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But without Organized Crime “Government” What Would We do About Physical Protection, Policing & Crime?

by Etienne de la Boetie2, A Sample Chapter from our upcoming book: Voluntaryism – How the Only “ISM” Fair for Everyone Leads to Harmony, Prosperity and Good Karma for All!

Because everyone wants to be safe and secure in their homes, on the road, and when traveling, there’s obviously a market for personal protection. Right now this market is dominated by a monopoly provider. In the absence of a monopoly provider, there’s no reason to think that private companies wouldn’t be able to provide the same service, at lower prices, with more efficiency and without the abuses of the monopoly police.

How “Government” Ruins It

Legislating and Enforcing Prohibition and Victimless Crimes

The “Government” and their monopoly police inevitably make the problem of crime worse by trying to legislate morality and enforce prohibitions on peaceful people. Crime, by definition, has a perpetrator and a victim. If there isn’t a victim then there isn’t a crime. When “Government” prohibits something that people desire, that doesn’t get rid of alcohol, drugs, gambling or prostitution, it immediately creates a black market that is run by criminals that can now earn above-market profits that create a myriad of unintended consequences that aren’t the fault of the “drugs” or “gambling” but of prohibition.

Overdoses – Illegality forces both addicts and recreational users to roll-the-dice with potentially adulterated substances since they can’t buy pure drugs of a measured and certified potency.

• Violence and Crime – Prohibition raises the cost of addictive drugs astronomically vs the free market leading many addicts to turn to crime to finance their habit, AND because drugs are illegal, it attracts organized crime (vs. the local drug store) that settle their disputes with violence leaving the population in the crossfire. Currently the monopoly police engage in around $5 billion dollars a year in asset forfeiture where they are seizing vehicles, cash, property and real estate in the name of the war on drugs frequently without charges being filed.

• Creating Addicts – Perversely, the drug war actually creates a financial incentive for drug dealers to spend their own money to create addicts! If a drug dealer can give a teenager free drugs until they are hooked, then chances are that drug dealer is the only one the kid knows, so the drug dealer has a captured customer. Compare that with legally addictive alcohol where no similar financial incentive exists because it can be readily purchased anywhere.

• Creating Criminals – By arresting overwhelmingly peaceful people for non-violent victimless “crimes” and sentencing them to horrific prisons, they are simultaneously reducing the prospects that person will be able to find gainful employment while incarcerating them with real criminals and gangs.

Civil Asset Forfeiture – One of the ugliest, stone-cold truths of monopoly policing is that the police now steal more each year through civil asset forfeiture than all private criminals combined. Civil asset forfeiture allows police, federal, state and local, to seize – and then keep or sell – any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be stolen permanently by the government, and the Institute for Justice²estimates it cost $3000 to fight each case with no guarantee of winning. The ugly truth is that federal law enforcement and the government’s monopoly police frequently steal more each year than all private criminals combined.

Road piracy has exploded for law enforcement in 2019 (including the adjacent chart).

Road Piracy, Red-Light Cameras, and Photo-Radar Cameras – Equally as egregious as the police robbing the population through Civil Asset Forfeiture is the fact that the police are frequently robbing the population through road piracy, red light cameras, and victimless DUIs.

Road Piracy is defined as local governments using their monopoly police to excessively fine motorists to raise revenue for the government and police force. See the example of New Rome, Ohio (below) The problem of local and State “governments” raising revenue on their citizens tax-slaves is exacerbated by red light cameras and photoradar cameras that can be tuned to ticket every single speeder at speeds as low as five miles over the speed limit on roads where the speed limit has been set artificially low specifically to raise revenue.

While red-light cameras have been proven to reduce the number of right angle (T-bone) accidents within intersections, they have increased rear-end collisions. People brake quickly to avoid triggering the cameras. A study done by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute³ found that in areas where red light cameras were introduced, right-angle crashes were reduced from 14 to 40%, while rear-end crashes increased on Business/Primary roads by 169%. Needless to say, it doesn’t reflect well on a “safety system” when one type of accident is increased for the sake of decreasing another type of accident.

Finally the amount of corruption around these cameras appears endless. In Search Engine: “Red-light cameras and corruption” to understand the level of payoffs and bribes from companies to legislators and town officials to get these systems installed while bilking the motorists.

There have been dozens of cases where the systems have been downgraded in other nations due to yellow light not increasing light length overtime. In 2017 the city of Fremont, California pled guilty to shortening the yellow light from 4.7 seconds to 4 seconds in a scam to increase the red-light camera revenue in partnership with a private company Redflex Traffic Systems. A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2014 that the Rahm Emanuel administration quietly used a new, shorter yellow light standard that resulted in the city issuing 16,000 more tickets worth$8 million in extra revenue from 77,000 illegal red-light camera tickets that would not have been enforceable without the shorter times.

Victimless DUIs – While no one wants drunk drivers on the road, the cold, precise logic of natural law stipulates there has to be a victim for there to be a crime. Anything else makes the police the criminals who would be using or threatening violence on people who haven’t actually committed a crime.

The unpleasant fact of monopoly policing is that monopoly government police frequently wait outside of bars and restaurants and randomly pull over drivers that they suspect have been drinking.

If that driver has a blood alcohol level above 0.08 then the monopoly police can now charge tens of thousands of dollars in fines, penalties, court costs, and mandatory driver re-education programs frequently run by cronies of the local government. This author has a personal friend who received a victimless DUI and $10,000+ worth of fines in her twenties for 0.08% breathalyzer that ruined her financially. A subsequent time she was out drinking she made the responsible decision to take a nap in her car instead of drive. An officer woke her up, forced her to breathalyze (0.08%) and gave her another $10,000+ DUI because her keys were in the ignition. She had not recovered financially into her thirties.

Road Piracy and the Corruption of Small Town “Government” – The Case of New Rome, Ohio

One notorious example of road piracy that reveals the idiocy of monopoly “government” was the aptly-named New Rome, OH which had a population of 60 full time residents and a 15-person police force which wrote $377,651 ($658,045 in 2024 dollars) in fines in 2001 along a single stretch of 1000 feet of a busy local thoroughfare where the town dropped the speed limit from 45 to 35 miles per hour.

Before the town was dissolved for serial corruption, the average ticket was for 42 in a 35 mph zone BUT, according to the Car and Driver article Town Without Pity, “the real money comes from violations that elsewhere would likely merit a warning at most—no front license plate ($55/$95 in 2024 dollars), driving a commercial vehicle without a commercial plate ($105/$182), driving with headsets ($90/$156), with a cracked windshield ($55/$95), with a chipped taillight ($55/$95), without a rear-view mirror ($55/$95), with tinted windows ($105/$182), with dirt or anything obscuring a license plate ($55/$95), without a seatbelt ($60/$104), with loud mufflers ($55/$95), driving too slowly ($90/$156), backing up improperly ($90/$156), making an “unsafe” lane change ($90/$156), stopping past the stop line ($90/$156), no backup lights ($55/$95), a dim bulb over the license plate ($55/$95), making a U-turn ($90/$156), tailgating ($90/$156), and on and on and on. Pity the unsuspecting kid who hitchhikes ($135/$235). And many pulled-over drivers wind up with multiple citations (no seatbelts on passengers and kids without safety chairs are typical ones). “Court costs” can be tacked on, and there’s a $13/$22 charge for paying with a credit card.”

The makeup of the village council begins with Nancy Chapman, the wife of Charles Chapman, who had been mayor during the 1990s and ran the traffic court. The Chapmans’ son and daughter, Charles Jr. and Alisa Gibbs, have been on the council. Councilwoman Patricia McCormick is Nancy Chapman’s sister; and councilman David Tisler, who works for a towing service on Broad Street, is McCormick’s live-in boyfriend. Councilman Richard Plants is Nancy Chapman’s nephew. Christopher and Valerie Gamble have been on the council; Valerie is the daughter of Connie Tucker. Who is Connie Tucker? She’s the clerk/treasurer of New Rome.

Second, none of these council members were ever elected – they were all appointed, by one another. The last time a council member was elected by voters was in 1979, and even that involved a pair of write-in candidates.

… the village has a history of sticky fingers going back to its inception in 1941. Five clerks handling the citation money—much of it cash—have been convicted of theft. In 1989, mayor’s court clerk Patricia Kinder admitted to stealing $7000 of the ticket money. Then a police chief, Darwin Pelphrey, resigned after being accused of theft (including stealing a shotgun he used to go duck hunting). Not much later, a mayor and another police chief resigned after someone leaked documents showing they’d both used village credit cards to fill the tanks of their personal cars. Both were ordered to repay $2500.

As ticket revenue grew in the ’90s, so did the boldness of the thieves. A state audit for 1993 discovered $56,563 missing. The mayor’s court clerk, widow of the previously discredited police chief, pled guilty to one count of theft in office but didn’t do jail time. Then a state audit of fiscal ’95 to ’96—for some reason not released until 1998—showed another $56,456 unaccounted for. No one was ever charged, although two administrative staffers resigned. New Rome’s history has prompted the perturbed state auditor, Jim Petro, to call it “the per-capita corruption capital of Ohio.”

THE VOLUNTARYIST & FREE MARKET ALTERNATIVES

If the government’s monopoly laws, police, and courts disappeared tomorrow, the overwhelming majority of society would not turn to murder or crime. Not because there wasn’t an “official law” prohibiting it, but because most people aren’t murderers or thieves. Most people could safely get away with innumerable petty thefts today with little risk of getting caught: from their employer, from their colleagues, from their neighbor’s open garage, from their friend’s homes, and purses, but they don’t. Not because they fear being caught in the act by the monopoly police, but for a myriad of reasons ranging from religious beliefs, to strong personal ethics, understanding of karma, private security cameras, to fear of being fired or shunned from their social circles.

The fact that a bureaucrat wrote down stealing is wrong on an “official’ piece of paper is way down on the bottom of the list.

An Armed Population is Already the Best Deterrent to Crime

A study by researchers James D. Wright and Peter Rossi that surveyed nearly

2,000 incarcerated felons concluded that criminals are more worried about running into armed victims than law enforcement. Absent monopoly policing, all these protections and deterrents would still be in place and, in fact, would be strengthened because the “laws” that shield murderers and pedophiles would be off the books so the potential for legitimate retribution for getting caught in the act would increase the deterrent.

Private Defense Agencies

Because there is a universal demand for safe streets, businesses, and neighborhoods, there is obviously a market for private protective services. Indeed, the bureaucratic monopoly police do such a poor job today that private security companies flourish even in competition with a “free” provider. These companies often offer innovative services: home security systems, 24x7x365 monitoring, and armed response. Not only do these companies have similar training and equipment as the police, but in many ways they are far superior: They only act in defense of life, liberty, and property and have no incentive or ability to engage in road piracy or arresting peaceful people for victimless crimes. If the companies ever acted with the same tyrannical nature or disrespect common to the monopoly statist police, then they could be fired immediately.

Because you personally have the right to defend your life, liberty, and property you can legitimately delegate that right to a Private Defense Agency (PDA) to act on your behalf when you are not home. Because you don’t have the right to tell your neighbor what flowers he can smoke or whether or not he should gamble on football, then obviously PDAs wouldn’t have any legitimate right to act in those areas.

While it is hard to predict what innovations that entrepreneurs in private protection would provide in a truly free market, we can speculate based on the existing market for those services and how existing private security companies compete on price and quality today. Most people would likely pay a monthly fee for protection with options for an alarm system, insurance, and services that the monopoly police would never offer, such as walking a client to their car after hours or helping to change a tire if stranded on the road.

In a free market, PDAs would be forced to compete for your business and you would be able to evaluate them by their apprehension records and the amount of stolen property they recover, the amount of restitution they are able to achieve for their clients and their Yelp reviews. Where monopoly police are frequently rude, oppressive and even violent and murderous because of their “qualified immunity” those issues go away as being rude and oppressive isn’t tolerated in any other service business and PDA employees would be subject to the same retribution and penalties that everyone else in society would be subject to. In areas where someone is falsely accused then that person’s PDA would get involved and the market force known as the “discipline of constant dealings” would ensure that the two companies had policies and procedures in place to protect the rights of their clients and an agreed upon arbitration provider with a trusted name brand reputation. We will cover free market courts and free market prisons in successive chapters but the key point to understand is that in a free market and competitive landscape everyone’s actions are aligned with a positive outcome for all parties vs. the current situation of a monopoly provider making crime worse, bureaucrats who can’t be fired, and police officers that believe they have rights that others don’t and who are protected “qualified immunity”.

Road Piracy & Victimless DUIs

Without the monopoly “government” having the ability to criminalize things that aren’t really crimes, I.E. running a red light or driving over the speed limit, you wouldn’t see private road owners doing things like shortening yellow lights or dropping the speed limit radically to give more tickets. They would be incentivized to keep traffic flowing as fast and as safe as possible so they would likely enforce policies that have been proven to reduce auto accidents like slower traffic and trucks staying to the right and keeping the left hand “hammer lane” open for passing and faster drivers. This has been proven to reduce accidents by reducing “turbulence” caused by faster drivers switching lanes to pass slower drivers.

No one wants drunk drivers on the roads and there would still be a variety of ways of dealing with the issue absent monopoly police. Private road operators could still pull over and require drunk drivers to immediately stop driving on their roads, fine them for the offense and ban/permanently ban repeat offenders. Private citizens can pull over folks driving drunk, as this author has done, and repeat offenders and bar owners could be publicly shamed in their communities with pressure brought on their employers, landlords, churches, and universities.

Private Defense Agencies, including those in the employ of the private road owner, homeowner associations or others might pull over drink drivers and call them a cab or drive them home. Belligerent drunks who refuse to be helped might be video recorded for public shaming, escorted home by the PDA, or forcefully detained if on a private road with a policy requiring suspected DWIs to breathalyze or be prohibited from using their roads.

While these measures may seem less than perfect compared to many people’s preference for the harsh justice and confiscatory penalties of monopoly policing, keep in mind that many of the small percentage of the population that

drives under the influence continues to re-offend even in this environment with some offenders having as many as 30 DUIs so there is no magic formula, no matter how heavy the penalties. Finally, once a drunk driver crosses the line and actually causes property damage, injury or death, THEN Private Defense Agencies or individuals can act and arrest that person for the damage they have actually caused.

Detroit’s Threat Management Center – In a city where the average police response time is 5Xs the national average and the crime rate is skyrocketing the Detroit Threat Management Center is a private security company that provides security services for business and individuals ranging from walking business owners to or from their cars for $10 to riding shotgun on cigarette trucks that were getting hijacked at an alarming rate which has now dropped to zero. The company will help local residents for free when called and even has a public access television show where they teach self-defense.

Because the legitimacy of “government” is now being widely and openly questioned by the population, forward-thinking Sheriffs and Chiefs will already be thinking about how they can privatize operations in an era where monopoly policing no longer has the support of the population.

Reduce headcount to only what you need to protect life, liberty and property. You can completely eliminate officers assigned to narcotics, vice, school resource officers, and D.A.R.E programs.

Reduce intimidating, invasive, and extravagant expenditures such as armored vehicles, drones, sting-ray cell phone towers, SWAT Teams, and license plate readers.

Refocus the department on preventing real crimes: Murder, Burglaries, Rapes, and Robberies

Renounce qualified immunity. Your officers don’t get a pass on morality or facing the consequences of their actions.

Become a scholar on police privatization and the existing alternatives from private protection companies like Detroit Threat Management to private communities who are providing their own police services.

Plan for a transition year where tax revenue collected under the threat of force will be replaced with voluntary payments from merchants and private residences. Expect and embrace competition with Brinks, ADT, Westec and other private security companies.

Create partnerships with alarm system providers, insurance investigators, and other self-interested businesses.

Think and focus like an entrepreneur on delivering a quality service (crime prevention and restitution vs. retribution) where your officers are focused on protecting the customer vs. raising revenue off the population and victimless crimes.

PRIVATE POLICE FAQs

What about people who cannot afford protection?
Private security companies today help non-customers in the communities that they protect for free for a variety of reasons:
First, it is good marketing in the community. Second, taking criminals off the streets ultimately protects their clients as well. Finally, security guys like to bust bad guys! Many people will benefit as “free riders” where their neighborhoods are being patrolled by the payments of their neighbors, and overall crime will be reduced in a voluntaryist society by reducing the crimes associated with drug prohibition. There will be more economic opportunity so less people will turn to crime and more students will be educated by religious and private schools who will be focused on developing honesty and character vs. the government’s moral and value-free schools today.

What is to stop a Private Defense Agency from going rogue and taking over a neighborhood or town like a warlord?
Unlike the monopoly police, PDAs can easily be fired by switching providers. It is unlikely that a successful company would endanger their business and doubtful that the employees would go along with it especially knowing they don’t have the “qualified immunity” of monopoly police, would be facing an armed population and retaliation from rival PDAs protecting their clients in that particular area.

RESOURCES FOR A DEEPER DIVE

Articles: Free Market Police, Courts, and Law– Reason Magazine article by Murray Rothbard

Videos: Tate Fegley – The Case for Private Policing – YouTube Video (11:12)

Books: For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard (Chapter 12) and The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman

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