Law Enforcement

If you read the comments section of this article regarding the FBI and others busting and ex-CIA agent scamming people with an Indie Film studio, what emerges from the comments (almost always the best part of any article) is the perpetrators were fairly well known in Hollywood.  Which means at the same time law enforcement is late to the game, and the bad guys reputation was closing in on them anyway.

No doubt these people could go on for years taking money off the wealthy, and no doubt the occasional foolish working man, and spending it on themselves.  It is what our government does, and no one seems to mind.  Almost nobody would agree to give money to someone on the strength of a telephone cold-call pitch.  But there are enough such people to make it worthwhile to scam artists.

Too bad the telephone was invented in the era of intellectual property rights, which means one man could own the whole thing.  So the government stepped in and applied a bad aid to an atrocious wound, a theory of natural monopolies, such as the telephone.  The solution to the first problem the government created, was a second problem, that a natural monopoly like telephone service had to be allowed but regulated.  And in fairness, everyone would get a telephone.  What a mess!

Now we have a system where anyone can reach anyone else by phone, to the point where I just do not bother with a landline (but they are better in audio quality and service reliability).  The internet followed on so now we have mountains of spam.

If we had no intellectual property rights, we'd have none of these such scams.  The bad guys would not be able to get on the network, because your phone company would protect you as a customer.  Compton California has plenty of plenty of armed police and much crime.  Disneyland has no (visible) armed police and almost no crime.  Walt won't have crime in his town.  Private companies protect their customers.  Airlines allow their customers to be abused because they too are heavily subsidized.

Ronald Reagan said "If it moves, tax it; it it keeps moving, regulate it; if it stops moving, subsidize it." It's nice being controlled by the government, because you never have to worry about competition or failure.  The government picks the winner and losers, and once picked, you are set.

Why pay money to investigate, prosecute and jail these criminals.  In time they would cross the wrong person, who would offer tax-free justice.  The check on such actions would be community opinion, such as we see in this original case, where the ex-CIA fellow and his crew have a bad reputation.

Benjamin Franklin noted how Indians handled these matters, another example of anarchy, order out of chaos.

The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors, when old, counselors; for all their government is by counsel of the sages; there is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment. 


For all of their kindness and generosity that Franklin notes, he did not mention the fact that the Indians carried tomahawks.  An armed people are always a polite people.  We need to be far more polite.

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