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elfsMany years ago (2004), Belle Waring quoted David Friedman on how to have a libertarian utopia:
Well, guess what? Because police departments benefit from the forfeiture of "criminal assets," the inevitable has happened: what qualifies as "criminal assets" has now expanded to the point where a motel owner who has had approximately 60 arrests out of the 125,000 visitors to his motel is now forced to defend his business against "civil forfeiture." Check it out: The United States vs. The Motel Caswell.David Friedman: Rights could be enforced privately, and imperfect but workable solutions to the holdouts in the railway case could also be found. "To justify taxation we need the additional assumption that rights enforcement cannot be done by the state at a profit, despite historical examples of societies where the right to enforce the law and collect the resulting fines was a marketable asset."Now, everyone close your eyes and try to imagine a private, profit-making rights-enforcement organization which does not resemble the mafia, a street gang, those pesky fire-fighters/arsonists/looters who used to provide such "services" in old New York and Tokyo, medieval tax-farmers, or a Lendu militia. Nothing's happening but a buzzing noise, right?
