Anarchists hear the same tired arguments over and over again. Without cops people will rob and kill with impunity. Warlords! Adulterated food. If education isn't compulsory kids won't learn anything. Etc. etc. And then there's the argument from traffic laws. Without laws and violent enforcement, the story goes, people will drive dangerously and we'll all suffer.
But to me traffic laws provide one of the most convincing examples of how anarchism will actually work. Los Angeles, where I live, has four million people and about 9,000 cops. Maybe 7,500 of them actively patrol. There are three shifts, which makes about 2,500 cops on the street. They always ride two to a car here, so at most there are 1,250 patrolling cars at any given time, or about one car per 3,200 people.[1] They mostly pull people over pretextually, which isn't based on how people are driving. Essentially we can drive however we want to and not get traffic tickets.
And yet the streets aren't chaotic. Far from it. People obey the rules because it's in everyone's interest to obey the rules. We even develop new noncodified rules passed along culturally. For instance we have our own style of left turn that just isn't done most places but everyone who drives here knows it. There's a way of passing left turners on the right on narrow streets that's hard to explain but it's really effective. It doesn't work if the left turner signals too late, and that's a teachable moment and one of the few occasions on which you'll hear a horn, but it's a short beep, not an angry blast. Horns are very rarely used here. The cops aren't necessary and the proof is that they're not doing anything now and everything's working fine.
Think of how much trust you place in other drivers. That they'll stay in their lanes, that when they wave you on they're not just fucking with you, that when they're signalling they actually mean to turn, etc. [2] None of this has to do with cops. It's the natural human talent for social self-organization at work. It works because everyone is better off if we follow the rules and everyone involved can see that. And if someone doesn't get it a few beeps and angry stares will almost always teach them what they need to know. If the cops didn't interfere with self-organizing because it harms capitalism we'd naturally extend this same system to every social aspect of human life. It's just what we do and traffic laws are a great example of it!
[1] Yes, the highway patrol works freeways, but at some point they stopped putting people over. It's literally been decades since I saw a car pulled over by the highway patrol.
[2] There are some exceptions to this but we all know what they are. It's easy enough to see when someone has their blinker on by accident.
