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A comment on What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills. Parent comment

Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by WalterBright on Thursday December 20, 2018 @05:23PM (#18729726)
Arresting someone suspected of a crime is not responding to initiation of force, because the suspect hasn't been convicted yet.

There are private police forces, we call them the "mafia", and people pay them for "protection". Sure, they're corrupt, but with no government funded police, whatcha going to do about it?

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by nybble41 on Thursday December 20, 2018 @06:22PM (#18730165)
> Arresting someone suspected of a crime is not responding to initiation of force, because the suspect hasn't been convicted yet.

If the suspect is eventually convicted (of something at least as serious as kidnapping) then that conviction retroactively justifies the arrest.

If the suspect is never convicted then arresting them is little better than kidnapping. If the police at least had a reasonable belief that the person they arrested would be convicted then it falls under the heading of accidental harm rather than negligence or malicious intent, which shields them from retribution, but that doesn't avoid the need to pay restitution to make their victim whole.

In short: Be sure you're arresting the right person, and don't do anything to them in the process which you'd find difficult to set right.

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Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by WalterBright on Thursday December 20, 2018 @08:55PM (#18730906)
Arresting someone is no joke and cannot be done using free market principles.

Enforcing laws is the point of government, and a free market requires enforcement of laws. This is why countries with a non-functioning government are an anathema to business, not a paradise.

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