"Obviously. It's impossible to eliminate bad things completely. They would happen more without anyone providing security."

To me, this argument is based on how one views human nature. Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior.

"Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone."

I probably should have phrased my response better but at the time was stuck in a better way to do so. Surely there are places that have improved in people's lives but it isn't like those same improvements couldn't or wouldn't have been made without a state providing security.

>I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished.

What is your definition of serious? Sure, most people don't want to kill others, but what about non-violent crimes. What about fraud? Not paying taxes? Although you might argue that taxes are usurping our freedom somehow, I like having infrastructure.

While I haven't truly thought about it much, I guess my definition of serious would coincide with what government calls a felony.

"What about fraud? Not paying taxes?"

Maybe I'm just naive but I don't think the average person walks around conspiring to commit fraud but is discouraged by the fact they could go to jail if caught.

As for the taxes issue, in this scenario, taxes would most likely decrease since there would be no big security machine (DoD, DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA) to feed, or at least budgets would be slashed. On top of that, there could be systems put into place that automate the taxes and make the current way of doing taxes a thing of the past. The lower taxes and the automated system could make it easy to pay taxes as well as harder to avoid paying taxes.

> Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior.

You don't need "majority", you need just a handful of really really bad ones.

But the current system, with all of the "security" it provides, already has a handful of really really bad people that commit crimes. So why should I give up freedoms to try and stop these bad people when despite everything, crime still happens?

I'm not sure what you argue exactly. That policing has no effect on crime rates?

The modern state we have is here not to build Heaven on Earth, but to avoid Hell. Eliminating all crime is impossible, but without state intervention you end up with Somalia, Afghanistan or post-Katrina New Orleans.