What? An insurance company would compensate you for the loss, not try to track down the thief.

Not according to ACists in this forum, but be that as it may for now.

How is anyone making money by investigating and prosecuting the theft of a television set?

No one is. I just told you, it is cheaper to just replace the TV so that is what they'd do.

You're looking at it as crime occurs, citizen pays kind of deal. That's not how it works.

You pay monthly fees to a defense agency. If you live in a high crime area, you have higher monthly fees. If you live in a low crime area, you have lower fees. BUT, since most people won't be getting burgled every month, the security agency makes money from them without having to prosecute thieves.

It's the same with insurance agencies. People pay like $100 to ensure a 1,000 dollar item. The company makes money since it figures out how much it needs to charge since every item isn't going to be stolen/lost/whatever.

ALSO, most security agencies would be very focused on PREVENTION, as opposed to certain police agencies I know. Prevention is far more cost effective then prosecution.

Since the only crimes that could actually be prosecuted (without a state) would be crimes that hurt other people (since you need a plaintiff), anybody can try to claim damages for a crime. The judge then decides if there were damages and a penalty. Both sides would have to agree on a court that previously had offered verdicts considered just by both sides of the case. There is really only 1 crime and then severity of damages, although there are lots of pretty words for the specifics.

Sure you can, but as soon as you/they leave your island, anybody who wants to can kill you and has a free pass since they won't be prosecuted which is the same for the Somali Pirates who choose to live outside legal society.

Also, if people decide you are enough of a menace and get together a strike force, they'll have free reign to attack you and you'll have no legal recourse.

That's quite a problem, you realize.

As long as you can make yourself more expensive to round up and convict than the value of what you're stealing, the only disincentive to theft is direct force, which is easy to overcome by simply adding more bad guys (e.g. home invasion robbery).

It's open season for criminals in ACland on anything with a replacement value less than the cost of investigating and prosecuting the theft thereof.

Under current circumstances, yes, but not once word gets out of the business model the security agencies are using.

Are you making the argument that since the protection agencies can only prosecute so many criminals that crime will go rampant?

I don't see how that is any different than now. The police in a podunk town have like 2 cops. They could only really investigate very few crimes. Why doesn't crime go crazy?

Also, you glossed over my entire point about PREVENTION. It is far cheaper to prevent crime than prosecute. Prevention saves lots and lots of cost and the police do very little of it while private security agencies do far far more of it.

Exactly how big of a problem do you perceive this to be? I mean, given that you've acknowledged that the value of the items stolen has to be small relative to the cost of investigation and prosecution, is it really probable that criminals are going to be systematically burgling people's homes (more than they currently do)?

It's not a question of strict numbers of crimes per security agency, but whether there are categories of crime that cannot be pursued profitably. These will tend to explode.

As far as Podunk goes, if there was more crime there would be more cops since the state can just steal what it needs to finance them. Profitability is not a requirement.

I did not mean to gloss over prevention. I considered it as part of the cost.

Why not, since the burglars basically know they won't be pursued as long as they keep the value of what they steal under the cost of tracking them down and convicting them, which for organized crime can run into the millions?

Actually, no. Are cops really out looking for petty thieves now? ****, they hardly even waste time on auto theft, the idea of them hunting down someone who stole a TV is lol.

Yeah, I don't see that ACland is any more exploitable by mass petty theft (heh) than we are now. I think there are flaws in other areas that are overlooked or dismissed outright. Anyways ACists don't have to explain how EVERYTHING will work without a state, it isn't utopia as everyone admits. There are things that need to be discussed within ACist philosophy and I don't see it enough.

Basically what SL_72 said.

Podunkvilles around the country are wide-open for mass petty theft. By the time they recruited and trained and outfitted more cops, they could move on, staying one step ahead of the game. Why doesn't this happen? What is different in ACland except that the security firms would do more for prevention than current cops do so that should help deter some petty thievery?

Also, from an ACist perspective, economically everybody would be way better off (in our opinion LDO) so there would be far less people than would need to turn to crime to survive.

ALSO, a bit off-topic but, simply eliminating black markets would do wonders for reducing violent crime and the ability for gangs to recruit people and to gain money to outfit their operations.

Most organized crime spawned from black markets.

The problem that it is unprofitable to catch and prosecute petty thieves in ACland is not really a problem. If the frequency of petty theft starts to get out of control, the defense firms will be forced to begin investigating and prosecuting these crimes at a loss and will have to make up the losses with higher fees, etc. Eventually society will reach an equilibrium point of petty theft vs. enforcement level. That level of theft will probably be lower than it is today (as other posters have mentioned, cops don't do much at all to stop petty theft today.)

Yeah, the state is also capable of taking the teeth out of black markets but most states tend to prefer to fight them which leads to more violence and larger state expansion, etc, and in some instances these criminal rackets become powerful enough to overthrow the state. Mexico is a solid example of this I think.

While in this case scaling down the drug war is better off for society, it isn't necessarily best for the state except where it has to fear destruction or revolution. All states are not equal though. Some are worse than others. It does depend who is in charge. There will always be a struggle though. By no means is it possible to have the perfect actors in charge of the state to optimize efficiency, protection, etc, but you can do worse or improve them.

In your scenario, if Bob fires his defense/insurance co, steals then pawns a $5,000 TV, and heads for the hills, the victim's defense co can waltz into Bob's abandoned house and appropriate $5k worth of stereo/jewellery/cars + $x more for damages etc. They *don't* need to hire Tommy Lee Jones to go all fugitive on Bob's ass.

Secondly, gl to Bob with his crime spree in AC land. Gonna be a LOT of fully auto AKs behind every xth door. Only needs to be an AK behind every 2nd/10th/20th door to make Bob's play incredibly -EV/hugely -EV/marginally -EV if we assume a) each robbery is 50% successful & b) each successful robbery nets Bob a $5k TV.

Thridly, what exactly are organised criminal syndicates *organising* in ACland? There'd be no profits in peddling 'drugs' cos Coka-Caina would be doing this very cheaply. Gambling/prostitution would be covered by markets also.

This leaves only protection-type rackets, and gl to the Sopranos when big insurance cos have more guns/money than they do, and citizens have security cameras & AKs behind the shop counter. In fact, it's entirely reasonable to expect insurance cos to give reduced premiums to those that take steps to arm themselves.

Ideology. Religion. Etc. Like I said you would have any number of agencies competing to determine what is a right, the moral framework to defend itself. These are not criminal syndicates but the entire DRO model itself engaged in perpetual civil war amongst one another.

Good luck small agencies defending their people against the more powerful ones! Now this civil war wouldn't go on indefenitely as there would be losers but the agencies which emerge are not particularly different from states. The most powerful agency would have no reason not to dominate, a state model works for the most powerful agency.

Because criminals that organized (as opposed to the spontaneous kind) find it more profitable in the cities and usually don't bother with nickel-and-dime crimes.

I already said it: the profit motive. City police, the FBI, etc are not constrained by making their operations pay for themselves and then some.

Funny, I read that paragraph 3 times and still don't see any due process in it.

You forgot that Bob has an AK of his own and the element of surprise. And maybe a buddy or two similarly equipped.

Pretty much everything criminals were doing when and where those things were legal. And these were by no means all "petty" crimes. The bad guys need only make themselves more expensive to apprehend and convict (which can be a very high figure for the well organized enterprise) compared to the damages they are causing, and they're good to go.

Meh,

As I said above, there are no rights in ACland. There is only what damages you can prosecute for in a mutually acceptable private court. Therefore rights would be literally determined by the market. And since damages are the only thing resembling tangible, objective measures, only losses and damages would be litigated. You can't prosecute Bob for smoking pot because there are no damages to sue over.



War is expensive, the security firms that avoid war will be the one's that rise to the top, and the one's that avoid war will be the one's that make co-operation deals with other firms creating a massive network of co-operating firms that will most likely band together against a firm trying to use force for market share since defending each others market shares will be key for staying in business and they already all co-operate with each other.

Plus as mentioned before, any firm that uses violence against other firms will now have a very difficult time getting other firms to co-operate with them so customers are not going to feel very safe with them.

Where are these organized petty crime syndicates? Can you post some links or something? All the crime syndicates that I'm aware of are black market based and would lose most of their power without the black markets existing. I've heard of the occasional chop shop ring, but that's about it.

Yes there are a few random groups of dudes stealing some stuff, but it is hardly an epidemic. But as you mentioned, cops do basically nothing about nickel and dime stuff and yet there aren't massive waves of criminals profiting off this stuff. Why not?

But most importantly, you yourself admit that cops don't do jack about petty or even auto-theft despite not having a profit motive and the ability to steal for funds. Nirvana fallacy.

Also, maybe they would do more IF they had a profit motive.

I agree. But Neilsio or someone else will chime in and say a market cannot exist outside of the respect for certain rights. Meaning you need the rights first and only then can the market exist. This doesn't quite make sense to me. Rights will evolve in the market, that's what I meant by firms/actors will compete to determine what a right is. Not necessarily a bad thing, I'm neutral on this at the moment.

How many times do I have to repeat that the problem is not confined to "petty" crimes? Here are the (evil state's) RICO offenses to give you the general idea (not all of them apply to ACland of course):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rackete...anizations_Act

I'm not going to speak for Nielsio but IMO, ACland cannot exist without a very large percentage of the population believing in the ideal of no violent coercion and the only acceptable violence is in self-defense. Without those ideals, people will continue to search for answers to their problems through the state. Only when a large number of people believe in those ideals can ACland happen.

Perhaps this is what Nielsio meant.

Sorry, I thought we were specifically discussing petty theft for the past 30 or so posts. That seemed to be the topic of discussion. You were arguing that petty theft was too expensive to prosecute and I and others were showing that the state certainly doesn't do much about petty theft and explaining why we feel people would be better off about petty theft under ACland.

If you want to being up the big crimes, feel free to read my original hypothetical except Bob attempts to kill me. Same things still apply. What critique do you have of my hypothetical with attempted murder? Do you still feel that it is simply too expensive to track prevent and track down criminals for the free market to handle it? Because I've think we've pretty much killed off the petty theft argument, unless you'd like to continue it? Do you think even the big crimes are too expensive?

It was what he meant and said. Maybe I am merely mixing up some specific idea of "ACland" with "anarchy" because you can have the absence of a state. Do ACers think the state is necessary before people have these values, or that it is better than anarchy at least?

But you still have the problem with what the terms coercion and self-defense mean. These terms are not self-evidently one thing or another. We all have a general idea what they mean, I don't mean the words have no meaning... but specifically you have a lot of difference of opinion. Same problem exists in the state ldo and also leads to internal conflict or civil war.

Sorry if I keep going off into tangents, just streaming ideas as they pop in my mind.

Edit: People have to stop saying "X won't happen in ACland" but admit that it will, the difference being that solving for X is a much simpler and efficient task. Then we have to decide if this is actually true or not for issues like justice, defense, the "problem" areas. Presupposing that it is better does no good.

We can forget about "petty" crimes for now, thanks. Hopefully a new and improved iteration will do, as it's getting late.

The same rule applies of comparing damages to cost of apprehension and conviction. Bigger crimes are available as freebies to harder-to-bust criminals on the basis of strait up dollars-and-cents budget calculations.

If the damages are large enough, or the prosecution inexpensive enough, then the case goes forward. If the damages are small enough, or the prosecution expensive enough, then the security firm stays out (or loses money). Criminals know this ahead of time and can do the rational calculation.