I decided to move some discussion from this post up to the top level here. Specifically, Watoosh wrote: "Well, if violence is defined as initiation of force (which, of course, presupposes certain property rights), then I think Rockwell is correct..." Well, if we define cats as elephants, then many people keep elephants in their house. More seriously, firstly, violence is not usually defined that way. It's defined as, you know, violence, so that, say, someone may respond violently or non-violently to someone who aggresses against them. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say, for instance, "He punched me, but I did not stoop to violence in response." And, secondly, the libertarian usage of "initiation of force" is very offbeat. If I wander onto someone's meadow, most people would not say I had "initiated force" -- I mean, sure, I used "force" against the earth to push off walking, but that's not force directed against...
Every time a foreigner lectures me on how India needs a more enthusiastic and less apathetic police, I simply say that the last thing I want is a police that actually does its job.
ReplyDeleteBecause there are some VERY sincere police in some eastern regions here, and those regions are currently seeing anti-police uprisings by peasants. The law deemed many of them squatters on their own land, for appropriation for ambitious state projects. The police was enthusiastic to remove them by force. Now, the anti-police uprisings in Jharkhand or Madhya Pradesh keeps resulting in nastier things being done by both sides.
THIS is an argument for efficient police?
If they were more like the police in my region, they would have been a little more lazy and relaxed, and figured it would have been unreasonable to evict people from land on which they already lived. And hey, no peasant uprising in my region, while police and normal people get along fine.
Efficiency and good conduct are not everything, and sometimes a little subpar conduct of duty goes a long way in stable society.