by Charles Mudede • Jan 19, 2021 at 9:30 am The foundation of police work is protecting those who have a lot from those who don't have so much. This was how the first systematic investigator of capitalism, Adam Smith, understood policing. So, let's begin this week's installment of The Stranger's Film Club, which is focused on Charles Burnett's 1994 film The Glass Shield, by reading the relevant but underappreciated passage from Smith's masterpiece The Wealth of Nations: Sponsored The month long cycling event takes place this May, with ride challenges, prizes from Zoka Coffee and Primal Wear, and funds raised benefiting Attain Housing. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days’ labour, civil government is not so necessary.