Government Causes the Crime
Part I

by James Redford

First of all, the police do not exist to protect you: the police exist to protect the Government from you. The police don't actually directly protect anybody except politicians and maybe movie stars, as well as themselves. For the rest of us they're just highly paid garbage collectors who show up after the damage is already done to collect evidence. In fact it is simply physically impossible for police to personally protect anyone unless they are there with them. Unless you have a police officer or bodyguard at your side, then only You can protect You. Indeed, the police aren't even legally required to lift a finger to help you if you are being raped to death on the side of a street--even if they are at your side (see Warren v. District of Columbia, D.C. App., 444 A. 2d 1 [1981]).

Indeed, it is not even in the Government's interest to reduce "crime": its incentive and actual practice is to increase "crime." More "crime" means more demands from the populace for Government to reduce this problem that it is largely responsible for causing (and hence willingness to further empower Government). If "crime" were ever to dramatically drop, this would be catastrophic from the viewpoint of Government, for so also would Government's whole rationale for existing diminish. Government's true incentive is to protect real criminals from you: by disarming you and making it essentially illegal for you to effectively defend your property or yourself--and this includes the criminals in Government especially. Government is actually responsible for causing far more crime than it "prevents" (assuming it actually prevents any, which it doesn't, it merely gets in the way of those who could have done the job better). Obviously there's a point at which the crime that Government causes reaches such a level that people revolt, but that's magnitudes of orders higher than what the crime level would be if it were not for the Government protecting the criminals from their victims and causing the crime.

Take riots for example. Riots are a complete product of Government. If property owners were allowed to kill rioters there would exist no such thing as a "riot." But as it is, the Government protects the rioters from their victims. And so it is likewise with all real crime (i.e., actions involving aggression against another's person or property). The businesses that were unharmed in the 1992 L.A. riots were the ones defended by the Korean vigilante-anarchists armed with semiautomatic rifles. Ironically, USA Today reported that many of the people rushing to gun stores during the L.A. riots were "lifelong gun-control advocates, running to buy an item they thought they'd never need"--and they were outraged to discover they had to wait 15 days to buy a gun for self-defense (Jonathan T. Lovitt, "Survival for the armed," USA Today, 4 May 1992).

If it weren't for the Government's police so-called "protecting" us, we would be able to protect ourselves just fine. What they actually do is protect the real criminals FROM us.

The only reason anyone need fear a rapist, for example, is because those same cops that "protect" us will brutally attack us and likely kill us if we attempt to effectively defend ourselves against such a criminal (see what happens if you start regularly carrying a gun on yourself without their permission). The only reason 99.9% percent of such (non- Governmental) criminals can even exist is because the Government protects them from their potential victims. This is the reason why the real crime and murder rates are the highest in places where the Government completely disarms the victims, like in Washington D.C., New York city, etc., and is virtually nonexistent in American towns that require gun ownership and in Switzerland where gun ownership is also required. As Prof. Lott and others have repeatedly shown, there is a 1:1 correlation between how well armed a population is and the real crime rate (i.e., "real crime" is aggressions made against another's just property, including the property of everyone's own body).

As well, the Government's War on Drugs has turned what once was an individual problem into a social problem by inventing new make-believe "crimes" that aggress against no one, while spawning a whole true crime industry associated with it (just like during Prohibition). The effect of libertarian legalization would be to make drugs an individual problem again instead of the grave social problem that it is today. As they say, we don't have a drug problem, we have a drug-problem problem. Were it not for the Government's War on Drugs, the gang turf-wars, theft, and other various true crimes that are associated with the distribution of drugs and the procurement of money in which to support habituations to drugs of which the price has been artificially inflated would not exist.

How many liquor stores have shoot-outs between each other? Yet when alcohol was illegal the black-market distributors of alcohol found it necessary to have shoot-outs and murders between each other on a regular basis. This was because, being that their business was illegal, they did not have access to the courts in which to settle their disputes; as well, because their business was illegal, this raised the stakes of doing business, for if they got caught then they would go to prison--thus it became profitable to resort to murder in order to solve problems which would otherwise lead to prison. And how many tobacco smokers resort to theft and prostitution in order to support their habit? Yet clinical studies have shown that tobacco is more habit forming than heroin. The reason you don't see tobacco smokers doing such things is because tobacco addicts can afford to support their habit. When Russia experienced an artificial shortage of cigarettes over a decade ago due to its socialist economy, tobacco smokers took to the streets en mass rioting--requiring emergency shipments of Marlboros and other cigarette brands from the U.S. in order for it to cease. If heroin or crack were legal it would cost no more (and probably less) than a tobacco habit, and so heroin and crack addicts would be able to support their habit by working at a regular job instead of resorting to theft and prostitution.

It may sometimes seem that Governments are bumbling or don't know what they are doing when they go out of their way to promote such crime, but if that were simply the case then one would expect them to make as many "mistakes" in our favor as against us--but if the history of Governments teaches us one thing it is that they almost always tend towards forever increasing their power at the expense of their subjects, and only ever give up power under unavoidable pressure. To understand why all this should be so, one must realize that Governments were not even originally instituted to protect people's property. Government was invented to be able to more profitably extort wealth from a conquered and enslaved populace. Originally warlords would just kill all the men of a conquered tribe and take the women and other wealth for themselves. Over time it was found that a better state of affairs would result by simply enslaving the conquered tribe so that wealth could be produced for them in perpetuity.

And to better comprehend why the incentive structure of Government is such that it is in its interest to actually promote crime it will very much help to clearly define just what Government is. But first, what is a definition? A definition should identify what is meant (i.e., what is being referred to) when people use a word. And if a definition is to be meaningful and useful it should identify the distinguishing characteristics of the thing (idea, place, object, organization, etc.) that is being referred to that differentiates it from all other things that are not that thing. The reason I bother with any of this is because over the ages Government has found it in its interest to use its Court Intellectuals to actually obscure the identity of Government -- associating it with family, church, and other institutions in society that people identify with in order so that Government, too, would come to be identified with these things that people value in their lives.

When people say such things as "I hate the Government" or "Our Government isn't worth the gunpowder to blow it to Hell" or "The Government says we owe them money," are they referring to a church, or a social club, or the institution of family? No, they are not. Although they do have a very specific idea in their mind as to what they are referring to.

So what is Government in the sense above? What are these people referring to? What are the distinguishing characteristics of Government in this sense which differentiates it from all other things that are not Government?

(When the word is used in the sense above) Government (i.e., a State) is that organization in society which attempts to maintain, and is generally successful at maintaining, a coercive regional monopoly over control of the law (i.e., on the courts and police, etc.) -- this is a feature of all Governments; as well, historically speaking it has always been the case that it is the only organization in society that legally obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

It is here that we find why Government's incentive structure (i.e., the internal logic of the system) is such that Government will always try to maximize expenditures while minimizing services. This is due to everyone's inherent disutility of labor combined with Government's monopoly tax income which is not connected to services rendered. To assign Government the task of protecting people's just property is to assume a job for Government which it is wholly unfit to do and which it was never intended for in the first place. An expropriating property protector is a contradiction in terms. And having as it does a coercive monopoly on ultimate judicial decision, it will naturally always tend to favor its own interests. If protection services were supplied on the free market then a business that is failing to provide protection services to a customer's satisfaction would loose that customer to another alternative. But since Government enforces a monopoly on control of the law and compels individuals to support it via taxes whether they want to or not, there exists no alternative that people can easily resort to without bloodshed. And since people are mis-taught from birth that Government exists to protect them they will naturally look towards Government for protection when danger to their person and property is viewed to increase.

Some have contended that Government is necessary in order for commerce and society to exist, and hence production of wealth on the market. This is not only ahistorical, it is also a contradiction. Logically, production must always precede predation (i.e., confiscation of wealth), otherwise there would be nothing to confiscate. This makes the market logically and necessarily prior in time to Government. As well, a truly Utopian notion is the idea of a "limited" Government. No Government remains limited for long. The minarchists simply posit a "limited Government" while totally ignoring the unavoidable incentive structure for it to become unlimited -- constitutions after all are interpreted by the very Government which they presume to limit.

Note:

*To the observant libertarians in the audience, I realize that saying "Government" does this, or "Government" does that, etc., is a reification, in that strictly speaking there exists no such thing as "Government," i.e., "Government" doesn't think, feel or act--there only exist people engaged in certain activities and modes of behavior that can be described as "Governmental" using resources (land, buildings, automobiles, etc.) that are put to that end. So simply substitute, if you prefer, "the ruling elite who control the Government."

November 2, 2001