Why Not Better Self-Defense?

Miscellaneous General
1

I had a close, female family member brutally murdered many, many years ago. If you were to ask her parents, what they would have paid to spare her this fate, they would no doubt say everything they have.

So why is it with all of the technology we have today, especially in regards to satellites being able to pinpoint your location, easy communication, nano technology, and chips?

There could be all sort of parameters and responses preset that could bring assistance to someone in trouble or someone predicted to be in trouble. You could have things set to the highest sensitivity and it could call for help if your biological functions are erratic, it could respond to auditory clue words or taps and touches to your body or near an implanted chip. If you deviate from a common route it could send out a signal.

Who would respond to the signal? It could be whomever you preset it to. It could be a loved one. It could be a friend. It could be a helicopter of ninjas that could most times be there and rappelling from their whirly bird in less than 5 minutes.

Of course something like this couldn’t prevent all homicides, but I think that it could save at least 100s of lives per year.

There could be a monthly fee, based upon your services. If the ninjas are called there could be a large surcharge. Assuming a ninja call is never utilized by a client, I could see such services running anywhere from $100-$1000/mth, depending upon several factors.

If people truly love their family and friends, especially the more vulnerable ones, they’re likely willing to pay a fairly high price, if you can sell it very well. I can imagine a highly effective infomercial for such.

Why do you think that all these technologies haven’t been brought together in a preventive way? I know price is an issue, but with the effectiveness of a well-integrated system, it would seem that a low enough price would be available.

Some things I see hindering it would be:

Cost

Naivete: Things like this don’t happen to me or my loved ones

Naivete: We have the police

Entrepreneurs simply not seeing the market

I think this issue is relevant because it has to do with the production of security in a free-market

2

Isn’t this what Life Alert does already?

3

We do not only have new technology, we have statistics and crimilar psychology, ie- info.

The title says self-defense, but that is only the smallest part and the last part of what we can call personal safety.

This is an excellent site:

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/pyramid.html

4

This whole point that people would invest anything in self defense is just talk from emotion devoid of economic logic. People have limited means to acheive their ends, that is a fact of reality. Consequently people must manage their means to satisfy their preferences. There is no agent or technology that can escape this and even if there was and the person could be completely safe there is still the possibility of suicide. Only the individual can answer questions like: Why spend money trying to keep a child from being a victim of a crime when that child is dying from cancer or insists on living in a high crime area. Or how about determining how many scarce resources to devote to preventing crimes when the person paying has to eat, clothe, shelter and take care of their own health?

The current world has these decisions made by monopoly government which means that the proper amount of protection from crime, disease, accidents, etc can never be staisfied for more than one single individual.

A better world would be the completely free one where parents could contract with 3rd parties to provide protection from crime, disease, accidents, etc that best fit their own preferences given their limited means.

5

The problem isn’t not knowing when someone is in danger per se, Life Alert could help with that, response time is the real problem. A person can push a button that sends a signal to a security company, that doesn’t really help when someone is in immediate danger though. (I’m using immediate in the strongest sense of the word.) It would only take a criminal a few seconds to kill someone, no security company or police force can respond that quickly, unless the person has their own personal bodyguard.

6

I looked at life alert and it looks like it’s limited to in-home use.

As far as it being ridiculous that people would pay anything for safety - duh. My point was to illustrate how valued life and safety is. And nothing can give you immortality, of course.

Until you’ve been exposed to violent crime or until someone you love has, you’ll likely undervalue safety. It’s just like our current economic situation. I believe in stocking up on food, water, guns, ammo, gold, silver, etc. How many people in the US self-insure or invest in the ability to survive w/o government intervention? VERY VERY FEW. And if their stockes crash and their social security stops coming, they’ll realize how valuable preperation is and usually not until then, when it’s too late.

The biggest hurdle to a better security system and a more independent person is the government. I guess you guys agree? All the wealth they confiscate encourages people to settle for the government’s physical security, education, financial security, etc.

Could you imagine the government encouraging people toward greater independence, not only thru words but thru a freeing of markets? Uh no. They want you fully vested in them.

The main issues are

Being able to ask, signal or even unconsciously cry for help

Being easily located

Responders having an extremely fast response time

One thing that could dissuade others from victimizing you is them knowing that you’re part of this security network and even if they can kill you or victimize you before help arrives, they’ll consider the prospect of the response time being quick enough to pinpoint the assailant.

Itd be nice to have the technology of drones in private hands. But every resource that comes about, unfortunately, is usurped by the state and used against us.

What would be the libertarian view of private companies using drones?

7

People decide that their chance of being a victim are too low to bother paying said price for the system. Am I missing something here?