November 4, 2009 – 3:13 am by John

A man returns home from drinking one night to find part of his house on fire. He warns everyone, wakes them up, helps them outside, then goes back inside to rescue someone who, he had just learned, was asleep upstairs. Do the police officers at the end of the driveway (A) Refuse to help him do anything, (B) Tackle and restrain him after he’s helped everyone out of the house, which is now burning down, (C) Tase him, (D) Arrest him for no apparent charge other than resisting arrest, (E) Confine him to a police car and police station, preventing him from receiving medical treatment for his first- and second-degree burns, or (F) All of the above?

Since I like directing this blag at Statists as much as at other libertarians, I’ll give some advice to the former group: Stop trying to convince yourselves that monopolistic law-enforcement entities are moral, just, or practical, and have the sense to end this embarrassing charade of pretending that you support monopolistic law-enforcement systems because they protect people’s rights or lives or property better than free-market systems in a libertarian society could. When you look deep down, you know that doesn’t make any sense, and you realize it’s foolish and absurd to suppose that people who are attracted to positions of authority and power would rarely abuse that power when they themselves hold the highest, ultimate legal authority in a particular region.

Could you imagine that, if it weren’t tragically true already?! A group of clown-suited thugs tases, arrests, and denies medical treatment to someone who probably hasn’t committed any offenses and certainly not any serious ones, and the only body to which the victim has recourse is the very one that employs those aggressors and imposes the laws that prevent him from seeking third-party arbitration! In fact, to even demand arbitration by a disinterested third party would automatically incur even more penalties on top of his original “crimes”! This is how the State wants it. This is by design; it’s how the holders of power want society to function. A monopolistic legislation, enforcement, and punishment system could not work any other way. Put simply, this type of incident is not a bug, it is a feature.

When competition is outlawed, the incentive to do good disappears, and punishment for doing bad is nearly impossible. The importance of this simple competitive mechanism in making the free market superior to socialism cannot be overstated. A libertarian society’s assortment of insurance, protection, investigation, pursuit, and arbitration systems provided on the free market would necessarily protect individual rights better and punish malfeasance more harshly, swiftly, and reliably than any monopolistic-Statist system could. If you disagree with this, please read The Enterprise of Law by Bruce Benson and The Market for Justice by the Tannehills and then get back to me. Please don’t be so stupid as to suggest Statist claptrap for me to read, because I already experience the reality of your socialist hellhole every day.

Posted in Philosophy, Police/law enforcement, Socialism