I know on this blog I often write about topics dealing with how society could function without government. With a little bit of imagination and critical thinking, it’s not often too difficult to think of situations where the market could find a way to solve the problem.

Today, though, I thought of something. How would you prevent someone from kidnapping another person and keeping them a prisoner for, I don’t know, ten years? How would you catch these criminals without government? People could just snatch up a young teenage girl and keep her locked up in the basement for years and years.

Without a government-sponsored police force, how would you protect your children from these predators? Do you think there’s even any way you could protect yourself? With government, there are laws that prevent someone from kidnapping and holding someone as a slave. And if you try, the police will come and arrest you. Then you’ll be tried in a public court and put in prison for a long time.

If we didn’t have all of that, there’s no disincentive to kidnapping. Without the police, no one could stop me from picking up off the street. And then there’s no court to punish me for my wrongdoing.

It’s clear—take away the police and other protective services that the government provides and we’d be left to fend for ourselves. We could never cooperate with others and solve these issues voluntarily.

I’d be very interested to see what Amanda Berry, Georgina DeJesus, and Michele Knight think about this.