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The bad guys sucked. They'd come into town to rape, loot, and pillage indiscriminately. They didn't exactly expect much; they just took what they liked, and left.
The good guys were even worse: they'd kill or drive off the bad guys, which was nice of them, and then demand — or even simply expect automatically — payment in goods and services, celebratory feasts, fawning villagers at their beck and call and beneath their sheets.
You expect a certain amount of overhead beyond mere workload: sometimes things will break, or go moldy, or be delayed in their delivery. Burglars, highwaymen, and dine-and-dash were an unfortunate likelihood. Likewise, while one might expect some altruism, one couldn't really expect people to spend their lives wandering around doing good for free — they'd need to eat and wield the tools of their trade if nothing else.
But to have the good guys go into a huff if not granted grandiose enough reward?
Surely this inequity could be addressed.
Perhaps a volunteer service, to walk the streets? Empower them with some limited constabulary duties for the good of all? Of course, that might then require a town constitution, but that could be written out easily enough.
Hmm, but then you'd need someone fair-minded to adjudicate issues arising from uncertain situations.
Perhaps a larger aggregate of settlements could work together in such a fashion as to permit a small number from each to serve in such capacity, paid out of a communal coffer? A tax, perhaps pro-rated upward by relative income and downward by certain necessities of life?
Hmm — others might then do the same, and seek to take from such a large target what they must otherwise work to attain.
A large, well organized, well trained, well equipped force to deal with such outside threats?
Mayhap, which then would return on a large scale the good guys and bad guys question that set things going.
Perhaps one large umbrella system for all the world over?
Ahh, but then this surely couldn't satisfy everyone's own ways and preferences, even if well-intended.
TANSTAAFL — There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Someone will have to pay the bar tab, no matter how you cut it.
Perhaps it would be best to call the whole thing off. Let bygones be bygones.
At least until the bad guys come for another visit — or worse: the good guys.
O ~~~ O