Police protection for non-taxpayers

[James I]

In episode 54 of Leonard Peikoff's podcast he states that people who don't pay towards the upkeep of the government in an Objectivist society have no right/claim to government services, but that the police would work to eliminate crime for non-payers for the sake of those who do pay.

What if there was an area made up of poor people who didn't pay taxes; wouldn't it made sense for the police to ignore such an area and isolate it except when their investigations led them there for the sake of the taxpayers, and also providing that crime didn't spill over into taxpayer areas? Isn't it altruistic to give free services to those people who didn't pay for them?

[Jake_Ellison]

In episode 54 of Leonard Peikoff's podcast he states that people who don't pay towards the upkeep of the government in an Objectivist society have no right/claim to government services, but that the police would work to eliminate crime for non-payers for the sake of those who do pay.

What if there was an area made up of poor people who didn't pay taxes; wouldn't it made sense for the police to ignore such an area and isolate it except when their investigations led them there for the sake of the taxpayers, and also providing that crime didn't spill over into taxpayer areas? Isn't it altruistic to give free services to those people who didn't pay for them?

Almost no one would want to stay in such an area (except maybe fugitives from the Law), and keeping someone there by force would be a horrific crime. The only thing setting up such areas would achieve is wastelands from which Somali pirate type criminal gangs could organize raids on neighboring communities.

[James I]

Almost no one would want to stay in such an area

But there are many bad neighbourhoods which people don't want to live in but they have to, at least for a while, because they don't have the resources to move out.

and keeping someone there by force would be a horrific crime

I meant that the police would limit their operations in areas where people don't pay for their services rather than imprison people in an area.

The only thing setting up such areas would achieve is wastelands from which Somali pirate type criminal gangs could organize raids on neighboring communities.

But communities with people who paid for the services of the police would be protected.

If the crime rate is low in areas where people pay for police protection then isn't it altruistic to give free services to those who didn't pay for them?

[DavidOdden]

What if there was an area made up of poor people who didn't pay taxes; wouldn't it made sense for the police to ignore such an area and isolate it except when their investigations led them there for the sake of the taxpayers, and also providing that crime didn't spill over into taxpayer areas?

It is not the job of the police to make that determination. The police would exist not as an autonomous law-making body, but as the law-enforcing component of a broader government. Their opinions would inform the policy-makers, but they would not themselves be the policy-makers.

[turboimpala]

What if there was an area made up of poor people who didn't pay taxes; wouldn't it made sense for the police to ignore such an area and isolate it except when their investigations led them there for the sake of the taxpayers, and also providing that crime didn't spill over into taxpayer areas? Isn't it altruistic to give free services to those people who didn't pay for them?

If all those poor people possesed weapons and were willing, able and legally permitted to defend themselves from crime, I think it would be a very safe place to live and they wouldn't need a police force.

I'd be more concerned about crime from the taxpaying area spilling over into this area.

[Zip]

What if there was an area made up of poor people who didn't pay taxes; wouldn't it made sense for the police to ignore such an area and isolate it except when their investigations led them there for the sake of the taxpayers, and also providing that crime didn't spill over into taxpayer areas? Isn't it altruistic to give free services to those people who didn't pay for them?

Um, no one would pay taxes in a properly governed Laissez Faire Capitalist state.

You are asking about the free riders problem, but with a voluntarily funded government, there is no free rider because no one is forced to contribute.

If I donate 10% of my disposable income to support the government I am not being ripped off by those that don't. I'm doing it for my value, not for theirs.

As for the police ignoring the poor area, well that is incorrect. It isn't the job of the police to only protect the rights of the rich it is their job to protect the rights of everyone living in the nation. We as citizens lend our right of self-defense in all but extreme cases of immediate danger to the police. In exchange the police accept the duty to serve and protect. A persons rights don't cease in a law abiding society when their money runs out, that would be the opposite of a "Right" it would be conditional, an allowance, arbitrary.

Edited April 24, 2009 by Zip

[sanjavalen]

Everyone's quality of life is improved if there are stringent enforcement of objective laws.

Having a "free fire zone" where the police do not enforce laws only creates a place where criminals can fester and eventually spill out into the areas where the police do have clients to protect.

Police would prosecute crime everywhere, because there is no effective way short of walling a place in to insure that no criminals from your theoretical (and, I would like to emphasize, highly fantastic) area where no one gives one cent to help with government functions will leave the area and prey on citizens who do.

[watson]

Australia

[John McVey]

Australia

Try again, mate.

Certainly, individual people back in Britain privately thought out-of-sight out-of-mind as you are implying, but the British government and their representatives here never acted that way. Australia in the penal years was not a dumping ground to chuck any old poor people or criminals etc as and when the government felt like it. It was the location of an actual prison system, complete with walled compounds and prison regimes etc, picked because this was the time when Britain was having its first population explosion fuelled by the industrial revolution and there was this newly discovered land that had hardly a soul in it.

Note that the prison authorities got very upset if the prisoners escaped from ("absconded") the actual gaol compounds proper or chain-gangs out in the field, even though they knew damn fine that not a one of them was going to get back to Britain any time soon. It was not at all an open-air prison using the land and seas as natural walls, as you are trying to imply. There was a definite demarcation between inside-the-prisons and outside-the-prisons, where the insides were treated as such and the outsides (where non-prisoner employees and others lived) were properly policed just the same as any urban and rural area.

On top of that there was a movement that got up and running right from the start as a bona-fide free-colonisation effort rather than being something tacked on to a penal colony. South Australia, unlike the other states, was never a penal colony, but was founded in 1836 by people who paid money to come here and start a new life (and before them were some whaler settlements, such as Port Lincoln). As had been prior planned and agreed to by the British Government before the first ship even sailed, the colony of South Australia became self-governing when the population passed 50,000.

JJM