Good question Derek,
First, the weak are not protected today. The rich enjoy incredible
service from the political establishment. Look at the response times to
police calls in Pacific Heights vs the response times in "lesser"
neighborhoods. So the government does not protect the weak. The weak
today are more likely to be jailed or imprisoned than the poor. I have
many personal stories I'd be happy to share with you privately to
illustrate the point. As I said loudly during my mayoral campaign,
anyone who thinks the poor are going to beat the rich in City Hall need
to "wake up and smell the coffee".
In a society where conflict is more honest, there will be services to
deal with it according to one's ability to pay. In Europe, they have a
long history of Personal Insurance where someone who wants to do
business with a bank MUST have an insurance company rate their ability
to handle risk before ANYONE will do business with you.
It could be the same with defense...there will be contractors to serve
every level of income just as there are developers who will build
housing to serve every level of income if not discouraged by laws,
regulations or taxes. I saw that in Taipei...a city of 17M people with
no people on the street. The reason is there is virtual anarchy in
construction and the laws they have are mostly ignored or are not
enforced. There is something for nearly everyone who has any money to
spend. Those who have lots less find other alternatives because they
have enough to compensate less format housing arrangements with family
or friends and the cost of the places those folks live in are low cost.
There are no laws about how big a until must be or about how much
parking must be made available or how many "below market" units must be
in a building. So there's lots of housing and the prices are crashing.
The place we were renting in Taipei is now half the price we were paying
because of all the real fancy places being built around it so rich
people don't want to live there anymore. It used to be you couldn't find
a place. Tons of development has changed all that.
My company as an example deals with companies of any size but the
companies who have stayed with us the longest and are the most
profitable in the end are always the smaller and medium sized
businesses. For them, we are essential. For bigger richer guys, they
start with us but often get to the point where they think they don't
need us...whether that's a good decision or not. Sometimes its not and
they go out of business.
The point is there's money in service poor people. If there wasn't,
there would be any of those payroll check cashing services. It's been
shown in many articles about economics. There's no accounting for one's
perspective on Time Preference of Money. Which means there's no reason
someone can's serve people with a high time preference for money or
security and a low ability to pay.
Mike