You're 100% right except for one aspect: that it is surprising.
The highest quality services are ones with multiple alternatives and low switching costs. Monopolies tend to provide poorer service and are more conservative because there is reduced incentive or pressure to change.
Police are a perfect example of this; democracy is a weak lever.
Edit: This is not inherently an argument against the provision of the police as a public good. It could be accomplished within democracy by stronger localization and flexibility in choice of provision (e.g. allowing neighborhoods to opt out / choose their own solution).
It would diverge into racketeering, and then into Feudalism with different companies holding control of different regions.
Although it'd be a libertarian distopia. Libertarians want it so badly but they don't really understand that it is how the world worked a thousand years ago.
To be fair, libertarian political philosophers often hold up law enforcement as a shining example of why they're libertarians and not anarcho-capitalists: They believe that there are some things that only government can even hope to handle in an acceptable manner.
That said, I can make no claims for the self-inconsistent mishmash of far-right reactionary and jingoist flippity-flap that tends to pass for libertarianism in a certain country that need not be named.
LOL, exactly why do you think we need so many licenses, etc.
If we don't have racketeering right now, how come individual police officers are allowed to keep the proceeds of any drug money they 'find'?
Also, don't most people pay taxes so the force 'protecting' them won't ostensibly take them off to jail?
When the police break the laws that are supposed to protect you is there any recourse for the police, or do they investigate themselves?
Exactly what we have is racketeering, however, we have no alternative forces from which to purchase protection.
If you read any book on the modern nation state it will tell you that the state is defined as the organization with monopolizes and projects violence over a given geographical territory.
If you read any book on the modern nation state it will tell you that the state is defined as the organization with monopolizes and projects violence over a given geographical territory.
You mean... a libertarian book on the nation state. ISIS for example controls and projects violence over a region, but no modern country is going to recognize ISIS as a legitimate nation-state.
If we don't have racketeering right now, how come individual police officers are allowed to keep the proceeds of any drug money they 'find'?
Because there are 12,000 individual police departments in America and it is literally impossible to police them all. The ridiculous decentralization of American police forces leads to racketeering.
Nations with a more centralized, top-down approach to policing do not have to worry about random 5-person police departments abusing the law in a small town in Nebraska somewhere. The fact of the matter is, random 5-person PD in the boonies answers to nobody, and such decentralization leads to racketeering.
Thank you for proving my point.
I know this doesn't sound right to you, but America is the libertarian wonderland you have been waiting for. And it leads to the problems you are apparently against.
And if you don't believe me, then please tell me... what action can you or I take against this behavior?
That definition isn't only used by libertarians, though it's possible that libertarians are more likely to use the "violence" formulation rather than the "physical force" formulation.
International recognition is possibly a separate issue.
According to some theorists, there are states that aren't recognized as states, but may still be states. They may actually rule territory (perhaps quite a stable way) but other states still may not recognize them -- most often because other states support a different claim to rule the territory that the unrecognized state rules. A familiar example in Europe is Northern Cyprus, where there is a state-like entity that has ruled a particular territory with no practical physical challenge for a long time, but almost all other states in the world support a different entity's claims to that territory and wish that the existing ruling entity would dissolve or be absorbed into the other entity.
Ok, so lets take podunk town out of the equation...
How about all the laws the FBI breaks?
How about when the FBI uses the exact same laws podunk town uses to seize money for their officers' personal gain?
How about the ATF selling guns to the cartels?
How about the CIA selling drugs to fund terrorism?
How about your police force being so centralized that your President believes he has the right to summarily execute any US citizen, you've centralized your entire justice system into the hands of one individual, judge, jury and executioner.
The US has centralized police and it's just as corrupt as many other decentralized forces. Also, many nations have centralized police forces that are corrupt. (Federales?)
Running away from your first argument eh? That doesn't strike me as very confident.
I'll take my win: you've already demonstrated ignorance in terms of Civil Forfeiture, and I don't have the time or energy to chase you on a wild goose chase all around US Politics in general.
Hint: Conspiracy Theorists always try the "shotgun" approach when they realize they don't understand an argument. Make a single argument, and make it count. Otherwise, I'm going to delegate you to the conspiracy bin.
Hint 2: My primary point was that policing is decentralized in the US. You've responded by... listing off a whole bunch of different police departments. There is no _single_ police agency in the US, we have competing, independent justice systems. Just as you Libertarians want.
The highest quality services are ones with multiple alternatives and low switching costs. Monopolies tend to provide poorer service and are more conservative because there is reduced incentive or pressure to change.
Police are a perfect example of this; democracy is a weak lever.
Edit: This is not inherently an argument against the provision of the police as a public good. It could be accomplished within democracy by stronger localization and flexibility in choice of provision (e.g. allowing neighborhoods to opt out / choose their own solution).