There are thousands of small towns and cities all across the US that
budget for substantial revenues from fines and traffic enforcement in
lieu of higher taxes. If the citizens don't like it, they can elect a
new city council next year. Issues of racial profiling and police practice are also at issue everywhere. These, too, are subject to review by votes.
Why is Ferguson any different than any of these 10,000 other Valkanvanian hamlets?
St. Louis County has a total population of just over a million people
and ninety municipal governments. The city of Toronto has
over two million people and one municipal government. The City of New
York has eight million people and makes do with one municipal
government. It follows that each resident of St. Louis County has to
support roughly ten to twenty times as many police chiefs, mayors, and
possibly even city councillors as a resident of Toronto.
Since many residents of St. Louis County do not want to pay for this
much government, the cities have grown dependent on fines as "revenue".
Since fines apply to residents of other towns, a municipality that
sustains itself through fines thus derives a percentage of its revenue
from outside its boundaries. These municipalities thus find themselves
in a variant of the "prisoner's dilemma"; the first municipal government
to eliminate fine revenue will have to raise taxes, while its
residents will continue to provide fine "revenue" for the surrounding
municipalities. Even worse, some of these municipalities cannot sustain
their operations from their tax base alone, which means that not
everyone can cooperate.
White flight spawned the "system" of racketeering hamlets that operates in
St. Louis County; continuing racism accounts for the failure to undertake any sensible
amalgamation. Once developed, the system of racketeering hamlets remains in place
because of a prisoner's dilemma paradox that no hanlet can escape
on its own.
