So your car has been stolen and the police, as usual, are doing nothing about it. Dealing with insurance is a pain in the ass, and you just wish you could get your damn car back. Well, a company called StolenCarReports.com may be able to help you out. They provide a searchable online database of stolen cars and allow people to give tips and say when and where they saw the vehicle.

The police are generally pretty useless when it comes to finding stolen cars. It’s not an insult to them, it’s just a statement of fact due to the circumstances. Police departments can’t go bankrupt or go out of business. If they do a poor job protecting people or finding stolen goods, they often actually get more tax money. But if there were private, competing police forces, the ones who do the best job for the lowest price will flourish, and the ones who do a poor job and cost too much money will go out of business. This is why goods and services provided by the free market (cell phones, package delivery, food) are always so much better quality and lower price than things provided by the monopoly of government (police, schools, DMV).

Either way, StolenCarReports.com is doing the job that police departments would be doing if they had an incentive to actually solve crime.It’s a perfect example of what could be if our system was set up more on competition and less on the monopoly form of government.