I don’t know how big the problem is outside Britain, but here the streets are covered in litter. We have people picking it up, but they can’t keep up. We have campaigns to stop it, but they will never work unless the penalties are severe and we increase surveillance to 1984 levels. That would give us clean streets, but… well read 1984.

The reason littering will continue to happen is because we’re looking for the solution in the wrong place.

Policing the random dumping of rubbish will only be effective when the state gives the people the ability to police it themselves. That’s the only way it will be cost effective and it’s the only way we will ever have enough eyes.

A police state says: if you see someone drop litter, ring this special number to report them. People will do that until they realise the men in uniform don’t have the resources to do anything with your report. When they realise that they will stop reporting.

A properly policed state is there for back up. A state that is properly policed says: go tell that litterbug off, and if he threatens you we will protect you. In a well policed state people will have no fear for doing this because they know that kid wouldn’t dare carry a knife with him. They’d do it because every kid they’ve told previously felt ashamed.

When people start respecting authority again, littering will reduce significantly.

And people will start respecting authority again when they find some to respect.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 29th, 2006 at 22:48 UTC and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.