How much of the looting is bona fide grassroots rioting and how much is false-flag activity by the cops? I don't know, and neither do you... But government agents are clearly involved with the spree, and it's very possible that they're stoking and spearheading it; defense of person and property, meanwhile, has fallen not just on the Army but on civil society, as neighbors form informal protective associations. If Robb's scenario turns out to be true, Egypt has inverted the Hobbesian story of the state: The police are spreading disorder and the voluntary sector is containing it.
What a wonderful world we would live in, if Hobb's theories had been true! But the truth is, for most of the world, the state is not a defense against predation, but merely the biggest of the predators. When it defends its citizens, it is not to keep them safe from predation, but merely to insure that it reaps the largest harvest. Those of us who live in nations where this is not true are blessed. As for the rest of the world, they hope only that the state will not take too much, and that they will be allowed a tiny portion of what it is they have earned.
