#DefundPolice

Sign at a George Floyd protest // photo by Taymaz Valley

It's funny to see so many people on the left suddenly become libertarians on this issue. Maybe The Atlantic can write an article titled "There are only libertarians in a police state".

Unfortunately, I doubt the left has thought too much about what this entails.

On the face, it seems like the Minneapolis city council went full anarcho capitalist, to completely dismantle the police department. But beyond the headline, the article state that the city will establish a "new system of public safety" instead of allowing a variety of private security forces to be established. Excuse my cynicism, but I imagine this will end up something like ending the police department to start a new police department. Unless they read up on some libertarian materials outlining the corruption, perverse incentive structures, and better policing methods instead of just focusing on race, I doubt the new system will be all that much better after the first few years when the dust settles.

While it's nice to just think "we'll just give the departments less or no money", it's not quite as easy as that, thanks in no small part to the entities and people that want to #defundpolice. Democratic politicians that have acted to expand police for decades are now suddenly reversing course, a step in the right direction, but it's unclear if they understand the full nature of the costs. Republican politicians, of course, have been expanding police, but I have little hope they would be anything but terrible on the issue (in what sane mind does someone think "people are protesting about police abuse...let's send in the military!").

One major budget item that is paid out to police officers are states' pension liabilities. Pensions are not usually accounted for within the police department funding, but accounts for a large portion of pay that goes to retired police officers. In many states, such as California, it is not legal to defund pensions. According to Scott Shackelford of Reason Magazine on Andrew Heaton's The Political Orphanage podcast, nearly half of annual expenditures on the police go toward pensions. Pensions are major compensation negotiated by the police unions, which has long been an ally of Democrats, though that now may be eroding anyway. Ask any libertarian in the past few decades about officer pensions and you'll hardly hear anything good come out of their mouths. Democrats and to a slightly lesser extent, Republicans, on the other hand...have been much more amenable to fat pensions that allow police officers to retire early on six figure salaries for doing nothing.

Another item to consider is that many local governments rely on policing for profit, whether through exorbitant fines that hurt the poor the most or civil asset forfeiture, which often just takes money and property from innocent people. While it's not just the Democrats or Republicans (it's both) that established these systems throughout the United States, this is the system that many of the #defundpolice movement have been voting in for decades and local governments are usually reluctant to give up sources of funding. It's mostly been libertarians fighting these issues, particularly the Institute for Justice on the civil asset forfeiture front.

The question of which laws they would like to go unenforced would also need to be answered. At this point, many cities like San Jose, don't even pursue open and shut cases like stolen smart phones where the victim can show exactly where their phone is. Does the left know exactly what this means? The police would be forced to focus on the most important and/or revenue positive cases and cut the unimportant ones. Gun control laws might not make the list of enforced laws. Business regulations like unlicensed food stands may not be enforced. If someone dares try to light a fire in their fireplace on a spare the air day, no police will be dropping by. It sounds great to libertarians, but it doesn't seem like the left would love this so much.

The crowd that wants to go full anarcho capitalist and completely remove government police is interesting. I'm willing to bet that there are many in this camp who just months ago have asked in a poor attempt of a gotcha question to a libertarian "how will you fund the police?" I doubt an apology is forthcoming.

Still, have they thought this through? If this is achieved on a large scale, two things would happen. Gun ownership would increase dramatically as people begin to realize they are now responsible for their own safety. This runs in direct opposition to the policies they push for. Another thing is that they would essentially privatize the police. Private security firms would expand greatly to fill the void left by publicly funded police. Again, this runs in direct opposition to what they typically align with. They usually see businessmen as the root of all evil (only being hyperbolic a little bit) and have rarely seen an industry they are not interested in socializing or regulating to oblivion. Guess what. They're not going to be able to regulate security firms from the government level with no police to enforce those regulations. The only regulations will be from market forces, a phenomenon they typically believe lead to greed and corruption.

I hope they succeed. I would love to see a massive social experiment where some police might stay roughly the same, some that have drastically decreased funding, and some areas with the police abolished completely. It would be a fantastic experiment. I just can't believe today's left is actually pushing for it.