Austin’s Homeless: Laissez Faire in a Mixed Economy

Here in Austin, Texas, the reductio ad absurdum of the city government’s policies toward the homeless is that you (and all your friends) can take over any public space for your own use. The city council and mayor have declared de facto privatization. I want a school. They are not being used now and I can make good use of one. Once in, I will be hard to extricate because schools are defensible fortresses. (See, for example, The Girl Who Owned a City.) Perhaps you would like a park or a sports arena. Just find one that is not being used and make yourself a home. 

 

Menchaca and Ben White Jan 2020 and June 2020 

Austin Statesman

City Council rescinds measures that critics say criminalize homelessness

By Elizabeth Findell 

Posted Jun 21, 2019 at 3:36 AM

Updated Jun 21, 2019 at 6:14 PM

 

The Austin City Council early Friday rescinded city prohibitions on sitting or sleeping in public and panhandling — measures social advocates said wrongly criminalized homelessness — after hours of emotional testimony from passionate residents on both sides of the issue.

 

The decisions, made after 2 a.m. during a meeting that started at 10 a.m., capped a long day of intense discussion surrounding several homelessness-related votes at City Hall.

 

https://www.statesman.com/news/20190621/city-council-rescinds-measures-that-critics-say-criminalize-homelessness

 

Ben White opposite Target Then 

Summary of Changes to the Ordinances

On October 17, 2019, the City Council made several revisions to the city ordinance that prohibits camping in public areas.  Other ordinances, including those prohibiting obstruction on sidewalks in the downtown area and aggressive confrontation, remain unchanged.  The ordinance changes went into effect on October 28, 2019.

https://www.austintexas.gov/department/council-direction-and-policy

 

The Texas Tribune

Greg Abbott says TxDOT could remove homeless camps from Austin's highway underpasses

BY DAVIS RICH OCT. 18, 2019

 

The governor has vowed to use state resources to clear Austin's homeless residents from public spaces since city officials began changing local ordinances dictating where people can and can't camp.

 

Gov. Greg Abbott's office said Friday the Texas Department of Transportation could force homeless Austin residents out from under bridges and overpasses where some of them live or camp if recent changes to city ordinances don't result in less feces and fewer needles by Nov. 1.

 

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/18/greg-abbott-says-txdot-will-remove-austin-homeless-under-highways/

Ben White opposite Target Now 

 

KVUE-TV (ABC)

After more downtown stabbings, Abbott says Austin's 'reckless' policies on homelessness 'must end now'

Author: Drew Knight, Luis de Leon

Published: 5:16 PM CST January 24, 2020

Updated: 8:16 AM CST January 25, 2020

AUSTIN, Texas — After a series of Downtown Austin stabbings overnight left three people injured, Gov. Greg Abbott released a pointed statement for the Austin City Council on Friday.

"City of Austin leaders have allowed lawlessness throughout the capital city that is resulting in violence against Austin residents, including those who are homeless," Gov. Abbott said in a statement released to KVUE. "Last night’s tragedy, leaving three injured, is just the most recent instance of this violence. This rise in violence has corresponded with the revocation of the camping ban that the Austin City Council passed in June. Public endangerment and murder can no longer be tolerated because of the actions – and inactions – by City officials. Mayor Adler and the city council should re-instate the camping ban and restore the rule of law in Austin. The City’s gamble on these reckless policies has been a loser and must end now."

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/gov-abbott-calls-austin-homeless-policy-reckless-after-stabbings/269-fe1bd9ab-d65b-4cff-a013-3edb295c4c1f

 

Fox-7 TV

Gov. Abbott working to override Austin homeless camping ordinance

By Steven Sarabia 

Published February 7 [2020]

Homeless Crisis FOX 7 Austin

While talking about Austin's homeless issues Wednesday, Abbott said on Twitter, "Next step should be to reinstate the ban on camping and work with non-profit organizations to assist with shelters. That's exactly what I will ask the Texas Legislature to do."

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/gov-abbott-working-to-override-austin-homeless-camping-ordinance

Wikipedia provided this definition from the Communist Party of Texas

LUMPENPROLETARIAT - German for "rag proletariat." Generally unemployable people who make no positive contribution to an economy. Sometimes described as the bottom layer of a capitalist society. May include criminal and mentally unstable people. Some activists consider them "most radical" because they are "most exploited," but they are un-organizable and more likely to act as paid agents than to have any progressive role in class struggle.  See https://www.cp-texas.org/glossary

 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

 

Workers’ Paradise Promised an End to Money 

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny 

Karl Marx and the Dustbin of History 

Furloughs for Freedom: Downsizing Government 

Toxic Leadership 

 

“Star Trek: Discovery” and the Conflict of Values

Star Trek: Discovery is an adventure story about conflicts of values. The characters act purposefully and in accordance with their values to achieve their goals. Following the theory of aesthetics proposed by Ayn Rand, I found that the storyline of the first year of this television series maintained an integrated plot, a well-defined theme, and a substantiated plot-theme. 

Rand defined plot as “a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax.” (The Romantic Manifesto, Signet edition, page 47). The plot of Star Trek: Discovery is the story of a war of attrition between the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets. 

Rand defined a theme as “the summation of a novel’s abstract meaning.” For Rand, the theme of Atlas Shrugged was “the role of the mind in man’s existence.” She identified the theme of Les Miseables as the injustice of society toward its lower classes. The theme of Gone with the Wind was the impact of the Civil War on Southern society. (Page 46). I found the theme of Star Trek: Discovery to be the role of values in choosing our actions. In that, I also found the series to be strongly and consistently within the Romantic tradition defined by Ayn Rand.

Adm. Katrina Cornwell takes the Captain's chair.
(I always find ambiguous command to be problematic.)

The concept of a plot-theme is unusual (if not unique to Rand). In The Romantic Manifesto, she wrote: “It is the first step in the translation of an abstract theme into a story without which the plot would be impossible. A “plot-theme” is the central conflict or “situation” of a story—a conflict in terms of action, corresponding to the theme and complex enough to create a purposeful progression of events. The theme of a novel is the core of its abstract meaning—the plot-theme is the core of its events. … The theme of Gone with the Wind is: “The impact of the Civil War on Southern society.” The plot-theme is: “The romantic conflict of a woman who loves a man representing the old order and is loved by another man, representing the new.” (page 51-52). 

I identify the plot-theme of ST:Discovery to be the experiential path of a woman who must identify the nature and extent of her own values.

Rand defines Romanticism as “a category of art based on the premise that man possesses the faculty of volition.” (“What is Romanticism?” pages 64-87) Bootleg Romanticism is popular fiction that implicitly accepts that premise, rather than explicitly. She put the early James Bond novels in that genre. She was also a fan of Star Trek: Original Series; and Gene Roddenberry was an admirer of her works. 

 

Emperor Philippa Augustus Georgio confronts Vulcan ambassador Sarek.
She is about to don the persona of her alter ego
the late Captain Philippa Georgio.
Cdr. Burnham and Adm. Cornwell watch.

It is important to understand the distinction between Rand’s own works and those she enjoyed. Her novels dramatized political conflicts. Others in that vein that she recommended to her admirers included the works of Allen Drury, such as Advice and Consent. Rand insisted that art is an end in itself. It exists to provide personal enjoyment. (page 14). So, whatever the conflicts of values acted out by the characters, we do not judge the value of the work itself by the specific political statements of the actors. Rand was a great fan of Victor Hugo. She wrote an Introduction to a Bantam Books edition of Ninety-three in 1962. The conflict of values and the integration of plot and theme center on the French Revolution.  However, Rand insists:

“The fact is that Ninety-three is not a novel about the French Revolution. To a Romanticist, the background is a background, not a theme. His vision is always focused on man –on the fundamentals of man’s nature, on those problems and those aspects of character which apply to any age and any country. The theme of Ninety-three—which is played in brilliantly unexpected variations in all the key incidents of the story, and which is the motive power of all the characters and events, integrating them into an inevitable progression toward a magnificent climax---is: man’s loyalty to values.” (p. 121)

I point out that in other writing, Ayn Rand was clear in her condemnation of the Southern culture of agrarianism in general and its basis on slavery in particular. But that had nothing to do with the artistic merits of Gone with the Wind. Similarly, Rand’s admiration for Crime and Punishment was not an endorsement of the police of imperial Russia. Today, many who claim to be admirers of Rand’s fiction confuse aesthetics with politics and economics. It can be interesting to discuss the extent to which science fiction writers who claim special imagination fail to envision any utopia more innovative than open-handed socialism. On that basis, the Star Trek franchise has been criticized by libertarians  But such complaints are wholly outside the realm of aesthetics. 

Star Trek: Discovery delivers a complex drama in which the values of the characters define the set and setting of conflict. Moreover, the integration of plot and theme provide a grand stage on which to see the consequences of values in the choices of action. 

In previous instantiations of Star Trek, the Klingons are just warriors. They have the pride of the honor and action evidenced by our own police and military in The Guardian Ethos, but their ideologies, such as they may be, are never clearly defined. Here they are. T’Kuvma’s opening speech is complete, succinct, and unequivocal. Moreover, that ideological framework is quickly betrayed and abandoned as a new leader arises. That results in internecine warfare at the expense of the Federation which finds itself fighting 24 separate wars, and is soon on the verge of annihilation. Peace is established (at once ironically and yet integrally) when that ideology is re-ignited by a true follower of T’Kuvma. 

 

In the mirror universe's agonizer booth, to be tortured to death,
Cpt. Gabriel Lorca has this planned carefully.

Cinema writing for the big screen and television has replaced the novel. TV writing today is much evolved over the work of Ayn Rand’s day. Unlike ST:OS and like most modern dramatic series Discovery follows a “story arc” a uniting narrative of action that plays out over many episodes. Here, that arc is the duplicity of Captain Gabriel Lorca. As the end approaches, we must condemn him. We can see even his best actions in a new (and worse) light. But his competence as a leader is never in question. Aligned to his values, his actions are purposeful, consistent, and thoughtful. We just reject his values. But he has them. And he knows what they are.

It is our viewpoint character, Commander Michael Burnham, who must confront hers. She is never without values. She is passionately committed to them and firm in her perception of them. The voyage of discovery she makes—hence, Star Trek: Discovery—is learning to understand the full range, depth, and meaning of those values. 

We are no longer on the eve of battle.

Even so, I come to ask myself the same question that young soldier asked the general all those years ago: "How do I defeat fear?" The general's answer: the only way to defeat fear is to tell it, “No.”

No. We will not take shortcuts on the path to righteousness.

No. We will not break the rules that protect us from our basest instincts.

No. We will not allow desperation to destroy moral authority.

I am guilty of all these things.

Some say that in life, there are no second chances. Experience tells me that this is true. But we can only look forward. We have to be torchbearers, casting the light so we may see our path to lasting peace. We will continue exploring, discovering new worlds, new civilizations.

Yes. That is the United Federation of Planets.

 

Cmdr. Michael Burnham's values are internally conflicted
because they derive both from her (adopted) Vulcan heritage
and her (achieved) Starfleet rank.

Does the show have flaws? Of course it does. I suggest that anyone who can do better should write their own novels and produce their own cinemas to demonstrate how it should be done (in their opinion). It is easy to criticize. Myself, with my limited training and experience in security and the military, I would never send the captain into hand-to-hand combat on an enemy vessel, no matter how convenient that is for Star Trek. But I did not write it. I write other stuff.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Ayn Rand and Star Trek. 

Soldiers of Peace 

Armies without Weapons 

Advanced Non-Commissioned Officer Training 

Why I Served 

Soldiers of Peace

The military teaches the way of peace, said Paul K. Chappell, because they praise in public and reprimand in private. I heard Paul K. Chappell interviewed on an KERA’s “Think” with Krys Boyd, on March 20, 2018. A West Point graduate, Chappell left the Army as a captain and now works for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. I bought two copies of his book, Soldiers of Peace, and gave one to the director of our state guard officer candidate school. I finished reading it this morning. Overall, it was easy to find much to disagree with but Chappell argues well for finding other solutions to our social problems.

Chappell repeats his claims, which begin (easily enough) with the observation that 200 years ago, slavery was accepted and women could neither vote nor own property. But here we are today. So, what about us now will seem short-sighted to people 200 years in the future? Chappell calls his program “peace literacy.” It is a path, a way of life, not a formula or a checklist. Peace literacy includes empathetic listening, respect, integrity, and selfless service. Peace literacy depends on knowing how to calm yourself so that you can calm others. All of this takes discipline.

Soldiers of Peace: How to Wield the Weapon 

of Nonviolence with Maximum Force 

by Paul K. Chappell, 

Prospecta Press, 2017; 272 pages; $16.  

Chappell denies moral relativism and epistemological subjectivism. He says that the truth exists and we can know it. He warns against romanticizing the past, and even against romanticizing nonviolence. He calls himself a realist, and differentiates that from the common “realism” that is only cynicism. It is not surprising that he repeatedly cites Socrates, Lao-tze, Gandhi, and King. I did find it curious that he echoed Ayn Rand (though Rand is not cited anywhere). Rand found the basis for morality in our mortality. She posited an indestructible robot and explained that it could have no values. Chappell makes exactly the same argument. Like Rand, Chappell points out that humans have no instinctive, automatic modes of survival. Oak trees and caterpillars, he says, have no need for mentors. We do. And he provides many. Among them are Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the heroes of the Iliad, and Lt. Gen. John Schofield, the superintendent of West Point.

I never learned anywhere else that one impetus for Rosa Parks to resist segregation on the city bus line was her experience with the integrated transports at Maxwell Air Force Base where she and her husband both worked. In fact, Chappell says (at least twice) that his mother yelled at him when he announced that he was leaving the military because nowhere else in her world could a mixed race (African-American/Asian) person be treated fairly.

Chappell also speaks well of the discipline of martial arts that teaches respect for one’s opponent as the path to avoiding conflict in the first place. Contrasting that, he notes that during World War I, in the mad charges from the trenches, cruel officers were sometimes shot in the back. In the military, everyone is armed and trained to kill, so the social formalities reinforce respect.

It is salient that the military succeeds by training. Chappell cites Julius Caesar who recorded that the Gauls, Celts, and Germans made fun of the small stature of the Romans—until the battle was engaged. And in the military, failures in the field are traced back to failures of training. Learning the literacy of peace requires deep and extensive training, of course. And Chappell and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation provide such classes (here) though he says nothing about them in this book. (His own website is here.)

Toward the close, Chappell says that the best use of the military would be for humanitarian aid and disaster relief. As killing the enemy still has not worked out very well, that seems hard to argue with.

Easier to take exception to are the very many glittering generalities, glib statements, easy oversights, and incomplete examinations that litter the book as Chappell wanders over the landscape of his personal life.

Just to take one point, the author asserts that women in ancient Athens were oppressed. It is the liberal, enlightened view. Women could not vote. They could not own property. Indeed, they were property. But so was everyone else. It is famous that the philosopher Diogenes was one of the very many who were captured on some voyage or on some road and were sold into slavery. Outside of your city, you had no protection. Even within the city, rights as we know them did not exist. Socrates is the most famous case in point, but not unique. On the other hand, Chappell at length cites Greek myths and Athenian dramas in which women were the driving force, the wise speaker, the effective agent. The god of war, Ares, was less powerful than Athena, the goddess of wisdom (and strategy). Beginning with the assumption that he seeks to prove, Chappell cannot reconcile that against the civil status of women.

A dozen other problems run through the book, repeated and restated, cast as assertions and reused as proofs.

In balance, Soldiers of Peace provides cogent reasons to re-examine our assumptions about war and peace. Chappell’s thesis includes the minor premise that nonviolence is not peace. Pacifism will not end war. Rage is an expression of pain, not of strength. Perhaps the most arguable and yet insightful assertion is that the threats to peace include disparities in wealth, rapid population growth in the cities, and climate change. Those threats were identified by the U.S. Army Sustainability Report (2009). “When the U.S. Army and the Occupy movement agree on something, I think we should pay attention.” 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Peace is More Powerful 

Armies Without Weapons

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security 

Do You Know Your Military? 

Peace is More Powerful

Imagine a successful protest in Berlin 1943 against the Holocaust.  Between February 27 and March 6, about 200 German women stood outside a detainment center, demanding the release of their Jewish husbands.  Between March 1 and March 12, although 25 were sent to Auschwitz, about 2,000 prisoners were let go. Soon, they were picked up again, but sent to work in labor camps in Berlin and other cities where they lived out the war. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here.

Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan (Columbia University Press, 2011, ppb 2012) grew out of a challenge. As a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, she believed “back then [2006] power flows from the barrel of a gun.” What changed her mind was a challenge from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict to prove her point.

Non-violent campaigns succeed more often.
They win compromise more often.
They fail completely less often.
(Chenoweth ICNC Webinar)

Chenoweth worked with Maria J. Stephan to gather data from every anti-government action since 1900 for reform or independence, whether violent or non-violent.  They published a paper, with only three exemplary cases, but dense with the mathematics of sociology parodied so well by Tom Lehrer (YouTube here). Nonetheless, they proved their point.  From that paper came several lectures and a book of narratives.

• International Center on Nonviolent Conflict Webinar (1hr 4min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Beep0xnonvk
• “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of  Nonviolent Conflict by Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth,” International Security, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Summer 2008), pp. 7–44  http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2008.33.1.7
• TEDx Boulder: September 2013 (12 minutes 33 secs) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

This new work by Chenoweth and Stephan validates earlier examinations, such as "A Force More Powerful" about peaceful resistance to modern dictatorships. 

DENMARK - LIVING WITH THE ENEMY:  By the summer of 1943, in the midst of World War II, Denmark had been occupied by German forces for more than three years. Resistance to the invaders was sporadic, mainly limited to displays of Danish cultural identity or scattered acts of sabotage. But then, provoked by German brutality, the Danes acted more boldly to resist the Nazi war machine. Mass nonviolent direct action began first with labor strikes. Then, when SS troops arrived to round up Danish Jews for deportation to the death camps, the Danes rescued their fellow citizens, ferrying most to safety in Sweden. The effort galvanized many Danes, and soon general strikes challenged German control. The Danish underground emphasized nonviolent operations. Although Denmark was not liberated until the end of the war, nonviolent resistance stymied German plans for extracting value from the occupation.  ("A Force More Powerful" from PBS here).
  

"Researchers used to say that no government could survive if just 5 percent of the population rose up against it," Chenoweth says. "Our data shows the number may be lower than that. No single campaign in that period failed after they'd achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population." She adds, "But get this: every single campaign that exceeded that 3.5 percent point was a nonviolent one. The nonviolent campaigns were on average four times larger than the average violent campaigns." – from Chenoweth’s TEDx Talk reported by Max Fisher, Washington Post, November 5, 2013 here. 

 

Non-violent campaigns (right) are more likely
to draw defections from the government
security forces.
Chenoweth ICNC Webinar.

The empirical results from Chenoweth and Stephan only validate many other narratives of successful peaceful resistance.  The American Civil Rights campaign took its lead from the independence movement in India led by Mohandas Gandhi.  That and many other stories – Chile, the Ukraine, Serbia – are told in A Force More Powerful, the premier product in a series of videos about social change through peace, produced by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. 

Confronting the Truth is another ICNC video explaining “truth and reconciliation campaigns.”  Perhaps the best known grew out of the genocide in Rwanda.  Rather than seeking punitive retribution, the commission's motive was to let the perpetrators admit their guilt and express their sorrow to the survivors.  Other commissions have worked in Peru, South Africa, East Timor, and Morocco. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Laissez Faire Criminology 

Active Defense and Passive Aggression 

Alternatives to Prison 

Money as Speech and Peacemaking  

Armies Without Weapons

Not all military units engage in combat.  Chaplains and medics are easy examples. Twenty-two Thirteen American states states and territories have home defense forces, and they generally do not carry weapons, but provide evacuation, sheltering, and other services in times of emergency and disaster.  Two federal agencies have their own unarmed commissioned officer corps with equivalent navy ranks: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Public Health Service. 

EXCEPTIONS

Some chaplains have carried small arms in combat. They stand out as exceptions.  More often, armed assistants accompanied chaplains.  Similarly, modern medics do carry sidearms to defend the wounded and supplies.  However, engaging in offensive combat removes the protection of the rules of war which otherwise cover medics.  If captured by an enemy who respects the Geneva Convention, medics can be held as prisoners of war, but must be allowed to carry out their duties as necessary.  By the Geneva Convention, chaplains who are captured cannot be held and must be repatriated.

 

Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic chaplains.Place de Strasbourg June 2013
(Photo by Claude Truong-Ngoc licensed under Creative Commons,Wikimedia Commons).   

The Inspector General of the US Department of Defense (DODIG), surveyed 22 state defense forces in 2014.  Nineteen responded to the questionnaire.  Only four states authorize their home guards to bear weapons. The report provided aggregate data only.  Therefore, some ambiguities were unresolved. Evaluation of Department of Defense Interaction with State Defense Forces, Department of Defense Inspector General, April 30, 2014. http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2014-065.pdf

State laws in California, Indiana, Mississippi, and Virginia allow the governor to issue weapons to the state defense force.  “The Code of Virginia states that members of the Virginia State Defense Force shall not be armed with firearms during the performance of training duty or state active duty, except under circumstances and in instances authorized by the Governor." (Virginia § 44.54.12. See also California Military and Veterans Code Section 554.) The Alaska State Defense Force did carry weapons when acting as law enforcement in 2004. However, that changed in 2008. 

Maj. Liendo Alvaro, Texas State Guard Medical Rangers.
In recurring deployments of Operation Lone Star,
the Medical Rangers provide free clinical care
to populations not well-served by other agencies.
(Soldiers Media Center. Licensed under Creative Commons
Wikimedia Commons.) 

Here in Texas, the TXSG does provide training for those who want to earn a concealed handgun license (CHL).  However, guard members pay for the training, which is contracted.  The state CHL fee itself is waived for active TXSG members.  Nevertheless, TXSG members are absolutely forbidden from carrying firearms while on duty. That applies to those who are also commissioned (sworn) police and other law enforcement officers.  Whether on state guard active duty or at drills or just visiting on base, weapons must be secured in a locked compartment of the privately-owned vehicle. [24 Feb. 2016. Following the Chattanooga shootings of 16 July 2015, on 17 Dec. 2015, the Adjutant General of the Texas Military Department issued new orders to allow the carrying of concealed firearms. This order applies to the National Guard, the Air National Guard, and the State Guard. It also addresses the new "open carry" law in Texas. No guard member may display any weapon not issued by the appropriate command.]

US FEDERAL SERVICES

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grew out of a survey of the coastline that was authorized by Congress and signed by President Jefferson in 1807.  Seventy years later, its mission was expanded into a geodetic survey of the continent.  In 1917, the corps became commissioned so that surveyors on the battlefield could not be shot as spies.   Today the NOAA maintains strict standards of achievement with an “up or out” policy: If you cannot be promoted, you will be retired. 

“The NOAA Corps today provides a cadre of professionals
trained in engineering, earth sciences, oceanography,
meteorology, fisheries science, and other related disciplines.
Officers operate ships, fly aircraft, manage research projects,
conduct diving operations,
and serve in staff positions throughout NOAA.”
http://www.noaacorps.noaa.gov

You can view their official recruitment videos for both officers and line mariners on YouTube.  They also have their own marching song, “Forward with NOAA.”

 The US Public Health Service Commissioned Officer Corp includes professionals in 16 specialties from physicians, nurses, and dentists to veterinarians, pharmacists, and engineers.

“The Commissioned Corps traces its beginnings
back to the U.S. Marine Hospital Service
protecting against the spread of disease from sailors returning
from foreign ports and maintaining the health of immigrants
entering the country.
Currently, Commissioned Corps officers are involved in
health care delivery to ... vulnerable populations,
disease control and prevention, biomedical research,
food and drug regulation,
mental health and drug abuse services,
and response efforts for natural and man-made disasters
as an essential component of
the largest public health program in the world.”  
http://www.usphs.gov/aboutus/history.aspx

NATIONS WITHOUT ARMIES

Several small nations have no armed forces because they maintain special treaties with larger neighbors.   Andorra has treaties with Spain and France. Australia defends Nauru, and the US defends Palau and several other Pacific micro-nations.  However, among those, several have impressively large police forces.  In the Caribbean, a Regional Security System serves Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.  Liechtenstein abolished its standing army in 1868.  Costa Rica has had no standing army since 1949. 

Military organization has its strengths.  Every job is defined, regardless of who performs it.  Grade and rank place everyone within a known hierarchy.  Also, military organization is common.  You could pluck someone off the street in Buenos Aires, and insert them in a job in police precinct in Beijing, and they would figure it all out pretty quickly.  So, the military model serves a purpose.  But armies are not necessarily synonymous with warfare.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security

The Science of Liberty

Financing a Revolution

Liberty's Kids