This blog assumes the absolute minimum about BLM’s full range of intentions, strategies and activities. It is limited in its focus, looking only at police policy. It contrasts socialist policing with market competition in security companies.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) doesn’t spell out what police would be replaced with if they are defunded. It says “We call for a national defunding of police. We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive.”
BLM’s juxtaposition of defunding police with its demand for money tells us that it wants more money to be transferred to black communities, derived in part from defunding police. Apart from the call to defund police, this demand is nothing new, and nothing that hasn’t in the past succeeded in bringing wealth transfers to poorer people. BLM wants more welfare. BLM surely wants a say in who dispenses and gets the resources; it presents itself as the power that ensures the “right” investments that are supposed then to cause black people to survive and thrive. Money is advertised to be the thing that will enable their people to catch up in terms of education, jobs, status and income. Of course, it won’t.
What, at a minimum, does BLM want regarding police? Four years ago, before BLM went to DefundThePolice, it proposed Campaign Zero to reform police forces. Campaign Zero listed ten reform proposals. This year, it has listed 8 more specific measures to reduce police violence.
“A comprehensive package of urgent policy solutions – informed by data, research and human rights principles…” I argue that this simply maintains an elitist, socialist, non-market way of thinking. It’s pseudo-scientific socialism of a sort. The consumer is regarded by their superiors to be off somewhere down below, way lower than the professional ones who have the data and have studied it all. Only they’re not really down below, and the professionals are not really superior. The consumers are not inferior. They know what they want and are willing to pay for. They know when they’re getting a good deal and when they’re not. They’re supposed to be #1, not the central planners. Campaign Zero’s package can’t achieve consumer satisfaction. A market in competing security providers can do that. A market that allows for individual self-defense and allows for private defense associations can do that. This blog concentrates on the private competing company system.
BLM hasn’t taken its Campaign Zero proposals off the table. And no matter what policing might emerge from defunding police, it’s surely true that BLM would still want a system that met the objectives of Campaign Zero to improve policing. We can grasp what sort of police BLM might want by examining the Campaign Zero policy suggestions.
Campaign Zero retains the local police’s tax-supported advantage, that is, a service offered at zero price that’s paid for by taxes. The proposals mostly amount to micro-managing police and shifting control away from its current loci to the “community” as represented by the Campaign Zero people or the BLM people. The current socialist police system would be maintained. It’s only that the customers, as represented by BLM, would have greater influence on the services they receive. BLM wants democratic socialism. A policing monopoly would be kept on even though the old police system would be dismantled. The BLM socialists would run the operation instead of the existing city socialists, many of whom are already black.
It’s safe to say that although BLM is organized as a charitable organization, there are many people behind the scenes who are using it to gain power, position and their own wealth. That’s how socialism works, including the brands of socialism in our current political system. There is a pot of gold arising from taxes and people compete to get some of it for themselves.
Every one of the 10 reform proposals of Campaign Zero could be handled far better than by throwing their micro-management into the hands of representatives working in a socialist system. If a socialist committee were created to manage a community’s restaurant purchases, there would be nothing but endless squabbling and howling as a consequence. Concerning what restaurants to patronize, when, and by whom, and what restaurants to close or expand or redecorate or change menus, the decision rights over all of these decisions belong properly to companies (providers) who compete to satisfy consumer wants. Why should consumers of security services, we ordinary people, have our dollars forcibly taken from us and pooled? Why should politicians decide on the kinds of police services to provide? Profit-oriented policing companies (aka security or safety providers) will do a far better job of satisfying our wants.
Almost everything that Campaign Zero worries about will be automatically taken care of by a free market in security services. The 10 things they want are quoted below with my commentary as to why they’re not needed or why they are inferior ways of accomplishing the goal of keeping people and property safe. There are also many policy suggestions on one of their pages, and generally they all would evaporate if competing security companies were able to operate in a real market in which taxpayer funding of police didn’t disadvantage them. In fact, this feedback page amply illustrates the infinite varieties of micro-management suggestions when individuals make suggestions about how to run something in which there is no profit and loss structure and no direct consumer buying.
1. “End Broken Windows Policing” The appropriate level of this policy can only be found by a market-based discovery process in which consumer preferences are expressed through prices and company costs. This policy is not a 0-1 option.
2. “Community Oversight” This is an inefficient non-market (or socialist) device. Replace it with the “oversight” of every single person who buys security.
3. “Limit Use of Force” Companies will choose force levels that satisfy consumers but are also within the law. Excessive force creates lawsuits and raises costs. Failure to use enough force results in lower security and loses customers. (There are already far more private than public police, and there are manuals and courses on the proper arrest procedures and laws.)
4. “Independent Investigations and Prosecutions” Police companies should be subjected to the same kind of wrongful death and damage liability as anyone else doing a job. Companies will have to control these costs to survive. There is an optimal level of mistakes on the job, and it will have to be discovered in the marketplace.
5. “Community Representation” This refers to a policy of hiring that is like the demographic of the people being served. The appropriate hiring of a company will be determined like many other things by how well the resulting services and prices attract customers. If the customers care about demography of the police workforce, it will be priced in. There is no need to establish a non-market community representation policy.
6. “Film the Police” Surely can be left up to companies. Filming may lead to lower liability costs as well as higher. Companies will compete to lower costs, and if this means more and better filming, that will be the outcome. Deciding these sorts of things beforehand and from afar, without profit signals, is again the non-market (socialist) solution.
7. “Training” Companies compete on this dimension too. There is no need for BLM or others in the community to set themselves up as deciding on who gets what training. If companies fail to train people effectively, they can’t compete as well on service excellence. If a restaurant is too slow in filling orders, people will go elsewhere. People will discern better and worse security services, as they now do, only they’ll have a greater opportunity to affect the outcomes.
8. “End Policing for Profit” This does not refer to market-oriented police services. It refers to such procedures as excessive fines and fees, asset seizures and forfeiture, and quotas of arrests and fines. Some of these will be eliminated through competition, but forfeiture may be one thing that requires legislative action.
9. “Demilitarization” This is a call by Campaign Zero to end it and restrict purchases of military equipment. The optimal kinds of arms and their application are determined in a free market system by the prices and qualities of the protections provided. Companies compete on this dimension too. There is no a priori hard and fast rule that can be imposed for all places, times, communities and situations. If an armored vehicle is advertised as available for use and it brings in purchases (subscriptions) from worried consumers, then so be it. But if this raises costs without attracting customers, the company will divest it. The same kinds of calculations involve all sorts of other weapons and procedures, such as optimal patrols, communications of crimes, detective work, etc.
10. “Fair Police Contracts” This item attacks police union contracts that favor police at the expense of the public. Competing police service providers will end this. All it will take is one or two companies that only hire non-union labor. In order to have this situation fixed may take legislation that doesn’t force unions upon employers.
There is no need to dismantle existing police in the sense of destroying their existing expertise, systems and capital. Police can be privatized. They or portions of them or associations of local departments can be formed into a company that’s operating for profit. They can buy out their facilities or lease them from the local town.
We have non-market (socialist) police now, and that’s one big reason they are not satisfying all or most or enough of their users. Defunding them is a slogan, not a workable policy, because it doesn’t address what will replace them. It’s reasonable to surmise that BLM wants democratic socialist control over police and to reshape them so as to create the kinds of reforms that its subsidiary Campaign Zero calls for. The result will be socialist, subject to the faults of any socialist attempt to provide a set of services without profit and loss signals.
The socialists never propose market solutions because they think profits are bad and employers exploit workers. BLM, if it has not already, is going to come out for some sort of community control over police or policing, and this will be a socialist structure. It will lead to internal divisions and dissension. It will lead to a deterioration in services. If BLM intends to build up its own police, it will discover that there are significant costs of training that it has taken for granted, as well as a wide range of other costs. What it wants is for someone else to foot the bills.
6:33 pm on June 11, 2020
