It was routine for homeowners to hire armed nightwatchmen. In Nigeria, we had a Touareg guy, with a scimitar. In Morocco, our neighbor had guys with machine guns (which meant we didn’t need much more than a wall), but we lived in a nice area. Our neighbor had some relation to the King. In Uganda, our watchman had a staff (and a holstered pistol).
South Africa has so much crime, that even the poorest neighborhoods have broken-glass walls.
This was shortly after the Westgate Shopping Mall attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack
That was probably a cop in plainclothes. Private citizens don't open-carry as a matter of course in Kenya.
And, I'm not the one saying it. Nigeria routinely purges thousands of ghost officers from salary rosters and recently claimed it had 80k ghost cops. In a country of 200 million. So, it's a no-brainer why private security is a better deal once you have the means. They're available 24/7 and often have guns, and backup, and other tech.
The marginal calculus could be tipping, but imo less from issues of social cohesion and more from an abdication of enforcement that necessitates more guard labor in the form of private security.
Another partial explanation is just that retail orgs are overreacting and/or cynically crafting a narrative to explain poor business decisions or changing economic conditions.[2][3][4]
> “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call.
> “Probably we put in too much, and we might step back a little bit from that,” he said of security staffing.
> However, it’s not clear the numbers add up. For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021. One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.
> The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft. It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2023/12/23/24012514/police-crime-data-so...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopliftin...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli...
[4] https://popular.info/p/off-target
*caveat that crime data is really complicated, don't take the numbers too literally
edit: found it
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-08-01/why-cvs-a...
That might be true but it certainly hasn't made me feel good about watching people walk out with a big jug of wine, electronics, a case of toilet paper, etc. That last one provoked some curiosity - are their circumstances so bad that it's worth risking jail time or are there so little consequences that it's the equivalent of self check-out?
I mean, the entire reason Allied Universal exists is because security (and therefore "guard labor") IS NOT a growth industry. A stable or declining industry inevitably leads to consolidation of the type that formed Allied Universal.
US active-duty military personnel:
2023: 1,268,027 (378 per 100k)
2003: 1,434,377 (492 per 100k)
1983: 2,123,349 (921 per 100k)
https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1...
https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/defense/
Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Bailiffs, correctional officers, and jailers occupations: 16 years and over:
2023: 365,000 (109 per 100k)
2000: 395,000 (139 per 100k)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491500A
Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Police and sheriff's patrol officers occupations: 16 years and over
2023: 686,000 (205 per 100k)
2000: 567,000 (201 per 100k)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491900A
Population
2023: 339,996,563
2003: 291,109,820
2000: 282,398,554
1983: 230,389,964
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...
edit: Found it! Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Security guards and gaming surveillance officers occupations: 16 years and over
2023: 730,000 (218 per 100k)
2000: 621,000 (219 per 100k)
Did you know that during GWOT, US military personnel deployed to combat zones were more likely to be killed in a car accident after returning home than they were to be actually killed in combat?
Cops being abusive pigs doesn’t invalidate the logic behind the law, but then again it always has been the uneven enforcement that’s the problem
In any case in communism majority of theft was committed by the workers themselves, so any guards would likely be in on it anyway.
The real economic system and its currency at the same time was the massive web of connections and favours. How does one guard that?
My grandfather, who was a surgeon, was reportedly particularly good at obtaining scarce goods like toilet paper - most likely as a token of gratitude for the procedures he performed.
Communist societies would be more likely to set wages by government.
Friedrich Hayek wrote on the topic of defending private property as a right to assert control [1]. To me, this feels particularly prevalent in high capitalist societies like the US, where the bond between people is not shared tradition, culture, and values - but rather personal freedom.
[1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/friedrich-hayek-dictatorshi...
In countries where the clan is the organizing principle, in contrast, your family members act as a check on your behavior, but those family members do not count as guards. (If you live in the US, your family has less influence on you because you need them less.)
Cooperation _isn't_ the natural state of people, and we need to make sure we're increasing the benefits of working together and not just the punishments for crime. Right now, the benefits of the economy are accruing disproportionately to the wealthiest and we need to do something about that, because we're destroying the motivation for people at the bottom rungs to "play nice".
[citation needed]