|
I Used To Not Be Anti-Cop
Manuel Lora
Lew Rockwell.com
Monday November 19, 2007
There was a time when I used to believe that the police had a
duty to serve and protect, to care for our property and to keep
criminals away. Over the years, however, I have come to realize
that though real crime exists in society, it is the cops who commit
most of it.
This was not a very easy decision to make. Whenever I saw injustice
and brutality, I would brush it off as a sporadic episode and
move on. Having seen (and this is another reason why it’s
very important to keep the internet free) video after video of
people being tasered, shot, beaten, executed, roughed up, fined,
ticketed, jailed, harassed, insulted, and being subjected to an
infinite number of abuses, it’s hard to stay optimistic
about the police and the system that runs it.
Government police is subject to the same ethical and economic
analysis that is applicable to other government functions. Given
that the state has no incentive to protect; that it can always
count on taxes; that it is institutionalized aggression; that
it legislates and therefore steals and plunders – given
all these things, I had to change my tune. What I had thought
to be random incidents of abuse were nothing but the normal, symptomatic
function of the government at work: a series of inefficient and
unethical monstrosities committed against society, allegedly for
its own good.
(Article continues below)
I understood, then, that police departments are just another
government program. Government programs, because they rely on
taxation and legislation, are not wanted by society. And we know
this is true because by resorting to taxation and regulation we
have eliminated competitors who in the market would otherwise
be free to meet the demand for security with a supply of such
a service. Therefore, it is impossible to know that the quality
and quantity of defense that is offered by the government reflects
what people want. We cannot express our preference.
So far I have talked mostly from an economics perspective and
determined that since there is no choice, there is no real efficiency
to speak of for one cannot decide how to best spend money and
allocate scarce resources for defense. Now I shall continue to
develop the idea that started this short essay: most crimes are
carried out by the police.
When I refer to "crime" I don’t mean crime as
defined by state legislature but seen as the violation of property
rights. Things like taxation and eminent domain are clearly theft.
And so are conscription and minimum wage laws because the former
constitutes theft of the use of one’s body while the latter
violates the right to contract freely.
We are now in a position to recognize that most crimes are committed
by cops. Since cops are the enforcement arm of the state, they
are the ones who must physically interact with citizens. And what
do they do? Well, it’s business as usual: raids, searches
and seizure, the war on drugs, on immigrants, on various "inequalities"
and the list goes on and on.
The amount of "public crime," crime carried out by
the government is overwhelmingly larger than "private crime."
Indeed, there are probably not many people alive who have not
been forced to pay some sort of tax or been subjected to regulation.
And taxation and regulations are ultimately enforced by the police
or another police-like executive authority. The existence of the
state (even a minimal one) guarantees that the amount of public
crime will always exceed the amount of private crime because while
one can chose not to be a criminal, the state is nothing but a
criminal entity.
There is one last point that remains to be said, and that is
whether the police can respect your rights and act legitimately
in the occasion where they prevent a true crime from occurring.
At first it would seem that this would be an exception of the
criminality and inefficiency of the police. But let’s not
forget that state-based defense is essentially socialist –
you pay for it regardless of your need and often the cost is the
same no matter how much you use it. Thus, one can be glad that
in some instances the police do protect you against private criminals,
but it would be unlibertarian to forget that your defense was
financed by aggressing against everyone else. Sounds a little
bit like welfare doesn’t it?
And what about the rights of the pacifist? To the extent that
pacifists are taxed to support the police, they are being forced
to support something they don’t believe: any kind of violence,
aggressive and defensive. Here, too, we see inefficiency and unjustness
(this is similar to the vegetarian who must still pay for government-mandated
meat inspections and regulations). Finally, even the Supreme Court
has ruled that the police do not have a duty to protect you.
Unlike juries and judges and unlike legislators and prosecutors,
the cops are the ones ultimately doing the dirty deeds. The judicial
and legislative branches must count on someone to carry out their
edicts. Of course, that implies that they are also guilty in the
causal chain of criminality and are not exempt of guilt. The reason
why I am picking on cops is because they are the most visible
branch. Almost every interaction between the state and serf occurs
through the executive branch – police officers, tax collectors,
the various inspectors, regulators, confiscators and so forth.
Police officers technically must enforce all laws. Given the
number of laws out there, let’s be thankful that they are
incapable of doing that. Let’s also be thankful that we
don’t get all the government we pay for. If the state is
institutionalized aggression, then the last thing we want is an
efficient government, or, for that matter, efficient cops.
|
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
|
