3 votes

Cops and Mises' calculation argument

Just like socialist factories in the USSR mindlessly produced millions of huge bolts that no one needed, because that is how they were measured and paid, socialist law enforcement mindlessly produces a vast amount of retribution for things that weren't even crimes, because that is how they are measured and paid.

Mises' calculation argument, in other words. They don't know what they are doing, because they can't know what they should do.

The tactic statist shills use is point to some system that has been corrupted by fascism/crony capitalism/socialism and claim this is the result of capitalism or else the natural state of affairs or otherwise unavoidable.

Then they ask, "how would a free society deal with this mess?" Explicitly or implicitly denying the real cause of the mess.

Since most people haven't thought it through, it can trick people.

People in the CCCP were (deliberately) terrified of what would happen if the state didn't provide bread. So complain all you want about the corruption but where else would you get food?

They had lived in a socialist agriculture monopoly for so long they couldn't conceive of how they might get food if it wasn't from the state. It was only when the state became increasingly poor at even this that it started to dawn on people the state wasn't very good at providing bread either.

This is what we have now in socialized law enforcement. People have been told they must put up with corruption and injustice, or else how would they be protected?

And today people are waking up to the realities:

  • They aren't protected. Property crimes are almost never solved and violent crimes are rarely solved unless against a state agent.
  • They are far more likely to be attacked by, and are daily victimized by, the people claiming to protect them than the boogeymen they claim to be protecting them from.
  • (bonus point) Often the boogeymen are manufactured.

There is really nothing the state can do about this except become more repressive.

State propaganda to keep public perception divorced from reality will fail more and more as the divide between the politically correct message and reality becomes greater and greater.

And they can't improve the product.

Socialist monopolies simply can't do anything except become increasingly inefficient. Even if some people in them wish they could.

Pig's don't fly.

Just like with the mail supplemented by private reliable mail, the law enforcement system only continues because private security fills in the breach. Private security works and does the job it should, keeps them safe, not punishes people after the fact. The poor can't afford it but they don't have a political voice. Also the poor must be victimized as an example of failure so the socialized law enforcement system can show how much more resources they need to do their work. Socialism grows through failure.

Retribution is not produced so prodigiously because there is a market demand for retribution, it's just the best a socialist system can manage, and not even that very accurately. The market demands security and that is what private security provides. That's what DIY security provides. If you don't want to be burgled or home invaded in the first place the police aren't helping you at all.

Socialist law enforcement can't know what they should do because the people they are supposedly 'servicing' have no capacity to cease being 'serviced'.

Socialism/statism/fascism is a cancer. It is made of people who seek resources. But without the ability for people to cease paying a socialist entity will simply grow and grow without purpose, except for the vague purpose of continued growth.

It has no discipline.

The only possible discipline is everyone. Which is just another way to say the only possible discipline is market discipline.

The cancer will not, and cannot, tell itself not to grow.

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