> Once enough people realize that "the state" can't be everywhere at once
That's a (ideologically driven) myth though: if there's just one thing to learn from the twentieth century, it's that even with limited available technologies, a State that wants to be everywhere, can be everywhere, and it's only getting more true as technology advances[1]. And NSA alone collects enough information today to be able to solve the large chunk of unaddressed crime in most of the developed world, it's just a matter of political will regarding resource allocation (with a little bit of Baumol's cost disease, but it's not the main factor at play).
Having a state that is effectively everywhere is of course not something desirable either (again, the lessons from the past century) but the state abandoning its role is a politically constructed situation (it's what you get when laissez-faire becomes a religious theme).
[1] and it fact, it is because the reach of state steadily increased during the early-mid modern period that we've reached the current state of things. It's not that people haven't yet learned that the state cannot be everywhere, it's that states spent several century building the ability to be everywhere, which in turn led to this confidence from the population (and unfortunately to totalitarism sometimes…)
That's a (ideologically driven) myth though: if there's just one thing to learn from the twentieth century, it's that even with limited available technologies, a State that wants to be everywhere, can be everywhere, and it's only getting more true as technology advances[1]. And NSA alone collects enough information today to be able to solve the large chunk of unaddressed crime in most of the developed world, it's just a matter of political will regarding resource allocation (with a little bit of Baumol's cost disease, but it's not the main factor at play).
Having a state that is effectively everywhere is of course not something desirable either (again, the lessons from the past century) but the state abandoning its role is a politically constructed situation (it's what you get when laissez-faire becomes a religious theme).
[1] and it fact, it is because the reach of state steadily increased during the early-mid modern period that we've reached the current state of things. It's not that people haven't yet learned that the state cannot be everywhere, it's that states spent several century building the ability to be everywhere, which in turn led to this confidence from the population (and unfortunately to totalitarism sometimes…)