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What's wrong with the police? by mikemorris

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· @mikemorris ·
What's wrong with the police?
Amid the rightfully heated political climate that is making slight acknowledgement of the inherent aggression in the State, but where sadly solutions to tame it are hopelessly searched for only within (e.g. "we need better trained police", "we need police who aren't racists", "we'll vote on better people next time") on how to take the brutality out of the police whose "job" is exactly to enforce legislative laws emanating from the centralized government that require violence be used against people who have violated no one's rights (tax-evaders, drug-users, people who don't give cops enough safe space when reaching for their wallets in traffic stops), I figured I'll continue to restate an alternative as I see it outside of all this: anarchism

I believe it's possible to have a voluntary, stateless society where socialist monopolies – on defense, law, police, courts – which the State has arrogated to itself are abolished, and human interaction is coerced no longer by this parasitic institution that earns its revenues through the use of aggression against non-consenting and non-criminal individuals, and that security, along with roads, schools, libraries, and every other “collective good” it's claimed is non-excludable and must be socialized, is instead a service that can be provided privately like any other market product by competing firms offering the actual protection of property rights.

There are no services it's said are essential for a monopolist government to provide that cannot be offered freely and voluntarily in the market. In fact, the only way I can see it is that the only genuine capitalism and freedom is when there's no state whatever; that all statism is socialist since it subsists on the theft of private property. 

It is the State – the coercive monopolist of law and defense over a given territory that receives its earnings involuntarily – that is the great violator of our [property] rights, and far from being the grantor of them. What the State does is to put socialism into effect. What we see is government run amok, not "capitalism." The State is not "us", and doesn't represent "the people", as do voluntary market institutions, but its compulsion is to benefit those who use this political power to exploit those who aren't as lucky: the vast majority of people who have to actually obtain their incomes in the market by producing something of value rather than participate in the plunder of resources and consumption of capital that makes up government activity. 

Subjecting the service of defense to the market, which operates on profit and loss, allocates resources according to various values within a price system, and works in the service of the customer, all unlike the structure of anything that is socialized, would end the problems we see surrounding the government’s police, who absolve themselves of any wrongdoing and suffer no retribution. 

One would think the terrifying guarantee of a Clinton or Trump presidency would be all that's necessary for a valid indictment that statism is finally to be seen as too dangerous not to be condemned out of existence, but rather we're still supposed to believe that it is actually without government where criminal warlords would take over and rule us. Yeah. Without the Pentagon and the FBI, the White House would be adorned by a criminal warlord!

Contrary to the relentlessly mistaken view of the population, it is with government, with the creation of "the political means" of legally coercing others, that makes possible all these things we fear would happen without it. What the State claims to protect us from is precisely that which it engages in: systematic theft through taxation, monopolization of the provision of goods and services, cartelization of industry, etc. 

Therefore even if our conceptions on the practicalities of an anarchist society were pure fantasy, which at worst they are superior to what it's imagined the State can be, then we should still oppose it for it is nothing more than institutionalizing aggression; the very thing we seek to rid from a world where the overwhelming desire by most is to cooperate peacefully.

I do not assume as an anarchist that humans are perfect, and that criminals will not exist, but that the tendency to cooperate would prevail under a natural order where the incentives would be strongly maximized to associate and assimilate versus the consequences of criminality such as social ostracization and the resulting economic vulnerability. It is only when it comes to government that anyone would even dream of treating their neighbor the convenient way they indirectly do so through the "democracy" that unfortunately justifies it in their minds. It is safe to say without it, there would be much less theft; much less crime; much less chaos and war; much less racism and social issues; much less highwaymen asking people for credentials and shooting them as they reach in compliance.

At any rate, it is not logically consistent to advocate for government (socialism) sometimes and not always; and vice versa, for the market (capitalism) to be free and competitive for one service but not for all. In seeking philosophical conclusion, I pledged politically that the "golden rule" already practiced in my personal life should be the same great principle we must apply equally to government, that there's never a time when initiating aggression against anyone for any reason (be it for school or military) is just and moral; and in the libertarian legal view, always criminal. 

The problem is not simply racism, but the actual physical aggression by police that “doing their job” requires. One could take a model-citizen, non-racist, and if they were sworn to uphold their oath, their job at the end of the day is law enforcement. Police brutality is not a racial problem; it’s a problem of the socialized police themselves. While the institutionalization of racism in the State is valid and exists, we cannot use the race-card to cover the inherent brutality of statism. Police monopolies, like any other, are not a "necessary evil” and we should reject the idea of them. 

The government exists because we believe it is necessary and legitimate. It doesn’t have to be this way; mankind can overcome this institution of violence. We needn’t be apologists of the statist-quo and accept this as our inevitable fate.
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vote details (4)
@funkywanderer ·
They used to hire people to be pillars of society and would pick peace officers for their honor and want to uphold justice, now they hire bullies who are good with a baton and intimidation. The police of today are not the police of yesterday and it's because of hire-ring policy decided at the very top. There are still good officers that get past the hire-ring process, but the system favors the person who is willing to throw you on the ground for not understanding their command vs someone who will de-escalate a situation to avoid confrontation.
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