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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Rent-a-Cop
Message-ID: <913@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Dec-85 16:44:18 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.913
Posted: Wed Dec 18 16:44:18 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Dec-85 21:54:10 EST
References: <883@mmintl.UUCP> <28200391@inmet.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 102

In article <28200391@inmet.UUCP> nrh@inmet.UUCP writes:
>
>>  In short, it would be an ideal target for organized crime.
>>
>>I am quite sure that organized crime would take over the private police
>>business in many areas.  I suspect it would come to dominate it overall,
>>although some areas might manage to remain free of it.
>
>The Mob has two choices then, if it wants to succeed in the rent-a-cop
>business: it can become honest and dependable enough that people are
>willing to deal with it (that's sort of the scenario in The Syndic)
>or it can become vicious and tough enough that it kills all the competitors,

	Or it could use a third policy. It could run a No-Holds-Barred,
results gaurenteed enforcement agency for a very high price. It would
be "reliable" in that if you paid for results you would get them, and
people would buy this service just like they often try to now, but
there would be no public police force to get in thier way. In fact
such enforcement agencies would form *without* Mob intervention, as
has been suggested.
>
>The Mob would certainly have other troubles in a Libertarian society though:
>it would be in danger of starving to death.
>
>Consider what I understand to be the three main money sources of the
>Mob:
>	o Drugs
>	o Prostitution
>	o Gambling
>
>My understanding is that the rest (leg-breaking, protection, fraud)
>are really minor adjuncts to these.

	In Libertaria the Protection Racket becomes *much* more
important, since there is no regular, independent police force to
provide the protection function. Thus they, and thier competetitors,
would simply change specialties.
>
>The "American Express Casino", to defend itself, would of course hire or
>form a security force emphatically NOT connected with the Mob.  As would
>7-11 and the bordello.  

	Actually, many of these places *would* hire hte Mob or an
agency like them, since that would give them powerful protection, and
allow them to control thier income more effectively.
>
>To answer one or two of your points directly:
>
>The same argument applies to banks and barbershops.  The problem with
>the argument is that part of what you'd like to buy from a police
>force is trustworthiness.  If "Don Carleone Protections, Inc" refuses
>to allow open review of its actions, it will find that folks are a
>little queasy about hiring it to protect them.

	Naw, if they say "you pay - you get" and then deliver a lot of
people with a large investment to protect aren't going to care
tiddly-winks for *how* they do it, this is the basis for the "mob"
"takeover" and it would not be limited to the current Mob.

>If it is exposed in the
>press, and takes military action against the press, it will find itself
>in a small war (the critical press is no more likely to hire 
>Mob-connected protection than is American Express).  The Mafia is not
>good at war -- they're good at extortion.   They'd lose.

	Yeah, it would be a small war, and the people hired by the
newspapers and such would not really be that much different than the
Mob itself, just a rival organization. I am not sure I *want* the
newspapers waging a war in *my* neighborhood! And the Mob is better at
war than you might think, they just limit it to *within* the
organization because they know that the *public* police forces and the
military could wipe them up if they were really gaoded into action by
that kind of violence. With a whole bunch of competing, relatively
small "police" forces they might just *win*.

> All it would
>take would be one large, well-trusted organization, such as 
>Pinkerton's, to offer competing protection in the neighborhood to make
>folks able to choose trustworthy service over the untrustworthy.
>
	I am not sure I really trust Pinkerton's all that much, back
when they *were* the law in some places in the West they had quite a
reputation for heavy-handed tactics, again not much different than Mob
tactics. Remember, Pinkerton's was and would be paid for *results* not
methods!

>Of course, it is possible that the Mob would conduct this aspect of
>its business scrupulously, in which case it would suffer from a 
>PR problem, nothing more.
>
	Considering that they conduct much of thier current business
"scrupiously", I don't see anything particularly unlikely about this.
You see it is largely a matter of your definition of "scrupulous",
they generally deliver what they promise, they just don't let anything
stand in thier way - that is they let the ends justify the means.

-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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