I found this article about a group of young men in Taranaki, near where I went to school (maybe I even knew some of them). They went looking for a cannabis patch to plunder, and after some hours of searching through coastal wasteland encountered a small plantation. They were surprised by two armed men who allegedly captured two of them at gunpoint - the others escaped through gorse and blackberry - and held them for a few hours, beating and threatening them.

This story sparked a few thoughts on punishment and the state. Because cannabis cultivation is illegal, most cultivators are unwilling to use legal means to punish thieves. But because of limited resources, they cannot ascertain guilt or apply an objective punishment - they can only use physical threats in an attempt to cause terror. States used to operate like that in premodern times, when deterrence was ensured by inventing ever more gruesome means of torture and execution, for example when rebellious Indian soldiers in 1857 were strapped to cannons and obliterated.

I think this is a powerful argument for a state. Without a state, offenders and those suspected of offending would have no chance of receiving just punishment, and the most powerful people would be those who were prepared to inflict indiscriminate terror. The incident also serves to demonstrate the violence that results from drug prohibition.