Perhaps the defining trait of the third world is a defense and security service designed to wail on the inmates citizens inside its borders. As guys like State Debris can readily attest, most African and Arab armies are merely the biggest gang faction with the greatest ability to inflict violence on the largest amount of defenseless people. They exist to quell rebellions and extract wealth, not to hold the line against another army.

In Africa, this process is straightforward, transactional even. You pay the new toll at the new security checkpoint, or you don’t cross. And then if you don’t turn around quickly enough, you’ll get magdumped by a rusted out Romanian AK 50 years older than its wielder. Simple as.

In America, we are quickly inheriting this trait. The FBI is perhaps 2 steps removed from a formal secret police, and career bureaucrats like Obama even innovated new ways to weaponize previously “off limits” nonpartisan institutions like the IRS, the rest of the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, the Department of Homeland Security, health care, and so forth. Because we have this uniquely American trait of wanting strong public/private separation, our slide into the sewer looks like a trillion private contractors obfuscated through a billion shell companies offering the services of the Gestapo to the government that still pretends to have its hands tied. Until recently.

Flock is merely the gloves off, teeth bared, middle finger extended, round chambered public facing version of a trade secret that’s been exploited since at least the end of WWII. It’s incoming IPO is the final signal that the charade is over.

In 2035, when new arrivals from Somalia are deputized as Flock security contractors to drag you out of your apartment in a clandestine night raid for a summary execution on behalf of unpaid Flock taxes, the gap between us and the historical third world will be imperceptible.