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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6364188" data-attributes="member: 177">Note that countermeasures require wealth.&nbsp; Why is a rural town official a powerful person?&nbsp; He has all the power of a murder hobo.&nbsp; Being a murder hobo pays pretty well, right?&nbsp; So, why is is a civil servant, getting payed diddly to protect a town?There will be some few who do it for good reasons.&nbsp; But not many.&nbsp; We have ample evidence of what happens when the &quot;protection&quot; forces aren't really good people.&nbsp; Who watches the watchmen?&nbsp; Yeah, but how many of them are going to die in the process?&nbsp; Is that cost of life really worth the damage the murder hobos are going to do?And, what damage is that, exactly?&nbsp; In a big city, they may rob rich people, sure.&nbsp; But those rich people can hire their own darned security.&nbsp; In a rural village, what, pray tell, is the murder hobo doing there?&nbsp; There's no darned gold to steal.&nbsp; No magic to find.&nbsp; There's just a bunch of farmers.&nbsp; There may be the occasional group of sociopaths in it for hurting people just 'cause, but by and large, murder hobos stay alive by being smart.&nbsp; Is it smart to mess up a fishing village just for giggles?&nbsp; No. So, will they frequently do so?&nbsp; Probably not.This kind of feeds into an important point - security is developed in response to rare events tends to be *bad*.&nbsp; Expensive and ineffective, more for show that, &quot;we are doing things to keep you safe&quot; than to actually keep you safe.&nbsp; Thus the phrase &quot;security theater&quot;.We are not actually very good at creating proactive shields against normal, real-world harm.&nbsp; We usually work with retroactive security - if a bad guy does act, we catch 'em, and do something to 'em to teach them a lesson and provide a deterrent to others who might be tempted to try the same.&nbsp; I am unconvinced that the fictional world should somehow be better at security than we are.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 6364188, member: 177"] Note that countermeasures require wealth. Why is a rural town official a powerful person? He has all the power of a murder hobo. Being a murder hobo pays pretty well, right? So, why is is a civil servant, getting payed diddly to protect a town? There will be some few who do it for good reasons. But not many. We have ample evidence of what happens when the "protection" forces aren't really good people. Who watches the watchmen? Yeah, but how many of them are going to die in the process? Is that cost of life really worth the damage the murder hobos are going to do? And, what damage is that, exactly? In a big city, they may rob rich people, sure. But those rich people can hire their own darned security. In a rural village, what, pray tell, is the murder hobo doing there? There's no darned gold to steal. No magic to find. There's just a bunch of farmers. There may be the occasional group of sociopaths in it for hurting people just 'cause, but by and large, murder hobos stay alive by being smart. Is it smart to mess up a fishing village just for giggles? No. So, will they frequently do so? Probably not. This kind of feeds into an important point - security is developed in response to rare events tends to be *bad*. Expensive and ineffective, more for show that, "we are doing things to keep you safe" than to actually keep you safe. Thus the phrase "security theater". We are not actually very good at creating proactive shields against normal, real-world harm. We usually work with retroactive security - if a bad guy does act, we catch 'em, and do something to 'em to teach them a lesson and provide a deterrent to others who might be tempted to try the same. I am unconvinced that the fictional world should somehow be better at security than we are. [/QUOTE]

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