To think that without crime, society wouldn't exist.

[Ihavetopushthepramalot]

A bit philosophical so bear with me! Without criminals there would be no need for the police service, most of the insurance firms,the prison service, the majority of solicitors and judges, pawn brokers and a proportion of the NHS. Which means that all of these roles would be made redundant. Which would increase poverty. Some of these people would go on to find other jobs, which would saturate the jobs market lowering minimum wage. So, hypothetically what would be the best solution? Not trying to shit stir just pondering.

It's not only criminals who use pawn brokers

Yeah I know, I've used them myself a few times! Was probably grasping at straws with that one. But still do you think that our society could still cope without criminals?

I think crime is much more expensive that you're taking into account, so I think that if crime suddenly ceased to happen, we'd actually have far more money sloshing about.

But I think it might be crime and social structures are linked on a very basic level. I think if we were all inherently peaceful we wouldn't have developed a whole lot of really complicated theoretical ideas, because a lot of philosophy/religion/medicine is trying to understand why people do bad things and how to stop them, I guess?

There'd be a big difference between crime never having existed, and crime suddenly stopping.

I don't think having no crime would have that great an impact on the NHS or insurance companies or pawn brokers or solicitors. There would still be flood, fire and lightning strikes, people needing legal advice for things other than crime. The jobs lost through having no crime would surely be a small negative thing compared to the improvements made by not having crime and the (economic and other) costs of crime.

But it will never happen. There has probably been crime since an early cave person got annoyed about another person's large share of food and decided to steal it.

I can't see why you think that without crime society wouldn't exist.

I don't think society wouldn't exist, just society as we know it wouldn't exist. Yes alot of money would be saved, but that money wouldn't necessarily be invested in creating new jobs. What jobs could be created without need? If the jobs that we have now would be superfluous, what would fill that void?

Yabu
This is nonsense - the cost of crime is huge.
If we had no crime those people would just be doing different jobs - our taxes would be much lower. We would be much happier
Any "crime" and "law" is a social construct - we have many more criminals because MPs just live making new laws - therefore more rules to break and more criminals.
No abuse, no theft, no murder,

I would be out of a job but would obviously just do something different.

maybe but you could also argue that any culture needs some rules in order to function in any kind of organised way, and there will always be some who decide to try for a free ride, this is harder to get away with in very small societies where everyone knows everyone.

In larger more complex societies the opportunities for crime/cheating are much greater and so we need a complex criminal justice system to process and manage these people.

But yeah police & thieves are interdependent...that just obvious!

Would just like to clarify that I don't think crime is a 'good thing'. I was just wondering how we would cope without it.

sure, but first we'd need to construct a culture such that there was no incentive to break the rules..very hard to envisage.

You could say that crime is a product of society, or do you mean that society is a product of crime, ie that social structures arise out of the need to make people conform..is that what you're getting at?

As has been said this comes down to basic philosophical questions about human nature and the 'social contract'

If you've eradicated crime, you've probably already got rid of poverty. And money. A la Star Trek.

We would have more energy and resources for engaging in positive, worthwhile pursuits - education, caring, art, science and so on.

I think the extinction of white collar, corporate, banking and political crime would save a lot of money that could be used to benefit the out of work police.

YANBU
They should legalise crime now

Definition of 'crime':

An action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law.

So, crime is entirely bound up with, and invented by, the offices of the state.

So, there will likely never be no such thing as crime, unless the world dissolves into anarchy and there are no ruling power structures left. Every government makes rules.

Even if nobody ever did anything morally wrong like murder or rape or paedophilia or fraud or all the rest, governments would still probably criminalise certain forms of dissent. At the more sinister end, the creation of 'crimes' like, say, 'insulting the Great Leader' is one of the best ways for governments to control people. Otherwise, how do you stay in power?

Do you mean crime as it is defined by society at any given time, or in a more general moral sense? If you mean "morally", you're absolutely right that society as we know it wouldn't exist. Our social hierarchies, land & property ownership, cultures and religions are founded on theft, murder and trickery.

If you meant crime as we define it here, now, this minute - you might want to ask yourself whether you mean "crimes" or "laws". If we didn't have any laws, there wouldn't be any crimes. But it would probably be a very immoral society ... depending on how you defined morality

Oooh, good xpost, McGee! And I must shut my browser this instant, or I'll be up all night teasing out philosophical basics ... Have fun!

Yes, certain jobs would go but there would be huge savings to the public purse so taxes could go down while at the same time more revenue could be used eg in the arts, leisure, and research fields. Which would employ more people.

On a personal scale, instead of buying door and window locks and installing burglar alarms I could employ builders to create me a lovely new bathroom.

Behave yourself, most 'crimes' are a construct of the society in which we live. You may as well say, 'Without our social structure there would be no criminality', which is true.

Crime does not begat law, & law does not begat crime.

We have a largely workable society. We may or may not agree with the minutiae of the strictures to which we have to adhere, but we (being the majority of rule-abiding folks) acknowledge that it's the best way.

& your original supposition that a lack of crime would cause poverty is utterly ridiculous.

FWIW, I'm a huge libertarian, I think many laws are complete nonsense, I like to think I'm a free human being & have volition in most areas of my life.

OP - If you want to do some philosophical thinking, I can point you in the way of a few good books.

Xposts with everyone there...

The majority if solicitors do civil work...

You could probably argue that without property ownership, there would be little crime. But since all basic societies have recognised property ownership in one way or other, thats nit much of an arguement.

Without criminals there would be no need for ... most of the insurance firms,

I don't have any figures, but I imagine insurance payouts as a result of crime only account for a small proportion of their business. Natural disasters, fire and personal injury claims will likely account for much more.

The majority if solicitors do civil work...

When I quickly glanced over this sentence, I thought it said "the majority of solicitors do evil work..."