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Overseers
by Jim Davidson
[email protected]

Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

On Wednesday 5 October, I had a conversation with a fire fighter. I gather that he works for a fire department in the Kansas City, Missouri area. Generally speaking, I am in favour of fighting fires. In a world of voluntary associations, I believe that the early 19th Century practise of having fires fought by the trained teams deployed by insurance companies and mutual aid societies would return, and that other cooperative groups, including spontaneous cooperation at need, would arise. The United States continues to have a great many effective volunteer fire fighting groups, especially in rural areas.

In the conversation, we talked about the police. I advanced the hypothesis that many people, seeing the police brutality at the 1968 Democrat national convention, at the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, and everywhere in between, believe that the police work more for the people with money and less for those without. In defence of this position, I pointed to the $4.6 million donated to the NYPD by JP Morgan Chase, apparently and by reports I've seen, for the express purpose of using the funds to crack down on the protests.

In his response, the fire fighter, an AFL-CIO man, pointed out that you can call around the Kansas City metro area and find that there are many more police, and also fire, personnel assigned in the poorer districts of town. I could insert here a long diversion about zoning, how it forms ghettos, and how KC has very little in really big ghetto areas compared to much larger cities I've visited. But I won't digress.

What I will say is that it serves the purposes of those in power to have more overseers wherever there are more slaves. And if you don't think the police are overseers, their tasers whips, their truncheons meant to beat people into line, then you have no clue that you are living on a plantation, that you are a slave, Neo.

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, and anti-war activist. His 1990 venture to offer a sweepstakes trip into space was destroyed by government action as was his free port and prospective space port in Somalia in 2001. His 2002-2007 venture in free market money and private stock exchange was destroyed by government action in 2007. He's going to Mars if he has to walk. His second book, Being Sovereign is now availble from Lulu and Amazon. His book, Being Sovereign, was just released as an ePub from Lulu.com. http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/being-sovereign-ebook/17792510
His business plan for Individual Sovereign University, with co-authors Shaun Lee and Harry Felker, is available here.
Contact him at indomitus.net or indsovu.com. Come visit IndSovU teams at gatherings in December 2011 in Florida, and March 2012 in Austin, Texas. Or join State Busters.

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