HeavenlyPossum on Nostr: To most people, “crime” is a general signifier for bad things that people do to ...

To most people, “crime” is a general signifier for bad things that people do to each other.

In reality, though, crime is defined entirely by *violations of some legal authority’s rules*, usually those of the state.

Many bad things that people do to each other are perfectly legal: war, pollution, exploitation. Many good things are crimes: feeding the homeless or protesting genocide or self-defense against an abuser.

The Holocaust was once legal. Freeing enslaved people was once a crime. When we ask “but how would we protect ourselves from crime without police or the state,” we are asking the wrong question. There is no crime without the state, because nothing can be licit or illicit without the state’s legal authority.

What we need to ask is: how do we best address interpersonal harms? Fortunately, that has nothing to do with the police or the state.