
Origins of the police - divs1210
https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the-police/
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HarryHirsch
I heard that the British developed the police as we know it today, as a
response to private security forces. Read up on "thief-takers", celebrity
thief-taker Jonathan Wild and the Macdaniel affair. That scandal was too big
to ignore, and public security was finally put under the auspices of the
government.

Somehow Libertarian circles manage to ignore this history lesson and expect
that this time around private police and the attendant power imbalance won't
lead to entrenched corruption.

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mc32
We already have private police forces. (security guards, police in private
communities, etc.) On a different note, we also have privatized prisons. With
re prisons people tend to not like them because of the incentive to keep
people locked up. I don't see how privatized police forces would escape the
same kind of criticism.

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hga
_All_ types of prison systems have that incentive. Just because government
prisons are non-profit entities doesn't mean the people running them don't
make out like bandits. I've read that the California prison guard union is
politically _very_ powerful.

Private police, though ... in an era where early death is relatively uncommon
vs. omnipresent, what's their incentive to take risks beyond what they're paid
for? That what can be problematic, there's many reasons self-help is outlawed,
but in the examples you give there's no immediately obvious problem.

~~~
mc32
I think the issue with regard to privatized prisons (and perhaps would-be
privatized police) is that there's a profit motive. A need to keep profits up.
Whereas public prisons can take the hit --ie. the losses are incurred by state
coffers. A private corp can't take that economic hit as well.

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exratione
If I'm reading the thesis correctly the modern state top to bottom monopoly on
mechanisms of enforcement of common law is a consequence of population growth
as it applies to two things, (1) crowd control and (2) attitudes towards
methods of crowd control.

But there seem to be holes. Unruly armies of tens of thousands have existed
since antiquity as insurrections, unrest due to demands for change, and
borderline rebellions. The ruling classes of the Roman empire had to deal with
this sort of thing on a regular basis. The size of the mob is not a new thing.

I think the change between old and new enforcement of common law has a lot
more to do with technology, specifically the development of firearms and their
ability to enable a small armed group to defeat a large unarmed group. That
changed the whole nature of insurrection and civil disorder. You'll see that
the advent of the police came right around the time at which firearms moved
beyond the crude, slow weapons of the Napoleonic era. I don't think that is a
coincidence.

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gausfather
You raise a good point about Rome. The patron/client model seemed to keep the
social peace for quite a while. Not unlike the social welfare system that is
described in the article. Additionally, I think the development of firearms
and cheap/easy to use weapons actually had the opposite effect that you
propose.

Specifically, the development of firearms led to a profound expansion of the
democratization of violence. This is the meaning of the quote, "God made Man
but Sam Colt made them equal."

Indeed, it wasn't the high technology that was important but how that
technology reduced the need to invest our only truly scarce resource, time, in
order to kill.

Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a
similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a
sword (or more commonly a spear).

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jessaustin
_Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a
similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a
sword (or more commonly a spear)._

I guess I understand this sentiment, but as someone who has shot many rounds,
many arrows, and also played kendo for years, it just seems wrong. Guns are
more powerful than the other weapons, but that extra power doesn't mean one
can't shoot and miss. (It also doesn't mean one can't intend _not_ to harm
oneself or others, and then fail in that intention, but if you don't own or
use firearms you don't need to worry about that.)

If you have a gun, you can kill on a whim. If you're skilled with a gun, you
can kill on a whim, reliably. It is just like a bow and arrows, in that
respect.

If you have a melee weapon, you can kill if you really mean to do so. If
you're skilled with a melee weapon, you can kill if you really mean to do so,
reliably.

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jsprogrammer
The real power is in how easy it is to 'activate' the weapon.

A gun requires, what, a few dozen PSI on a trigger that most anyone can
activate and the power you get out of it is the same regardless of who (or
what) activated the trigger.

A bow and arrow requires some knowledge about how to use it and enough
strength and coordination to fire it. Same with a sword, except you also have
to be within feet of the target.

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einhverfr
This is an interesting, if fairly, Marxist, view. I wonder though if there is
much thought given to the restructuring and unification of the ruling classes
which happened during the Reformation in much of Europe (where instead of a
hodge-podge of independent cities, lords, royalty, and church men often both
cooperating and at odds, one ended up with a supremacy developing in the hands
of factory owners, coupled with a very sympathetic and now highly developed
absolute monarchy). In other words, one thing that made Capitalism quite a bit
worse than Feudalism (Marx being blind to this fact) was that power was far
more consolidated in the former, and so the lower classes had fewer options in
navigating the power relationships.

What is the alternative to this sort of inequality? I would argue that open
source begins to show a way, insofar as effectively the worker as individual
owns the means of production (owns, meaning here, "has the right to utilize or
direct utilization of"). This sort of commons development has been shown
successful in many other areas, including manufacturing (google "Emilia-
Romagna Manufacturing").

It isn't Capitalism if everyone is a Capitalist (i.e. has the capital to start
his or her own business).

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dllthomas
_' I would argue that open source begins to show a way, insofar as effectively
the worker as individual owns the means of production (owns, meaning here,
"has the right to utilize or direct utilization of").'_

I would recommend reading up on the Cooperative movement, if you haven't.

 _' google "Emilia-Romagna Manufacturing"'_

I did, but I'm not sure I'm getting relevant results. Could you expand on
this?

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einhverfr
I am familiar with the Cooperative movement.

Regarding manufacturing in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, it tends to be
based on the same sorts of informal collectives that open source utilizes, but
in heavy manufacturing with many small shops working together on specific
projects to compete with large manufacturing firms.

The model is very successful there and it allows for large numbers of small
businesses to take on big businesses by working cooperatively.

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garrettgrimsley
Another view I've seen recently, it covers the same time period as the parent
article.

[http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/willmodpol.html](http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/willmodpol.html)

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Ollinson
A worthy contribution to this conversation would be Michel Foucault's
Discipline and Punish.

While it mostly focuses on the history of the Western penal system it also
discusses the history of punishment and torture.

It's a dense book but the first few pages alone are riveting enough to inspire
one to continue.

