This. If you allow capitalism to absorb the government itself, what you get is for-profit persecution. If crime generates income, be it through asset forfeiture

This. If you allow capitalism to absorb the government itself, what you get is for-profit persecution. If crime generates income, be it through asset forfeiture, private prisons or a law system where you can win by just making the case big enough the other side can't pay defending the case, you align the incentives towards finding crime where there is none. It's no surprise the US has the highest prison population per capita in all the developed world and nobody trusts cops. The US is an interesting experiment in what you get if you try to run a government on market forces, but I prefer to live in a country where police don't have to earn their own income, but are civil servants, tenured for life. That may lead to inefficiencies, fine, but at least the incentives are aligned towards helping out and preventing crime instead of generating more of it. I haven't had a single instance I can remember where I was ever scared by police.