What is the job of a Police Officer?

 
Lol, I saw it pre edit. 
 
Nice try though!

 

 
Edited for the sake of clarity.  Nice try tho.

 

Are you trying to "catch" me or something?  Does that help your cause?

 

Anarchy is a philosophy that has not been tried yet in the modern world. If you believe in the science of evolution then you must realize that we can progress past the need for government. It is not a one way street (that only the government can build haha) but takes mental and philosophical evolution.

Since you statists obviously can not mentally grasp the the concept of the human mind and condition being capable of evolving beyond the point where we need government to control us I will just say, it does not matter if we currently benefit from the state, It does not matter if the money and resources that have been plundered benefit the individual or the whole, it does not matter if the collective society that we all live in is better for it. All that matters is that forcing a sovereign human being to conform to laws that they do not agree to under threat of violence is morally wrong.

If taxation and government was the only way to achieve a society that is advanced enough to provide for every living person on earth and eliminate hunger and poverty world wide, it would still not be even remotely close to worth the cost of individual liberty.

 

Anarchy will never last because of human nature. I just dont see how anyone can think humans can live together and not establish some kind of social order.

 

People will always break the law, and there needs to be someone there to protect people from the robbers, burglars, murders, and rapist by keeping those people away from civilization (jails/prisons). And the problem I see with privatizing the police by getting security agencies to protect, is how many companies would there be to choose from? What will happen is that 1 company gets sued or goes under, and the employees will jump ship, and work for another company. You will not change the personnel enforcing the law, just the name of the company. You think these people will just stop working if their employer gets sued or goes under? No. They will look for another job, and will probably find a job at the competing company. 
 
I think everything needs to be localized, everything. We could still pay taxes, but keep it all at a local level. In my opinion it's easier to keep track of what these politicians are doing if everything is accounted for and no money leaves the state. Now the state could get a small amount to pay for the "state gaurd" and major highways within the state, but the local government keeps everything else...  
 
I wish there was a way to totally do away with government all together, but I don't think it's possible. 

 

We already tried that once and look where it got us.

 

When?

 

 
I think a pretty easy case could be made as to why that wouldnt necessarily happen.
 
Ok so a company gets sued because of corruption or misconduct of an employee, and goes under. So those security people are looking for work again in the same field. However, information on police scandals is already pretty easy to come around, and information about the officers involved can be found out quite easily. That shouldnt change anytime soon. It wouldnt be too hard to almost blacklist those people, or ostracize them; its all about reputation, and they certainly wouldnt have a very good one.
 
So a company is getting into the business of private security and is looking for employees. They come across a person or people who have been previously taken to court. Why would that business risk hiring those people, and being sued as well? It wouldnt make a lot of sense to hire them and jeopardize their business, because if previous business's were sued and held accountable, it could happen again.
 
Customers already shop around and collect information on products and services before they commit their money to it, and people would probably be even more diligent when it comes to security. It would only make sense to do research on a security company before you get in contact with them, and it would seem pretty plausible for those companies to have a roster or database of their employees, especially if they want to appear professional. Those rosters could have lists of their employees; their names, history, records if any. And if those people involved in scandals are already well known, then there would be immediate red flags when you see their names on the roster. It would therefore not make any sense to hire a security team if there are known corrupt employees.
 
I think business's would act pretty smart, pretty quick, and not risk hiring corrupt employees, and the customers would do their homework and not settle for garbage services.

 

Well I was thinking more on a city sized scale, because I already see security in gated communities and business. So I'm thinking more of the general public aspect. The amount of people that will do that sort of job will not increase just because it's privatized, so people that may have had blemishes on their record will still be trained experienced vets. So if the previous company got relieved because of excessive force and harassment situations, they might take an experienced veteran over someone they will have to train to keep safe. Because face it, people still have guns and people do shoot people. So they will have to make sure they have people that are qualified to do the job and if that means hiring someone with a not so good record to do it they will. I'm not talking about convicted felons though.

 

 
It still wouldnt make any business sense to hire those people, and it wouldnt make any sense for a city too either. They both can be held liable and taken to court.
 
And I think you could say there would be a influx in the amount of people working in private security, since all those police officers who were employed by the government would be looking for work.

 

 
Exactly, companies will compete and the best policies, workers etc, will be hired.
 
Companies and people will be held liable and taken to court. That a big enough incentive to not go "too far over that line".
 

 

My dad is a cop... Their job is to enforce laws. Don't blame cops for people getting arrested for bud, blame the people writing and voting on laws.

 

Your dad COULD recognize that the law is wrong and just not arrest people. The framers wanted people to disobey unjust laws so yeah we can be angry at people like your dad for arresting people.
 
 
 
Also for all you guys saying get rid of engorgement, do you realize the American government is one big company? That government can be sued and they can lose money and all that. You think when the police are privatized companies will just go under because a couple employees step over the line? Nope. People need the police and the amount of work these companies will be making you couldnt sue them enough. Hell I would go as far wager that laws would be made the protect these companies in the event of someone wanting to sue but I guess we are trying to do away with government intervention so I guess that wont happen. What happens if the only security firm in an area is the company doing the abuses? 

Citizens can get mad and sue and companies will apologize but unless it is a small firm it wont be going under because one guy wants 10 million for his pain and suffering. 
 
Companies will operate just like how the government operates police now. Whoever is hiring the firm will accept a certain level of abuse in exchange for safety. Depending on which job they apply for at another company I dont think the same guys who got caught and thrown under the bus will be rehired but youll always have citizens who want the power and authority to boss others around. They dont need to and wont be bossing around the guy currently paying their paycheck though.

 

Would you hire your local police for protection?

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I'm more worried about the rampant police brutality and total lack of accountability, the blue shield. I'm worried about these paramilitary thugs and their police state. I'm worried about them willfully violating people's rights and lying, doing anything they have to to make that arrest.
Getting busted for a little weed is the least of my worries.
Fuck the police state.

 

Chapter 12: The Public Sector, III: Police, Law, and the CourtsPolice Protection

The market and private enterprise do exist, and so most people can readily envision a free market in most goods and services. Probably the most difficult single area to grasp, however, is the abolition of government operations in the service of protection: police, the courts, etc. - the area encompassing defense of person and property against attack or invasion. How could private enterprise and the free market possibly provide such service? How could police, legal systems, judicial services, law enforcement, prisons - how could these be provided in a free market? We have already seen how a great deal of police protection, at the least, could be supplied by the various owners of streets and land areas. But we now need to examine this entire area systematically.

In the first place, there is a common fallacy, held even by most advocates of laissez-faire, that the government must supply "police protection," as if police protection were a single, absolute entity, a fixed quantity of something which the government supplies to all. But in actual fact there is no absolute commodity called "police protection" any more than there is an absolute single commodity called "food" or "shelter." It is true that everyone pays taxes for a seemingly fixed quantity of protection, but this is a myth. In actual fact, there are almost infinite degrees of all sorts of protection. For any given person or business, [p. 216] the police can provide everything from a policeman on the beat who patrols once a night, to two policemen patrolling constantly on each block, to cruising patrol cars, to one or even several round-the-clock personal bodyguards. Furthermore, there are many other decisions the police must make, the complexity of which becomes evident as soon as we look beneath the veil of the myth of absolute "protection." How shall the police allocate their funds which are, of course, always limited as are the funds of all other individuals, organizations, and agencies? How much shall the police invest in electronic equipment? fingerprinting equipment? detectives as against uniformed police? patrol cars as against foot police, etc.?

The point is that the government has no rational way to make these allocations. The government only knows that it has a limited budget. Its allocations of funds are then subject to the full play of politics, boondoggling, and bureaucratic inefficiency, with no indication at all as to whether the police department is serving the consumers in a way responsive to their desires or whether it is doing so efficiently. The situation would be different if police services were supplied on a free, competitive market. In that case, consumers would pay for whatever degree of protection they wish to purchase. The consumers who just want to see a policeman once in a while would pay less than those who want continuous patrolling, and far less than those who demand twenty-four-hour bodyguard service. On the free market, protection would be supplied in proportion and in whatever way that the consumers wish to pay for it. A drive for efficiency would be insured, as it always is on the market, by the compulsion to make profits and avoid losses, and thereby to keep costs low and to serve the highest demands of the consumers. Any police firm that suffers from gross inefficiency would soon go bankrupt and disappear.

One big problem a government police force must always face is: what laws really to enforce? Police departments are theoretically faced with the absolute injunction, "enforce all laws," but in practice a limited budget forces them to allocate their personnel and equipment to the most urgent crimes. But the absolute dictum pursues them and works against a rational allocation of resources. On the free market, what would be enforced is whatever the customers are willing to pay for. Suppose, for example, that Mr. Jones has a precious gem he believes might soon be stolen. He can ask, and pay for, round-the-clock police protection at whatever strength he may wish to work out with the police company. He might, on the other hand, also have a private road on his estate he doesn't want many people to travel on - but he might not care very [p. 217] much about trespassers on that road. In that case, he won't devote any police resources to protecting the road. As on the market in general, it is up to the consumer - and since all of us are consumers this means each person individually decides how much and what kind of protection he wants and is willing to buy.

All that we have said about landowners' police applies to private police in general. Free-market police would not only be efficient, they would have a strong incentive to be courteous and to refrain from brutality against either their clients or their clients' friends or customers. A private Central Park would be guarded efficiently in order to maximize park revenue, rather than have a prohibitive curfew imposed on innocent - and paying - customers. A free market in police would reward efficient and courteous police protection to customers and penalize any falling off from this standard. No longer would there be the current disjunction between service and payment inherent in all government operations, a disjunction which means that police, like all other government agencies, acquire their revenue, not voluntarily and competitively from consumers, but from the taxpayers coercively.

In fact, as government police have become increasingly inefficient, consumers have been turning more and more to private forms of protection. We have already mentioned block or neighborhood protection. There are also private guards, insurance companies, private detectives, and such increasingly sophisticated equipment as safes, locks, and closed-circuit TV and burglar alarms. The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice estimated in 1969 that government police cost the American public $2.8 billion a year, while it spends $1.35 billion on private protection service and another $200 million on equipment, so that private protection expenses amounted to over half the outlay on government police. These figures should give pause to those credulous folk who believe that police protection is somehow, by some mystic right or power, necessarily and forevermore an attribute of State sovereignty.1

The Courts

Suppose, then, that the judge or arbitrator decides Smith was in the wrong in a dispute, and that he aggressed against Jones. If Smith accepts the verdict, then, whatever damages or punishment is levied, there is no problem for the theory of libertarian protection. But what if he does not accept it? Or suppose another example: Jones is robbed. He sets his police company to do detective work in trying to track down the criminal. The company decides that a certain Brown is the criminal. Then what? If Brown acknowledges his guilt, then again there is no problem and judicial punishment proceeds, centering on forcing the criminal to make restitution to the victim. But, again, what if Brown denies his guilt?

These cases take us out of the realm of police protection and into another vital area of protection: judicialservice, i.e., the provision, in accordance with generally accepted procedures, of a method of trying as best as one can to determine who is the criminal, or who is the breaker of contracts, in any sort of crime or dispute. Many people, even those who acknowledge that there could be privately competitive police service supplied on a free market, balk at the idea of totally private courts. How in the world could courtsbe private? How would courts employ force in a world without government? Wouldn't eternal conflicts and "anarchy" then ensue?

In the first place, the monopoly courts of government are subject to the same grievous problems, inefficiencies, and contempt for the consumer as any other government operation. We all know that judges, for example, are not selected according to their wisdom, probity, or efficiency in serving the consumer, but are political hacks chosen by [p. 223] the political process. Furthermore, the courts are monopolies; if, for example, the courts in some town or city should become corrupt, venal, oppressive, or inefficient, the citizen at present has no recourse. The aggrieved citizen of Deep Falls, Wyoming, must be governed by the local Wyoming court or not at all. In a libertarian society, there would be many courts, many judges to whom he could turn. Again, there is no reason to assume a "natural monopoly" of judicial wisdom. The Deep Falls citizen could, for example, call upon the local branch of the Prudential Judicial Company.

How would courts be financed in a free society? There are many possibilities. Possibly, each individual would subscribe to a court service, paying a monthly premium, and then calling upon the court if he is in need. Or, since courts will probably be needed much less frequently than policemen, he may pay a fee whenever he chooses to use the court, with the criminal or contract-breaker eventually recompensing the victim or plaintiff. Or, in still a third possibility, the courts may be hired by the police agencies to settle disputes, or there may even be "vertically integrated" firms supplying both police and judicial service: the Prudential Judicial Company might have a police and a judicial division. Only the market will be able to decide which of these methods will be most appropriate.

We should all be more familiar with the increasing use of private arbitration, even in our present society. The government courts have become so clogged, inefficient, and wasteful that more and more parties to disputes are turning to private arbitrators as a cheaper and far less time-consuming way of settling their disputes. In recent years, private arbitration has become a growing and highly successful profession. Being voluntary, furthermore, the rules of arbitration can be decided rapidly by the parties themselves, without the need for a ponderous, complex legal framework applicable to all citizens. Arbitration therefore permits judgments to be made by people expert in the trade or occupation concerned. Currently, the American Arbitration Association, whose motto is "The Handclasp is Mightier than the Fist," has 25 regional offices throughout the country, with 23,000 arbitrators. In 1969, the Association conducted over 22,000 arbitrations. In addition, the insurance companies adjust over 50,000 claims a year through voluntary arbitration. There is also a growing and successful use of private arbitrators in automobile accident claim cases.

It might be protested that, while performing an ever greater proportion of judicial functions, the private arbitrators' decisions are still enforced by the courts, so that once the disputing parties agree on an [p. 224] arbitrator, his decision becomes legally binding. This is true, but it was not the case before 1920, and the arbitration profession grew at as rapid a rate from 1900 to 1920 as it has since. In fact, the modern arbitration movement began in full force in England during the time of the American Civil War, with merchants increasingly using the "private courts" provided by voluntary arbitrators, even though the decisions were not legally binding. By 1900, voluntary arbitration began to take hold in the United States. In fact, in medieval England, the entire structure of merchant law, which was handled clumsily and inefficiently by the government's courts, grew up in private merchants' courts. The merchants' courts were purely voluntary arbitrators, and the decisions were not legally binding. How, then, were they successful?

The answer is that the merchants, in the Middle Ages and down to 1920, relied solely on ostracism and boycott by the other merchants in the area. In other words, should a merchant refuse to submit to arbitration or ignore a decision, the other merchants would publish this fact in the trade, and would refuse to deal with the recalcitrant merchant, bringing him quickly to heel. Wooldridge mentions one medieval example:

Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows, and their power over his goods, proved if anything more effective than physical coercion. Take John of Homing, who made his living marketing wholesale quantities of fish. When John sold a lot of herring on the representation that it conformed to a three-barrel sample, but which, his fellow merchants found, was actually mixed with "sticklebacks and putrid herring," he made good the deficiency on pain of economic ostracism.1

In modern times, ostracism became even more effective, and it included the knowledge that anyone who ignored an arbitrator's award could never again avail himself of an arbitrator's services. Industrialist Owen D. Young, head of General Electric, concluded that the moral censure of other businessmen was a far more effective sanction than legal enforcement. Nowadays, modern technology, computers, and credit ratings would make such nationwide ostracism even more effective than it has ever been in the past.

Even if purely voluntary arbitration is sufficient for commercial disputes, however, what of frankly criminal activities: the mugger, the rapist, the bank robber? In these cases, it must be admitted that ostracism would probably not be sufficient - even though it would also include, [p. 225] we must remember, refusal of private street owners to allow such criminals in their areas. For the criminal cases, then, courts and legal enforcement become necessary.

How, then, would the courts operate in the libertarian society? In particular, how could they enforce their decisions? In all their operations, furthermore, they must observe the critical libertarian rule that no physical force may be used against anyone who has not been convicted as a criminal - otherwise, the users of such force, whether police or courts, would be themselves liable to be convicted as aggressors if it turned out that the person they had used force against was innocent of crime. In contrast to statist systems, no policeman or judge could be granted special immunity to use coercion beyond what anyone else in society could use.

Let us now take the case we mentioned before. Mr. Jones is robbed, his hired detective agency decides that one Brown committed the crime, and Brown refuses to concede his guilt. What then? In the first place, we must recognize that there is at present no overall world court or world government enforcing its decrees; yet while we live in a state of "international anarchy" there is little or no problem in disputes between private citizens of two countries. Suppose that right now, for example, a citizen of Uruguay claims that he has been swindled by a citizen of Argentina. Which court does he go to? He goes to his own, i.e., the victim's or the plaintiff's court. The case proceeds in the Uruguayan court, and its decision is honored by the Argentinian court. The same is true if an American feels he has been swindled by a Canadian, and so on. In Europe after the Roman Empire, when German tribes lived side by side and in the same areas, if a Visigoth felt that he had been injured by a Frank, he took the case to his own court, and the decision was generally accepted by the Franks. Going to the plaintiff's court is the rational libertarian procedure as well, since the victim or plaintiff is the one who is aggrieved, and who naturally takes the case to his own court. So, in our case, Jones would go to the Prudential Court Company to charge Brown with theft.

It is possible, of course, that Brown is also a client of the Prudential Court, in which case there is no problem. The Prudential's decision covers both parties, and becomes binding. But one important stipulation is that no coercive subpoena power can be used against Brown, because he must be considered innocent until he is convicted. But Brown would be served with a voluntary subpoena, a notice that he is being tried on such and such a charge and inviting him or his legal representative to appear. If he does not appear, then he will be tried in absentia, and [p. 226] this will obviously be less favorable for Brown since his side of the case will not be pleaded in court. If Brown is declared guilty, then the court and its marshals will employ force to seize Brown and exact whatever punishment is decided upon - a punishment which obviously will focus first on restitution to the victim.

What, however, if Brown does not recognize the Prudential Court? What if he is a client of the Metropolitan Court Company? Here the case becomes more difficult. What will happen then? First, victim Jones pleads his case in the Prudential Court. If Brown is found innocent, this ends the controversy. Suppose, however, that defendant Brown is found guilty. If he does nothing, the court's judgment proceeds against him. Suppose, however, Brown then takes the case to the Metropolitan Court Company, pleading inefficiency or venality by Prudential. The case will then be heard by Metropolitan. If Metropolitan also finds Brown guilty, this too ends the controversy and Prudential will proceed against Brown with dispatch. Suppose, however, that Metropolitan finds Brown innocent of the charge. Then what? Will the two courts and their arms-wielding marshals shoot it out in the streets?

Once again, this would clearly be irrational and self-destructive behavior on the part of the courts. An essential part of their judicial service to their clients is the provision of just, objective, and peacefully functioning decisions - the best and most objective way of arriving at the truth of who committed the crime. Arriving at a decision and then allowing chaotic gunplay would scarcely be considered valuable judicial service by their customers. Thus, an essential part of any court's service to its clients would be an appeals procedure. In short, every court would agree to abide by an appeals trial, as decided by a voluntary arbitrator to whom Metropolitan and Prudential would now turn. The appeals judge would make his decision, and the result of this third trial would be treated as binding on the guilty. The Prudential court would then proceed to enforcement.



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