Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Gina Norman" <gina.norman AT nortelnetworks.com>]

Title: RE: [internetworkers] Defeating the thought police

Michael C. said:
 
> It wouldn't be a hard change to make. Instead of calling 911 in an 
> emergency, you could just call your favorite security company, say a 
> subsidiary of Halliburton, who would come and do the same things the 
> cops would, but for a fee. If some homeless person was breaking into 
> your car, for example, they would just come and haul the bum
> away and stick 'em in their private jail pending trial. And there'd be
> a range of services, like for an added charge police would patrol past your 
> house regularly.

At first I thought you might be being sarcastic, but upon further reflection, I think you actually mean this... and I gotta say this sounds like a fabulously bad idea, unless, of course, you want Wal-Mart (or Time-Warner Cable or [insert your favorite monopoly here that has little-to-no guidelines about how it has to service customers] in charge of your safety.)

I think in the beginning, this idea would look super.  You'd have some cops who were tired of bureaucracy, etc. who'd go off and form their own swell little police force (woo hoo) and maybe some of the security agencies (like Pinkerton) would get into the game (though I'm not sure I'd want many of the rent-a-cops I've seen responding if someone were, say, breaking into my house and endangering me...not enough training, etc.).

But anyway, so it'd be fun for a while... Choose Your Own Cop.  But then suppose you're visiting a friend in Chapel Hill (you've contracted with a Durham cop-operation) and someone breaks into your car (or rear-ends you or whatever).  You now don't have any one to call... uh oh.  So you figure you'll just switch to one of the conglomerate cop-ops that has greater coverage.  (You see where this is going, right?)

I think the end result would be that there'd be *one* (ok, maybe as many as 2) companies who "owned" the market -- *all* markets.  And everyone (as much as they'd want to support "the little guy" would end up using them so they'd have someone to call in Paducah.  And this big Cop-Op USA would have *no* restrictions on how much they pay their ppl (and when all the little cop-ops go out of business, all the cops will be out of work, driving the cost to employ someone down); no restrictions on how/when/why they respond (what happens if *I* think some guy's harassing me and I pay the cops?  The way things are now, you can say someone's harassing you, but they have to be harassing you within the definition of the law in order for the cops to respond...); no restrictions on how quickly they must respond (anyone called the infrastructure side of Time-Warner?  Admittedly the installation team has gotten more timely, but the other side of the house -- the bad wiring to the street guys -- are still in the "um, we may get there today... or it could be tomorrow" camp); etc.

And this doesn't even begin to touch the Tragedy of the Commons problem.  Who's going to do "preventative maintenance" -- cops on the street kind of stuff?  What if there are three different companies that "patrol" your neighborhood, but one of them (the "cheap" one) doesn't come around too often?  Well, that's not going to work for the rest of the neighbors, so they'll write a stipulation into your covenant that says you must use Pinkerton or whomever...

Anyway, it's (as always) my $.02, but *I* don't want the people who are trying to keep me safe operating under a paradigm where cutting expenses and making more business is good for them.

-Gina