Life Without Government: Police

Life Without Government

By

Mitchell Gray

Police

Like all services even police protection can be provided for by the free market. However when you suggest that we should eliminate state funded police forces in favor of free market ones people tend to have an adverse reaction. Their face crinkles up, their eyebrows lower and they begin twisting in odd ways as they attempt to demonstrate the ridiculousness of such a notion. Most people assume that without the government and without their police forces crime would run rampant. It is really an irrational fear once you break it down and examine it logically. Like everything else supporters of the free market are against state funded police forces since they exist only because of the coercive actions of the state. To fund the police the state must forcibly extract large sums of money from the people through taxation. Every year we pay billions of dollars in income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes and a slew of other taxes to pay for police service and for it we get sloppy, inefficient and corrupt service. Under a free market competitive system each person could elect to receive the amount of police protection they wanted. Because of stiff competition for customers the cost would fall dramatically while the efficiency and quality of service would rise. There are several arguments against public police forces chief among them is their coercive nature. Their existence relies on the theft of billions of dollars from individuals. Many will argue that paying for a government service through taxation is necessary to provide police protection for everyone. In the free market where competition is fierce for customers if a service is unwanted then it does not get funded and the companies offering those services go bankrupt. The fact that police protection must be funded through the forcible confiscation of monies from the public must mean that it would not exist in its current form if allowed to compete in the free market. How then would order be established in an world where police services are privately funded?

Like everything else police protection is a service and a service that can be sold by the market. While the state may have socialized this service and currently funds it through coercive methods this does not mean that it could not or would not be provided by the free market. The first objection we must overcome is the belief that everyone needs police protection. This is most assuredly untrue. The vast majority of people will go through their lives just fine without ever needing a police officer and for many of them the only time they will ever have any contact with an officer is when they are caught speeding or for some other offense. Rarely is someone going to need the police for crimes such as murder or theft or assault. In the free market there would be security companies that offered police protection as a subscription service. There is already an industry operating like this. Many private companies and individuals employ private security firms to augment the inefficient and unreliable police protection offered by the government. While the state allows these companies to exist they are heavily regulated and are limited in what they can do. History also provides a good example of private police forces in the form of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Pinkerton was so good at their job that at one time they employed more private detectives than there were soldiers in the standing army. They had a terrific record of catching the bad guy or protecting those things that needed protecting. And because they were a private company people could choose to employ them or not. This would continue to exist with a pure free market in police protection. When evaluating their security needs a person would take many factors into consideration. A person that lived in a small rural town might not have any need for a security company believing he can best defend himself and his home with a pistol and a shotgun and some good locks. Whereas a person who lived in a city with a high crime rate might opt for considerably more police protection. Likewise a celebrity or captain of industry might find it suitable to hire full time body guards who are with them 24 hours a day.

This concept isn’t limited to individuals. Many businesses already employ private security companies and this practice would continue without socialized police forces. Private businesses hire security firms for a number of reasons. They want to ensure that someone is watching their merchandise so that none of is stolen. They want to provide a secure atmosphere for their customers who can shop freely without fear of being attacked. And they want their employees to feel safe. All of these factors ensure that if public police forces were to be dismantled private security firms would quickly take their place.

For many police protection might be bundled in an insurance policy or they might simply subscribe to a particular plan offered by a security firm. Businesses might hire a company individually or they might form a business association that subscribes a blanket contract to share the cost. A residential neighborhood might see a rise in crime and the homeowners might come together form more an association that would hire a security company to perform regular patrols around the neighborhood.

The key to this is that each person now has a choice. Instead of being forced to pay for police services that they might not want or need each individual is free to choose the level of protection that best suits them. While one person might not want the services of a security firm, believing he can best defend himself with a pistol on his hip another might want armed guards stationed outside their doors 24 hours a day. The choice is now yours, as a consumer, to pick how secure you want to be. The person that might not need any security protection fifty weeks out of the year might sign up to have a company perform routine patrols around his home while he goes on vacation. It could include anything from just monitoring a security system to driving around the house to actually getting out and checking all of the doors and windows to even having guards stationed around the clock until he should return. The key is that now he can choose what he wants instead of it being forced upon him.

What about murders and rapes and other violent crimes? How would those be investigated? Much the same way they are today. A person would contact their investigation company (likely such actions would be handled through an insurance provider who would contract with a company specializing in such things) who would then investigate the crime and track down those guilty of committing it. They would use all of the tools available now and those that are surely to come in order to find the perpetrator. But what if someone didn’t have a subscription? They could purchase the service of an investigation company to investigate the crime after the fact like we do with so many different services.

You would likely see many different types of companies that specialized in different areas. You might have some that just offered armed guards while others specialized in fields such as murder investigations, robberies, rapes, kidnappings, fraud, etc. Likely we will see these various companies working together as well by developing a common database of known criminals, much like the one the FBI currently maintains. It would be to their advantage to share their records with other companies as it would reduce overall cost and possibly speed up investigations.

The second objection people will raise is the belief that these private security companies could exploit their customers becoming a state unto themselves. This argument demonstrates a lack of understanding concerning competition. Assuming a company began to exploit their customers in order to establish their own “state” is difficult to imagine happening because of the very nature of the market. Unless there is already some authority, such as the state, that could ensure something like this could happen granting monopolies to privileged businesses, then pure market forces would utterly destroy any company that did attempt it. The natural reaction of people who are abused by one company is to cancel their service and take their business elsewhere. Any company that became abusive would suffer the negative market reactions of lost customers and lost revenue. If they continued on their course they would surely have to close up shop or be sold to another more reputable company.

Daily we read about police abuses in one city or another. Inner city residents often view the police with skepticism and contempt alleging abuse, corruption, racism as well as their inability to control crime. These things would surely vanish or be reduced significantly with a free market police force. To control high crime residents could pool their resources to hire a firm to patrol a certain area. Or, if they so wanted, could form their own security force that would be used to drive the criminal gangs from the area. Police brutality and abuse would become a thing of the past or at the very least much, much less common. If a security company begins to develop a record of brutality or leniency with their employees then they will start to lose customers. It is the reliability and fairness of a company that is it’s chief marketing tool. Company A might offer a better price but is known to have a record of abuse while Company B might be slightly more expensive but has a very good reputation of fairness when dealing with people. The reputation of Company B makes it the stronger company and will attract more customers while Company A’s reputation will drive customers away and reduce its revenue.

The key factor in free market police services that the consumer now has a choice. They can use to have as little or as much protection as they want. Gone would be the coercive confiscatory actions of the state which violate the property of all people. The state must use force in order to fund its police forces which are often used against those who would challenge its authority and to enforce draconian or superfluous laws which further violate the rights of its subjects. Their use of force demonstrates that they offer a service that the market would not subscribe to. It is clear that a free market in police services is much preferable to that of the coercively funded state police.