Vigilantes have thwarted speed traps across three continents over the past two weeks. In south Essex, UK a speed camera located next to Canvey Fire Station was set alight with a gasoline-soaked tire. The £40,000 (US $60,000) device on Long Road in Canvey was destroyed, despite its proximity to firefighters who eventually managed to put out the blaze. Just one week before another camera was torched on the A127 in Southend bringing the total number of south Essex cameras destroyed in the past year-and-a-half to eight, according to the Echo newspaper.
In Queensland, Australia, members of the public grew outraged over a plan to install a new laser-based speed camera technology designed to be hidden behind bushes. During testing of the device on the Maroondah Highway in Croydon on November 5, vigilantes covered the camera in spray paint. On November 15, a three citizens tied a chain to the replacement camera and tore it from the ground with their white Subaru station wagon, according to the Herald Sun newspaper. Police have run out of replacements.
In Scott Township, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, vigilantes grabbed speed trap equipment from the side of the road at around 3:45pm. Officer Joseph Gillott was using an Enradd speed measuring system on Route 347 that day. After finishing writing a ticket to a motorist, Gillott turned around to find that one of his Enradd sensors was gone
We either have cooperation, or control.
Cooperation requires rational people with rational desires. Control allows you to live “I wanna do only what I wanna do,” but there’s going to be rules to keep the mob within the barriers. Cooperation means you have a nice society; control means the clock over your head is ticking down to third world, authoritarian status.
When you’re in a control society, direct revolution gets you branded a Commie or a Nazi and thrown in jail.
But retarding the Nanny State and its sister, the Police State, can occur through creative but simple everyday acts that make it want to move from your local area to another. Let it find a place where the inhabitants are so clueless they deserve abuse.
This enforces natural selection on the police state in turn, meaning that communities with a clue rise above ghetto-ridden, investigation-blighted, downward-heading places.