Re:How much do we need the police?
by throwaway894345 on Thursday June 04, 2020 @01:12AM
(#23412713)
The natural state of people is to form into increasingly larger bands under increasingly hierarchical leadership whose power provides them with security and liberty. When you take away those power structures, everything indeed devolves back into chaos—this is the definition of a civilization collapsing. Anarchy is incompatible with security and consequently with peace and liberty as well.
'Completely' is a meaningless term. Animals behave selfishly in almost every choice (even in altruism) as part of the survival instinct. There is a question of degree and there is a distribution curve that hasn't been fully explored. For some people, some desperate or casual situations lead to barbaric (lack of a better term) behavior, when possible, for some portion of the population. Even with a police force, the curve exists and we experience the effects.