Building a Utopia

This is a thought experiment about a concept of our day which has come up: "defunding the police department."  This post is not intended to present an argument for or against this position.  It's meant to merely explore this issue more fully.  I plan to write additional posts like this that explore more current concepts in a simple way.

There are too many factors, variables, emotions, etc. that go into this concept to even mention.  I like to boil things down to their bare essentials.  Instead of getting rid of the police department (which I think is the main intention of this concept), let's get rid of civilization as we know it for our thought experiment.

Let's build our utopia from the ground up.  At first it's just us.  Then we invite some trusted friends.  Everyone knows each other and gets along just fine.  No police needed.  Everyone is working doing odd jobs for our utopia.  Some, however, need to travel outside our village to bring back water and other odd jobs.  While someone is far from their house, thieves outside the utopia come in and steal everything from a house that was left empty.  So, the next time, the community appoints volunteers to keep watch over the empty houses while the occupants are gone working.

Pretty soon, the community realizes these volunteers are very useful in guarding their houses.  But the volunteers also need to eat so they start giving them a salary and they call them the "community watch."  Some within the community watch turn bad and start stealing from the community houses once in a while.  In fact, some members even starts to harass those whom they dislike and use physical force to "stop" them from committing imaginary crimes.

What's the solution in our thought experiment?  Is it to get rid of the community watch?  Is it to maybe to hire fewer of them?  This experiment illustrates a few points.  There is no silver bullet solution to anything.  Every solution has it's drawbacks.  It's trying to minimize the negative repercussions as much as possible.  This also helps boil things down to a more basic level.  Why was the community watch created in the first place?

My opinion is that we often look at the end result of a situation and try to fix things at that level.  However, we need to consider the entire picture.  We need to look at the possible negative repercussions to our solution to any problem.  The best solution is not one that does not have negative consequences but one in which those consequences are minimized.

We can never remove human nature.  We can't out-think it or create a system that completely takes that out of the equation.  Just as some humans are hard-working, some are lazy.  Some are good and have only good intentions and some are dishonest or plain evil.  Fortunately, the truly evil ones are the far, far minority.  Unfortunately, even a minority of bad actors can do a lot of damage.  Good, thoughtful solutions to contemporary issues consider all points of view and all consequences, intended or unintended.  These are problems that have existed as long as there are humans.

There is no silver bullet but only trade-offs.  Let us all be civil with one another, respect other viewpoints and come together in unity.  There are better solutions out there but none of us has the "answer."  It's through working together that we can come up with a better solution.

Photo credit: McMac70 (Flickr)