May 29, 2025

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Lord Melbourne (1779–1848), British Whig politician, prime minister, in Lord David Cecil, Lord M (1954), Jay p.256

Preserving contracts is usually left to the courts. But what’s your suggestion for preventing crime? Incarceration, being after the fact, doesn’t count, except when the threat of it is part of an anticipatory crime prevention strategy.

In other words, protect the haves from the have nots, and the haves from each other.