Thursday, May 4, 2023

Is internal security a public good?

Thomas Hobbes seems too suggest that it is. He uses this to justify expansive governmental power. It doesn't really benefit individuals to provide such security, so if it is going to be provided at all it has to be done through the creation of law enforcement. Think of the settlement of the American west.

- Here's a quote from the Leviathan



Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is a war of every man against every man. For war consists not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, where the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known… so the nature of war consists not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition to war during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

Whatever is the result of a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same results occur in the time when men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them with. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious [large or spacious] building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.


- Who is Thomas Hobbes?