What would happen to our society without laws or law enforcement?

reply to post by Silver Shadow


I sure hope you are wrong, because I do not want to be here if that ever happens.

n the early days of the Wild West, it was survival of the fittest, the stongest, the smartest, or the one who had the most bullets. For the most part people went about doing there own thing with little problems. When the more people arrived, a need for taming happened because groups of people started taking advantage of others. People simply grew tired of being shot at, roughed up, or stolen from. Laws, rules, customs, call it what you will but people will not go for mayhem.

The wild west was never called that until city slickers started selling cheap dime novels.

It was actually a very safe place and people got along with each other.

Because they all had guns strapped to their sides.

reply to post by bsbray11


I haven't yet finished the thread, but had to give you for the post.
Back behind the Pine Curtain they'd say 'nuff said!

Thing would change much.

Just ask yourself if they legalized murder or rape tomorrow would you go out and murder or rape somebody? I don't know anyone who would answer yes to that question. I you would answer yes do us a favor and down a jug of drano right now.

The truth is that anyone who wouldmurder, rape, steal, even drive recklessly is already doing it regardless of legality.

Should every law be erased overnight I'm sure there woukd some brief uptick in stupidty not unlike some kid turning 21 going on his first 'legal' binge.

Regarding the mythical gunslinging free for all of the Wild West, well, it's just that. A myth. Outside of television and comic books the American West was pretty tame and civil. Sure, the occasional lunatic run amok until he was killed or captured but how is that different from today? I'm sure every lawless group of people from Native Americans to hippie communes in Oregon have their variables. Just because there's no 'law' doesn't mean you have to sit there and be victimized by that variable. And just because there's no 'law' doesn't mean there will suddenly be more variables sprouting up.

Too often people seem to think very little of their neighbors (they're all murderous lunatics) or far too much of mans 'law' ( the more there are the safer I'll be).


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reply to post by SaturnFX


wow you are so right. good post

reply to post by thisguyrighthere
oOf course.

If you are right..........

And all road laws were completely suspended, nobody would ever speed, fail to indicate before changing lanes, or park somewhere that might inconvenience someone else.

The idea is just unthinkable.

And as far as vehicle theft, car jacking and road rage, that would stop completely.
Sure it would..................



[edit on 1/3/2010 by Silver Shadow]

Reply to post by Silver Shadow

I certainly wouldnt start driving recklessly. Would you? Do you? Why?

Theft and carjacking and other assaults wouldnt stop any more than they would increase. Police prevent no crimes. The best they can ever do if capture a criminal once the crime has been commited.


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Try leaving your car at a busy shopping center car park, with the windows down and the keys in the ignition.

Of course nobody would ever take something that was not theirs.

All I can say is, you are in for ONE HUGE SHOCK when law and order breaks down, and chaos takes over.

reply to post by Silver Shadow


I totally agree. As I was reading this thread, I also had thoughts about the direction we are heading. If there is an uprising or Revolution in America, we will witness first hand what it is like to have no law, although I think that there will be more "Good Guys" than Bad. There will be areas of safety and areas of destruction throughout the states.
Laws help keep the seams of society stitched together. Like others have said, there are too many sometimes and a lot that need to be examined again.
I never thought that I would ever see where we are as a nation and what is about to possibly happen. Whatever happens, I will be with the people who believe in the law, Lady Liberty and in the country that we have fond memories of, before everything went to hell.
America will never fail, WE the People will survive. WE must Survive!

Every organized society has had some form of organized law enforcement agencies. If you want to have an organized society then you need law enforcement agencies. The Ancient Greeks used slaves owned by the elected magistrates as a police force. The Romans had the Vigiles Urbani and the Urban Cohorts. The Moors in Medieval Spain had the Urban Guard.

The United States has had law enforcement agencies from the very day the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock when one of their first official acts was to elect a sheriff.

Great Thread! None of the usual bashing going on. IMO once the initial craziness has "died down" and the fringe has been trimmed as appropriate in the urban areas, I don't see too much difference in expected behavior than we see today: kids rebelling acting out, poverty induced crime... The difference will be in how it is handled by individuals acting in the best interest of "society", regardless of whether or not a formal legal structure exists.

Instead of having a cop with a ticket book out looking for driving infractions, drunk drivers and road ragers will probably be allowed to go on until some responsible citizen tags them for their deeds. Unless the miscreants go nuts and rip up every road sign, we'll still have guidelines for driving, a little notice of where the bumps and curves are in the road - and a lot more leeway about how we interact with those around us. Everyone should get to experience the Autobahn - in heavy traffic it is more of a symphony of logical, polite driving and not the kind of anarchy we experience on major metropolitan freeways in the USA or that we might expect with no laws to govern our behavior. BTW, you'll notice that nobody seems to give a flip about traffic laws when there's not a cop around.

Someone asked rhetorically if we Americans would all be polite with 270 million guns between 300 million people - well, if that's the way it is now, then sure why not! The big difference will be the open display of weapons won't just be for LEOs anymore... I think once the true numbers of gun toters become evident, there might be a certain sociological adjustment in acceptable standards of tolerated behavior and decorum. I think the consequences of acting outside the tolerated boundaries would generally result in keeping the peace. Raiders and marauders, gangs, kooks and zombies notwithstanding.

Potentially on the lighter side, There certainly wouldn't be any need for attorneys which could bring some real meaning back to the circus.


Great thread.

gj

Originally posted by ganjoa
Back behind the Pine Curtain they'd say 'nuff said!

You prompted me to do a search for Pine Curtain but I couldn't find much of anything really, not even a Wikipedia article. What else can you tell me about Pine Curtain?

excellent thread!!!!

i mean, what a ground breaking thought, that without laws, human beings would be even more out of control then they are now. hoooly crap. (clapping hands) i mean, this discussion should be starred, flagged, emailed to the president, and typed out and physically mailed to all the citizens of the usa, because, news flash, without laws, welcome to extreme chaos on so many levels. (inject obnoxious amounts of sarcasm)

ive never seen or heard anyone outright believe, and desire wholeheartedly to get rid of law enforcement entirely, but i have seen people in a fit of internet rage say, f cops, cops are scum, all cops are bad, the judicial system should be tossed out, blah blah blah, but i would bet my life that 90 percent of the u.s citizens at LEAST, if were all asked and given two examples each for having laws, vs a free for all, protect your own world, most would be like, yeah, i want laws.

people just dont like 200 dollar j walking tickets from some dick head cop who has nothing better to do, or silly tickets for something like having an open container, 8 miles over the speed limit, ect... nor do they like smart ass cops who take their day out on someone else, or corrupt pieces of crap who are getting way to emotional in a black and white situation, and they do something stupid like pump a round into the back of a teenager while he is laying on his stomach getting handcuffed, or pumping a hundred plus rounds into a car of an innocent man.

people get up and rage over that stuff, and they say stuff they dont mean. at the end of the day, this plague known as the human race is mostly a bunch of trash, deserving to get pimped around. completely naive to the world, we make up bull crap in our heads just to get by, judging people from our thrones when we have no room to judge. i could go on and on about how worthless most people are, but thats so blatantly obvious, it would be a waste of more energy then i have already wasted, on yet another pointless ats thread about common sense bullcrap.

lol at the original poster taking some ats post out of context to the point she feels there are enough people that literally think there should be no law enforcement. ha ha. no one wants a lawless country in the 21st century. how would they even solve murder crimes and rapes without law enforcement, a forensic team, ect..? ask bobby jo and them who they think might have done did it, while the murder speeds away through the mid west at a 130 mph in his stolen mercedes, cutting through states in no time, moving on to the next city to terrorize. come on now.

oh well, im sure this thread will die in 2 days, and fall down to page 2, where someone can make something else as silly.

yes we need the law
yes people are stupid and 98 percent of them are worthless
yes the law is crap at times
yes cops can be pieces of trash, waiting to abuse their power on any tick, and im sure there are more hot tempered ones then cool tempered ones just because the nature of their job forces them to deal with idiots constantly, backed by a system that sometimes doesnt even back them.
yes the judicial system can be arse backwards at times, and completely manipulated by those with money.
no we cannot function properly in the 21st century as it is now without the laws we have in place


the world we live in is trash. we would only be lucky to have a nice restart with a select few million, and let others pass away to reincarnate later as hopefully more useful creatures, then we could properly redo the laws, and our general politics, and everything all over again. but for now, we're all stuck in purgatory, but oh well, i still got my xbox, liquor, and bars.

Another thought.

If society is so well behaved, that no law enforcement or justice system is required.

Then no weapons would be required either.

Think about it........................

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


I appreciate your opinion and you have some good points. One of the reasons I started the thread was due to my thoughts the other day regarding my own actions. I would have been tempted before to agree with you about those of us that follow the laws doing so without them there too. I really suspect that while most of us would not be lawless, we would certainly behave differently.

More importantly, having personal knowledge of just how much crime there is (even in my small community), I am afraid that those that already break the law would quickly form gangs.

I think a large portion of our society does not realize the amount of crime and injury that the police prevent just by their presence. Also, how many lives do you think are spared every year by the thousands of drunk drivers taken off the road, minors in posession driven safely home, car prowls and home burgs interrupted and physical fights broken up?

Perhaps I should have titled the thread differently, for I really don't think personally that our laws and enforcement will just suddenly go away. I was most interested in hearing how you think you would react without it, and our society as a whole. I know that once I looked at myself and how even my daily tasks were affected by societies expectations and the enforcement of them....it made me wonder just how everyone else would act.

Thanks for all the great comments and conversation.

reply to post by bsbray11


"Pine Curtain" = geographically East Texas Bible Belt alternatively "out in the sticks" or "bubbaville" - humorous characterization.
I live 20 minutes from a major metropolitan (3+ million) area, but I'm definitely on the fringe of the pine curtain - We may be only fifteen miles from the big city, but the prevailing attitudes are about 50 years behind.
It's probably not in common use on the Internet except maybe in a few forums. Most folks don't self-identify as being behind the pine curtain simply because they truly aren't aware of the world outside it.

gj

Our society would create law enforcement again. That's all.

Same thing goes for government. If it got wiped out, a new one would evolve...for better or for worse.

We would actually be free. if your not harming anyone else or oppressing them or violating thier rights there is no crime period. The ancient Celts lived in relative peace and freedom for a thousand years without all the trappings of the state and was teh most sophisticated society in Europe of the time. Government is the worst perpetrator of crime on the planet. Government is responsible for more theft, plunder rape and murder then any other entity!

out these links:

Celtic system:
www.mises.org...

www.mises.org...

Society is a Blessing, Government is Evil. By founding father Thomas Paine
mises.org...