I'm unsure if this is an original concept of my own, or more likely I read about it somewhere and have completely forgotten the source. Please fill me in if it's familiar to you.
Often government programs create a reverse incentive structure, it's not that they are under less of an incentive to succed than the market, public funding and a lack of competition (actual or potential) creates an incentive to fail.
Imagine 2 school districts with ballot initiatives to raise taxes for their districts
District A, does an excellent job of teaching their students, no-one has any complaints
District B, is doing a horrendous job, is graduating kids that can't even read has tons of crime etc.
Voters will likely decide district A obviously is funded well enough, they are doing a great job, while district B must need more money to succeed.
This is why schools in more affluent areas do a better job with less funding. It's not a level playing field, but they at least have some competition since parents can afford private schools if the public schools fail at their task.
Police are under a similar negative incentive structure, if they actually put a stop to real crime then less officers are needed. Making sure crime is high is job security.
Thats why there is alot of corruption. The more problems, the more government is needed to solve them.
Why do u think they keep drugs illegal? Why does the land of the free is the nation with most fucking laws?
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
so how would you design a private security force to negate the reverse incentive?
All that is needed to correct the incentive structure is freedom to compete, a bad school loses out to the better schools, a security force that's impotent at stopping crimes loses out to a better one. This cycle continues over and over raising standards higher and higher (or costs lower).
You wouldnt have to. The free market would allocate just the right amount needed per demand.
How do you allocate enough jobs to ANY task, not just police?
Anyone wanting to join a polic force that already has enough amount of police must find another force to hire him/her or compete with other officers for a job spot.
you said the problem of police is that if there was no crime there would be no police.
why would companies in a industry compete with each other to end the existance of the industry?
the reverse incentive says that it's in the interest of competing police companies to have crime in a area so people will pay them to prevent crime. that seems to say police would be interested in working with criminals to drive up crime to keep the police industry in business
I guess it's possible that agencies could instigate crime against their competitors to both make themselves look better and to attempt to expand the market, but that takes resources in itself, giving a larger advantage to an agancy not participating.
The larger point though is not that teachers or police actively try to keep kids stupid or crime high, I don't think if that happens at all that it is very common, the point is that even if the individual teachers want to do a great job, the system is incentivised against it, there is nothing pushing them further. In the market the incentive to do great comes from the owner, and is passed down to each employee, and going up the line the incentive is real all their livelihoods depend on it. You have competition customers come when you do a good job, people get raises and promotions, they leave for the competition when you do a bad job and people get fired. Without these incentives, why not just be lazy?
When you have no competition you have no yardstick to measure this performance against, and when you're not selling your service to customers who come to you voluntarily you have no idea if you are providing them the best value, or a value at all.
while i don't think government should have a role in anything, i think there can also be the same reverse incentives in a free market.
one example could be churches getting 10% of a person's income don't have the incentive to tell people there is no god( or something else that could take away the funding).
Well if the private police force brought in crime, and crime rate went up, then I as the consumer will think they are doing a bad job.
I mean if there is an X amount of crime, id hire polic forces to lower this X amount of crime. It is upon voluntary contract that my pay either goes up or down according to crime, or it does not change at all.
You can contrast this with an electricity bill. Im not sure if it does work this way but, i assume some companies have policies where you pay a flat fee for any amount of electricity you use (so 700 dollars for high amt, or 700 for low amt). Or most companies will charge you upon how much electricity you use (100 dollars for X amount, 300 dollars for Y amount). It all depends on how profitable and efficient it is, and the most appealing to the consumer.
Many possibilities are possible in the free market.
i dont think it is reasonable to say there is always a potential police force able to give lower crime rates at lower prices.
allowing a free market does not mean a company will be able to step in and compete and create competition of better service for lower prices.
government compensation methods are messed up, so a private market would deal with things differently.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/nj_police_salaries_rank_highes.html this was a interesting article on how government can do things.