Originally Posted by
r3volution 3.0
If you mean that the state cannot prevent all crime, that's certainly true, but no minarchist would claim that it could. If you mean that the state cannot even reduce the incidence of crime, that's false. The state can reduce the incidence of crime in two ways. First, criminals respond to incentives (many of them, anyway). If the state's actions result in a certain fraction of criminals being caught and punished, certain people who would otherwise have chosen to commit crimes will refrain from doing so, judging the risks to outweigh the potential reward; i.e. they will be deterred. This should not be controversial. Second (and this is really just a special case of deterrence) the state prevents a great deal of crime simply by existing. How's that? Its existence prevents the emergence of another state; and that process by which states emerge, which might be called civil war, is very ugly and involves much more crime than occurs under an existing state.