On a related note, I woke up today to the radio telling me about a man in Oklahoma that reported his wife missing when she and his truck were gone for a couple days, with no notice.
4 days and an expensive (wo)manhunt later, she was found in Corpus Christi, TX, shacked up with some other guy.
The huband got a bill for (undisclosed) tens of thousands of dollars for the cost of the (wo)manhunt, and the woman got arrested for unauthorized use of another person's vehicle. Unknown if the auto title had both of their names on it or not, or the insurance... but whatever.
I become more and more convinced that I really don't need to use the police to resolve any problems in my life.
No doubt. I wonder what sort of charges the husband would've faced had he not reported her missing, and she wound up dead.
Regarding the passage of manhunt costs on to the husband - I am reminded of an argument we had here when the jetliner went down into the Hudson River last year. All parties acted in good faith and the best possible outcome was had, and yet there were those who argued that "someone has to pay".
Vigilantism occurs when gov't does not hold up its end of the deal.
Between taxation, revenue-generating police practices(combined with ever-lower emphasis on actual police work), and the ever-more-complex and contradictory system of laws RevDisk mentioned, I'd say the government long ago lost interest in holding up its end of any "deal".
It's become us against them - not in a revolutionary or existential sense, but the average American is pretty much prey for his government.
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
