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Here are a few questions you can ask yourself.

1. Do you think someone would be more or less likely to break into a house or attack someone if they assumed they were armed?

2. In general what provides better service and efficiency, private business or government services? Why would policing be any different?

3. Police are just a group of people. Why is this group uniquely able to provide security and another group would not? Why would we assume that police can offer this service better than every other possible group of people?

The concept of a world without government seems impossible at first but the more you think about it the more you realise that all the arguments for government quickly fade away.

The biggest criticism is that we would just end up where we are now with one monopoly in control but that hardly seems like an argument against anarchism as even in that worst case scenario we end up only exactly where we are now.

For" a New Liberty" is very in depth but if you want a succinct overview of Rothbard's view of the state then I would recommend reading the 60 page "Anatmy of the State" as a good starting place.

You can read it here.

https://mises.org/library/book/anatomy-state

freemymind 🇨🇭 1y ago

I thought of the legitimation of state power a lot in the last weeks.

One strong point is that the police works under the law. And when they do not behave according to the law a court has to possibility to bring them to the court and into prison for their illegal acts as anyone else too.

A just police corp always ever react, since all citizen need to be seen as innocent until there is proof against it. This means Police legitimized by human rights can never act preventive.

And when we already know that someone needs to have the most power. Why shouldn't it be legitimized by democratic rules?

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Discussion

Den Yellek 1y ago

You raise a lot of good questions and it can be hard to grasp how the police could operate outside of a government structure.

If you really want answers then I would say that the best thing for you to do is read the chapter of For a New Liberty that I linked to the other user.

In brief I think the biggest point that you have wrong is when you say we need someone to have the most power. All security organisations should have equal power. There is no need for a police with extra powers. You also make points on how police are held accountable but so often police are held to a different lower standard than regular citizens. Rothbard makes the point that free market security would be much farer and held to a higher standard than current public policing.

There would still be courts to hold security companies accountable they just wouldn't be monopolised state courts that can choose what to prosecute but would instead be private arbitration organizations.