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I think the point is that hackers and cybersecurity researchers, or lawyers and other lawyers, cancel each other out. To take yet another example, countries pay

I think the point is that hackers and cybersecurity researchers, or lawyers and other lawyers, cancel each other out. To take yet another example, countries pay lots of money to maintain nuclear arsenals that will never be used because their adversaries also have nuclear arsenals. If all nuclear arsenals disappeared, the only real difference to any country would be that they would be spending less money. So yes, your statement about the police is correct. But if there were neither criminals nor police, the situation would be the same as with criminals and police, only less expensive. I believe this is why they call it zero-sum. I don't see how taxation will solve the criminals/police problem, but it's fairly clear for legal services.

jacobwilliamroy 9y ago
Nuclear arsenals bring peace. Lybia's dictator was immediately assasinated as soon as he agreed to disarm. North Korea is constantly showing off their nukes because they've seen what happens to small resource-rich countries with no nuclear weapons. The U.S., China EU and Russia are all commited to peaceful economic competition because there is an understanding that the first war fought between nuclear powers will be the end of the human race. Removing nukes from the equation would drastically alter the state of the world. Nuclear buildup may look similar to the cat and mouse game of law enforcement but in fact they're two different games; the former cannot be used to reason about the latter.