being widely challenged and questioned by the population, forward-thinking Sheriffs and Chiefs will already be thinking about how they can reduce taxes and transfer more authority towards policing that is voluntary based and open for private protection.

Reduce taxes and eliminate costly and outdated police gear, and/or cut the department in half. Fundraise to protect life, liberty and property through car washes and other old-fashioned approaches to save taxpayers money and eliminate DARE programs.

Refocus the department on preventing real crimes: Murder, Burglary, Rape, Arson and Robberies instead of police budgets and victimless crimes.
Increase integrity and morality: Your officers don’t get a pass on morality or facing the consequences of their actions.

Become a scholar on police privatization and the existing alternatives from private protection companies like Detroit Threat Management to private communities who are providing police services privately.

Plan for a transition where tax revenue collected under the threat of force will be replaced with voluntary payments and beneficial services. When they have lost a majority of their largest departments like ATF, Weste and other private security companies.

Create partnerships with alarm system providers, insurance companies and neighborhood watches.

Think and focus like an entrepreneur on delivering a quality service (crime prevention and victim restitution vs. retribution) where your officers are focused on protecting the vulnerable or raising revenue off the population and victimless crimes.

PRIVATE POLICE FAQs

What about people who cannot afford protection?
Private security companies today help non-customers in the communities that they protect for free for a variety of reasons:
First, it is good marketing in the community. Second, taking criminals off the streets ultimately protects their clients as well. Finally, security guys like to bust bad guys! Many people will benefit as “free riders” where their neighborhoods are being patrolled by the payments of their neighbors, and overall crime will be reduced in a voluntaryist society by reducing the crimes associated with drug prohibition. There will be more economic opportunity so less people will turn to crime and more students will be educated by religious and private schools who will be focused on developing honesty and character vs. the government’s moral and value-free schools today.

What is to stop a Private Defense Agency from going rogue and taking over a neighborhood or town like a warlord?
Unlike the monopoly police, PDAs can easily be fired by switching providers. It is unlikely that a successful company would endanger their business and doubtful that the employees would go along with it especially knowing they don’t have the “qualified immunity” of monopoly police, would be facing an armed population and retaliation from rival PDAs protecting their clients in that particular area.

RESOURCES FOR A DEEPER DIVE

Articles: Free Market Police, Courts, and Law– Reason Magazine article by Murray Rothbard

Videos: Tate Fegley – The Case for Private Policing – YouTube Video (11:12)

Books: For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard (Chapter 12) and The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman

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