[chipperyman573]

Day 2 may have been a lot better as store owners started to take matters into their own hands. We only saw the first day, which many people were unprepared for. A lot less people would be willing to loot if they had a friend who died after getting shot by a store owner with a shotgun. Not that this is really any better, I'm just trying to say that we can't really reach any conclusions from one day of this experiment

[matheusmoreira]

> A lot less people would be willing to loot if they had a friend who died after getting shot by a store owner with a shotgun.

Criminals are likely to organize in order to increase their chances of success and survival. Individuals will be quickly overwhelmed if they don't form their own organized defense forces. There's always a lot of extremely violent people protecting the "normal" ones.

[JPKab]

Yes people could organize their own protective forces. The shopkeepers could even pool their money and require that you pay in to be protected. We could call this a police force.....

[awb]

Pretty sure gangs would take over. Power abhors a vacuum.

[51Cards]

This. It would quickly devolve into a power struggle of who could amass the most strength. You only have to sample the mob era to see what would happen, where shop owners for example were paying for protection. In the absense of any form of control there will always be people that will take advantage and sway others to their cause.

[thephyber]

Yeah, but police units and private security firms are a form of "gang", just with different pay masters and accountability.

[throwaway894345]

Notably accountability to the people (in principle if imperfect in practice), which is an important distinction indeed.

[lowdose]

Oh the greeks! Great application of the quote.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)

[throwaway894345]

Vigilantism is better than a police apparatus? I don’t understand these takes.

[chipperyman573]

I didn't say it was better overall, I was just responding to "I expect day 2 would have been a lot worse." from the OP