One of the interesting things happening in Britain is the formation of ad-hoc groups for neighbourhood defense. People have noticed that the police can’t defend them, and have decided to defend themselves.
This it is not a good thing for the State, which is why the police are strongly against it. This is potentially the beginning of the breakdown of the monopoly of state violence, and the beginning of the creation of militias. Normally, of course, I’d be aghast at the creation of militias. They lead to nasty sectarian strife, etc… and if they take off, that’s exactly what will happen.
But what they also are is a crack in the social contract between state and citizens, an acknowledgement that the State can’t defend its own ordinary people. And as you walk down this path, citizens start questioning their support for the State, period — whether in taxes, or in obedience to the State’s law.
Normally, again, this is a bad thing. Heck it’s a bad thing here, but just as with the riots it is a natural reaction to the current situation. When the State doesn’t do its job properly, whether that’s running the economy for everyone’s benefit, not just a few; or whether that’s maintaining the basic monopoly of violence (which includes basic social welfare so that the designated losers of the system don’t resort to uncontrollable violence), people start opting out.
States which don’t perform their basic functions become failed states. There are a lot of ways to get there, but one of them is to allow the highest inequality in the developed world to exist in your capital (sound familiar?). Those people lash out, you can’t repress them effectively anymore, others step up to do what should be your job.
Those who say there is no solution are, as usual, full of it. There is a solution, and it is obvious. Britain had plenty of money for the Iraq War, had and has plenty of money for Banker salaries and a housing bubble. A chunk of that money could have easily made sure this didn’t happen, but the choice was made to have rich bankers and bomb Muslims: those were Britain’s priorities.
But if you wanted to fix it, first you clamp down hard (you now have no choice, because you didn’t care about these people), then you offer them a future. You basically give everyone who wants a job, a job, put ex (or current) sergeants and corporals in charge, move any non-married men and women out of the city, and put them to work fixing and building things. There are always roads and buildings to be repaired, ditches to be dug, farmers who need help and so on. You hire out of work tradesmen, and they teach them skills. You pay them decently, you feed them, you house them, you give them skills. After 4 or 5 years, you start putting them back into the private work force, and you subsidize their first job.
This isn’t rocket science, it is dead obvious. Yes, it is expensive, but it is less expensive than the Iraq War or bankers bonuses. And it is a hundred times more humane, and will prevent further occurrences while improving race relations, your economy, your tax base and you workforce.
When people say there are no simple solutions they are, in the current context, almost always full of shit. What they mean is that there are no simple solutions which are socially acceptable either to the governing class or to society as a whole.
