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$3k/hr to catch a kidnapper is not excessive. $3k/hr to go to a chili cook off is excessive.

Police in the US act as if they are royalty. Above the law when the break it, sacrosanct when their budgets are questioned. The one thing I've notice is when they're not around, annoying behavior increases (littering, traffic, etc) but society seems to keep humming along and it doesn't collapse. I'll take the annoyances over their cost and bad behavior any day.

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The interesting experiment is could self policing work. As in somebody reports a crime with a cellphone. People of the public collect evidence, evaluate surveillance, catch the culprit, force him via service boycott to face a judgement of his peers and enforce a house arrest.. Could that actually work.. The whole institutional behemoth replaced with apps, databases and transactions.

Vigilante justice has been tried many times. It doesn't work well either.

I dunno, seems like this scenario could easily devolve into some sort of Lord of the Flies mob rule situation.

But there are places in the world where you already have that. And where a citizen formed and normed parallel justice system is largely preferable to none. And the whole surveiled by the public and observed by machine with eternal memory might make the justice less volatile, emotional, add hoc.

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