Topic: Competing police forces/laws - page 3. (Read 2281 times)

How would they be compelled to pay for the police?

Assuming everyone is using Bitcoin, their money cannot be stolen at the point of a gun.

In large scale yes. No one had to really follow the rules, but if they didn't there were some people with force. You weren't forced to be a serf, but everyone had to eat... So alternatives weren't very good.

Anarchy is preferable to chaos/status quo.

Monarchy and slavery = anarchy?   ??

With no laws, all your left with is anarchy. The strong and rich will survive, the weak will perish or band together to survive. Its everything before the industrial revolution basically.

The gay haters would push through a scheme that allows them to compel homosexuals to pay for the very police and courts that enforce the laws against homosexual marriage, but eventually common sense will win out and their courts will hold that marriage equality is a fundamental right.

Open your mind for a moment and imagine a few hundred people on an island starting with no laws.

With no laws and no way to enforce them they start to run into problems, some murders, theft, property is taken, people build a house and assume they own the land only to have their neighbors think that they own a different part, etc...

People start arming themselves and try to protect themselves and their property but most find that they have to go to work, they cannot stay at home all of the time so a private police force offers to protect peoples' properties for them, some people like it and pay for this police force to protect their home from intruders. The police force is given boundaries of peoples' properties and disputes are worked out to come up with clear property lines.

Some people do not agree with the lines and go with their own police force, a few police forces pop up and pretty soon there are property line disputes between police forces. One guy says an acre is his while another says it is his. They both call out their police forces to keep the other off of their property and soon there is a stand off between forces. Both are right, they are protecting lawful property and a firefight between forces breaks out.

The next time funding for the force comes up, both forces raise rates for those home owners to deal with the extra cost of a firefight with the other force. After some time both land owners realize it is cheaper to come to an agreement on property lines than keep paying higher costs to the police. So they make compromises and the rates go down.

Now imagine one group of people really hates gays, they pass a 'law' against gay marriage. Basically they authorize their police force to go in and kidnap and punish a gay couple. The gay couple is paying another police force to protect their property from intruders (including police) and protect them from kidnapping. The gay law police come to kidnap and imprison the couple and the kidnap protecting police are called to protect them. Another stand off and possible gun fight ensues...

At this point the people who hate gays are told their rates will go up in order to pay for gun fights with other police forces. The battles are costly so the gay haters have to decide if it is fiscally worth it to have such a law. Over time it would not make sense to pay for gun fights.

After a while, the cheapest route for all users of the police forces would be to agree on what 'laws' to impose, and it would gravitate toward such a common agreed law of the land with very few subtle differences. You would also have to factor in people who do not use a police force and protect their own properties and lives. Any outside force used against them or their lifestyle would bring with it a cost that would likely not be worth the higher rate.

Thoughts? With no laws and people willing to pay for competing police protection, how do you think things would end up?