Keeping crime down ineffectively
Posted in Uncategorized on December 30th, 2009 by Abhi – Be the first to commentI heard on the radio yesterday, the latest in the long spate of “advertisements” which the UK government uses to educate its hapless citizens that leaving their valuables lying around the house in places that are easily observable is generally not a good idea. The general gist of their message can be gleaned from the following:
http://letskeepcrimedown.direct.gov.uk/index.html
Now the reader may be puzzled as to why I mention this scheme. Is it not surely the zenith of libertarian pedantry to be blogging about an issue involving a government scheme as defensible as this? Indeed, I surely do find its aims agreeable, it is surely in individuals’ and society’s interests that their property is not stolen by criminals, and this is one of the rare instances that the state’s interests align with those interests to an extent.
Of course, the reason why the state or government is eager that citizens are not robbed is the same reason a mafia or any protection racket would generally like to “keep the peace”, from other criminals unaffiliated with its organisation; it serves against the mafia’s own interests, perturbing the conditions that allow for its own collection of income to be as maximal and peaceful as possible. However, given that the government is a monopolist of final decision making over its territory, and by necessity its mode of achieving its ends is largely restricted to compulsion via threats of violence; it is hampered from utilising incentives that can only be achieved in a method of governance that could be achieved through voluntary contractual arrangements. The work of Hans Herman Hoppe is great at illustrating this principle of governance through private courts, insurance and defence, in the following essay.
We can illustrate this using the topic of this post as an example. The way in which governments, and therefore their police forces are funded is through taxation and debt financing. This is a system for the provision of security that is rather disconnected from those presumed to be its beneficiaries; the taxpayers. The incentives which allow for the best possible provision of services in a market scenario are considerably weakened, there is little choice and buying power the consumer and receiver of these services can exercise with such a monopoly can exercise. Hence, given the state is really only interested in protecting “vital interests” in preserving law and order, we see that it generally is not able to tackle and convict effectively the criminals that pursue small scale crime. We are expected not to “waste their time”, having paid for services that they cannot sufficiently complete, with the police concentrating mainly on limiting only heinous crimes like murder and victimless crimes like the possession and sale of drugs.
This is without regard to the problems that occur from disputes citizens may have with the state. If the mafia has committed a crime against you, and your only court of appeal comes from a part of the mafia, no sane person would argue that such a trial could be immune from bias, dictating the settlement.
In any case, this “problem” that is the topic of this article, insofar as it is not a consequence of the incompetence of police not being able to catch the criminals that perpetuate small scale robbery, thereby not providing a suitable deterrent to this behaviour; is one of citizens erring in protecting their valuables. This strikes me however, as something that would be a complete non-problem under a system of private governance.
Imagine that your security is not provided by the state, but by an insurance company under which you would be compensated for any damages to your person or property they were not able to prevent or correct. For such a company, providing insurance for those who are reckless with their property in the first place would be immensely damaging to their bottom line. Indeed, companies that did pursue such a policy could be expected to swiftly go out of business. Hence, in addition to providing and warning people with information relating to the risks associated with reckless show boating of their valuables; they would be able to issue a far more effective financial incentive for people to behave in a more responsible way, by charging higher premiums for their less risk averse customers.
This in many ways, could be reasoned to be far more effective in tackling this problem, than pouring money for years and years down a rabbit hole with a largely ineffective PR scheme.
The state cannot be in principle this effective, since it is not a voluntary entity. People have no choice over who provides their security, policemen are paid largely the same whether they catch criminals or not, and it is completely a lost concept that citizens would ever be redeemed on what property they lost. However, since everyone pays at the same rate for the provision of security, no matter how poor it may be; they would not have the same incentive provided by private system of security since they would be paying the same for security regardless of how careful they are of their property. To the extent they can “free-load” on the security services provided by other taxpayers, people will, and this helps explain why many people in modern society may be less careful in preventing their goods being stolen than they otherwise would be.