Customer Virtual Governments - Would they need police?

Would customer operated virtual governments need police, and if so what sorts of powers would they have?

probably, if one wanted these governments to effect any change.
probably something punitive.

To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke from Parliment of Whores, in RL you have to decide whether for a given tax increase you'd be willing to kill your grandmother, for if she doesn't pay the new tax, she'll be put in jail and if she tries to leave jail she will be shot. Put another way, without enforcement powers, government is ineffective. Players have no enforcement powers in SL.

Parliment of Whores is an excellent read for those who wish to see the foibles of representative democracy in practice. The author approaches the subject with a stance of "suppose everyone in the US government was trying to do good and right" which makes for a rather charitable if incisive look at government. Even with his humorist's eye, O'Rourke comes to some startling conclusions which certainly changed my view of governance.

For those who care about such things, O'Rourke is a former hippie turned "republican party reptile" (in his words). To steal the book's punch line, in a representative democracy, the people are the "parliment" and thus the "whores" of the operation. Although he says it much better.

Hehe definately a good book, and an excelent read for those with any democratic political asperations especially within SL.

If the government has powers to enforce rules through variation of the game physics, there's no need for police.

If, on the other hand, you're trying to enforce human conduct (no swapping bodily fluids in the middle of the turnpike), you'll need human enforcers. And giving police powers to players without some pretty draconian accountability standards and heavy monitoring is a recipe for disaster.

Police are the last things you should make, after you have a constituent assembly, a parliament, a balance of powers, checks and balances, a judicial authority, democratic elections, the rule of law, and a lot of other stuff. A police force should embody the achievements of those previous difficult steps, not hobble those important steps through excessive force.

I wish I had a dollar for every time some @#$%@#$% flew up to me in the game and announced he was the neighbourhood police chief, or a former FBI chief from another game, or so-and-so-'s security chief.

Players in games, especially young male players in games, so often *start* with creating a police/military/intelligence force (aping RL governments whose inner workings they've been poorly educated about in their suburban warehouse schools).

They *start* with an already-defaulted abusive, excessively-kitted, enforced body, in a default macho, protectionist mode, that too often goes and wrecks havoc on others.

They can do this by promising, mafia-style, "protection". Protection from harassers, abuses, TOS-violators, losers, cheaters, users, and av-pushers.

In providing that "protection," they all too often end up being *exactly like* the supposed evil they came to conquer. We saw this in spades in TSO, where the evil Sims Shadow Government (with the accent on the "shadow" could take over all the top skills and money lots in the game by promising "protection" from the game's various lame mafias. It was merely a bigger mafia using the same nasty tactics of pressure, bulling, buy-outs, extortion, protection payments, etc. etc.

I won't even answer your questions about what kind of police force is needed until you can tell me:

1) what body will write the law on the civilian police force?
2) will the police chief be a civilian authority, elected or appointed?
3) is there an independent judiciary?
4) is there an independent and adversarial bar association?
5) is there a citizens' review commission that can examine allegations of police brutality?
6) what kind of police academy is there and what kind of training will it have?
7) what school of policing will you use, i.e. community corrections, "broken-windows," etc.

You see, too often in a game, somebody wants to import full-blown a body like "the police" or "the intelligence force" and role-play those groovay kewl functions of getting to beat up on bad guys and lord it over others.

But they forget that in RL when macho types strut around with that stuff, there are other people just as eager to play "parliament member" or "crusading human rights lawyer" or "citizens' review panel" or "judge" and help curb the excessive powers of the police.

Those sorts of institutions take a long time to make right, they have lots of cumbersome and difficult interlocking steps...and that's why we don't want governments in a game like this!