In voluntary trade, both people are better off as a result of the trade, or it wouldn't occur. Positive sum game.
But sometimes bad people are
more better off being coercive. Otherwise that wouldn't occur either. Failing to take into account bad people or the consequences makes your ideas flawed.
And that's where the providers of security come in. Because they have +1/+1 arrangements with a lot of people, even Alice's +5 is puny in comparison. Bob asks them to come fix the situation, and they take that +5, and give it back to Bob, so that the use of force does not benefit Alice.
Oops, I forgot to mention that Alice
is the security provider. Too bad, so sad.
Well, in that case, all those other +1/+1 relationships dry up, as they wisely decide that Bob may not be the only one Alice tries this on, and another security provider is chosen (by Bob, of course) to extract the restitution from Alice.
As I said, market competition is the best way to hold governments accountable to the people.
You're still not thinking it through to the
end.
Let's do another step: This new security provider (let's call her 'Alicia') obviously takes a cut from the restitution for herself. She's pretty smart and realises that if it weren't for Alice, she'd be out of a job. Alice is pretty bad-ass so she doesn't take much convincing to do more coercion.
Alicia gets +1 for each bit of restitution.
Alice gets +0.5 for each successful crime.
(And since it's just security, why point fingers?)
They trade voluntarily.... Everyone wins...
Tsk... And you're forgetting that Alice and Alicia are not alone in the marketplace. There's also Alfred, Allen, Amanda, and Anna. If Alice only preys upon Alicia's customers, then it soon becomes clear that she is only preying upon Alicia's customers and everyone switches to one of the others to avoid Alice's predation. If she is not so discerning, then the other four have no agreement with her, and hunt her down. Probably revealing her arrangement with Alicia in the process. So now we have two criminals, and the guy who
really rakes it in is Gary, the investigative reporter, who made it onto national TV with the news of this story.
