> I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death. We

> I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death. Well, that's a fairly heinous definition of law enforcement working well as it also covers, say, fascist secret police. Society running smoothly should not be prioritized over society running ethically. This is the core of why you could consider police primarily protecting the property rights of rich people: a disrupted rich person is enormously inefficient in terms of capital use, but a disrupted poor person is just another burden on society without much effect on the economic health signals to which people refer.