xnfm adjacent
found poetry in the margins of this 1A spanish reader
To most people, โcrimeโ is a general signifier for bad things that people do to each other.
In reality, though, crime is defined entirely by *violations of some legal authorityโs rules*, usually those of the state.
Many bad things that people do to each other are perfectly legal: war, pollution, exploitation. Many good things are crimes: feeding the homeless or protesting genocide or self-defense against an abuser.
The Holocaust was once legal. Freeing enslaved people was once a crime. When we ask โbut how would we protect ourselves from crime without police or the state,โ we are asking the wrong question. There is no crime without the state, because nothing can be licit or illicit without the stateโs legal authority.
What we need to ask is: how do we best address interpersonal harms? Fortunately, that has nothing to do with the police or the state.