In the news today: Govt takes aim at private security

If you care for your and your family’s safety – which you do – there’s an important article to take note of in today’s Business Day:

SA’s foreign security investors face curbs

Amendments could spark new row over investment protection

CAPE TOWN — The large foreign investment in SA’s R50bn-a-year private security industry could soon be under threat again if the government goes ahead with plans to limit foreign ownership of security companies.

…

The civilian secretary for police, Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane, confirmed that amendments to the act were being considered, but there were no details yet as there was not yet a draft bill and the process was at the stage of “finalising policy positions”.

She confirmed, however, that ownership of the industry was one of those policy positions.

The document concludes with an analysis of the motivation for “quotas for share investments”, saying “it is unclear from the private security industry regulator what has motivated the addition of the ‘quota for share investments’ in the bill, but speculation within the industry is as follows: ‘The private security industry has become one of the biggest industries of SA; there is an inherent lack of trust of the industry by the state; and individuals who do not rely on the state for public safety and order any more have begun to lose all hope of a proper functioning and reliable police service, and the next logical step is for individuals to refuse to serve and contribute to the state in the form of taxes for their basic right to safety, which they are not receiving’.”

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The analysis by the industry is spot on, and as we said before in “Strategically promoting public inefficiency”:

“The government must control the SAPS and judicial system, both which have as their main purpose the coercion and compulsion of citizens, of which paying taxes over to SARS is arguably the most important aspect.  Remember, without forcing people to use its paper money and forcing people to comply with tax laws, the state has no resources whatsoever at its command, excepting those it has appropriated before within a coercive state and with taxpayer monies.

The point is that while private policing adapt quickly to client demands, the state never will.  It cannot feel demands in its pocket, and as such, doesn’t care for it.  All it must do to raise its income is increase tax rates and the police force by another 55,000 and come steal it from you lawfully.

It is the state police that will round you up and prosecute you in the state judicial system when you refuse to, as a free economic citizen would, choose what to spend your income on and who to give your income to.  So paying taxes is made a law and the state over time brainwashes the public into believing it is noble to pay your income to thieves.

Unfortunately there is no way around this.  The state will never privatise its police force, military, or judicial system as it is these that maintain the status quo. Other than arranging a ratepayer association and withholding taxes until services have been delivered, there isn’t much that can be done to be able to not waste your income on ineffective policing and military “services”.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however.  As freeman said some months ago: “As government fails so people are quickly coming to realise that the private sector actually can provide everything people need.  The beauty of failing government service delivery is that it knocks us out of our state-dependent brain-dead comas and unlocks the creativity, ingenuity and solution-finding ability of the private sector.”

Better to have a failing and ineffective government so that private services can spring up and show people the light before the dangerous efficiency of a well-run government inevitably buckles under the leviathan it creates, leaving a bunch of state-dependent adults and politicians to sort out the mess!

“Instead, Human Action says, don’t fight for better public services, fight for worse public services!  And then fight for lower taxes so you can pay someone else to do it better and cheaper than your local branch of failing government.

Viva, freedom, viva.”

So here we go: more regulation of the private security is on the cards by first limiting foreign ownership.  Next step will be to limit local private ownership, and ultimately the industry will become government or -crony owned.

So where the market is coming up with solutions to a failing state, the state is getting nervous as it loses control and is fighting back with its legislated power to coerce and control.

This is a policy to ensure the state maintains the power to force the public to pay taxes and obey the state.  The private security industry competes with the state apparatus, which is one of legalised theft.

This policy is likely to do significantly more damage to South Africa than even the Protection of Information Bill over the long-run.

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Further reading: “A simple solution to SAPS corruption and harassment” published by HA in Feb 2010.