Protection is a peculiar commodity even when it is sold by the most legitimate authority. When we pay taxes or insurance premiums, we pay without receiving anything in return other than the right to use a certain commodity when and if we need it and wane to use it. We pay for it, in other words, even if the service is only a potential one. For instance, we pay for homeowner's insurance in exchange for a kind of financial protection which we may never need. Protection requires an apparatus which must be sustained even when the protection itself is not used.

XREF: Connects to the economics of security, insurance, and state legitimacy — the idea that we pay for potential services. Resonates with broader debates about surveillance and the police as prepaid protective apparatuses.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 73