Comment by hnthrowaway0315
6 days ago
I'm not saying that violence is legal -- which is definitely not. But it is part of the "packages" and totally depends on whether the one wants to use. Historically violence has been a very...effective tool.
When people feel that law and order do not protect them, some eventually will go "the extra mile" (somehow managers always like this phrase). It's not something we can prevent. It is human nature. I guess super riches really like AI because this gives them extra protection.
> Historically violence has been a very...effective tool.
What to you mean historically? Violence backs every government decree from speeding tickets to the maximum water flow rate of urinals.
Overwhelming violence is something that people will go to amazing lengths and spend nearly all of their economic surplus to avoid.
Seems like its legal if you can pay for it today.
Of course violence is legal. Laws themselves carry no weight if they aren't backed by a credible threat of violence.
Violence by the state is legal. Violence otherwise tends not to be.
Not all violence by the state is legal. In a properly functioning democracy, the state cannot carry out arbitrary violence with impunity, only that which is consistent with the powers granted to it by the constitution and laws written and passed in accordance with that constitution. That was the case in the US for long stretches of its existence.
But under an authoritarian regime, it doesn’t matter whether what the state does runs contrary to statute or constitution because there is no one who has both the will and the ability to enforce any restrictions against the state.
See ICE murders.
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Corporations that pollute our air and water without penalty do violence against us.
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> it is part of the "packages" and totally depends on whether the one wants to use.
Could you explain what packages are and what depends on (what?)?
> Historically violence has been a very...effective tool.
This is dramatic sci-fi for anarchists of all political stripes.
The critical reality to understand is that violence is the most ineffective tool, causing catastrophic harm for others and outcomes that the perpetrators rarely control or foresee. Revolutions can overthrow status quo power but what follows is rarely what the perpetrators aimed for. The same happens in warfare - the outcome is rarely what anyone envisioned at the start, a fundamental lessons that experts try to teach hot-headed amateurs that think warfare will solve their problems.
It also establishes violence as legitimate - usable by everyone else too, a very bad outcome and the opposite of the rule of law, incompatible with freedom; it elevates violence and destruction over life and liberty. In contrast, the American Revolution was founded on principles of freedom and law (for example, in the Declaration of Independence), did not embrace violence as desireable, and laid it out for example in the Declaration of Independence.
The most successful societies have freedom, the rule of law, and allow violence only as a last necessity to restore freedom and the rule of law.
> The most successful societies have freedom, the rule of law, and allow violence only as a last necessity to restore freedom and the rule of law.
The ugly, uncomfortable part is that when a certain fraction of people decide violence is the answer, a tipping point is reached and that's what happens. Historically, people have reached that point en masse without a great deal of provocation. So for a society to remain successful--or to remain at all--it needs to prevent this tipping point from happening. Force alone can't do that.
A lot of people in the US feel like they've already tried the nice way, and it's failed. Given the increasing wealth disparity between the haves and the have-nots, it's hard to argue otherwise.
Many, close to most of the "have-nots" just voted to help the "haves" at great cost to themselves. The economic decline across fly over states isn't going to stop. It's going to continue. Resulting in those angry uneducated voters to double down. Those old factory jobs are gone. Unlikely to come back in our or our children's lifetime. They are ideologically opposed to education. Leading to more of the same, just more so. Economically, politically, and educatively.
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I don't know, but just look at Iran and US. Where is "rule of law"? Who is going to give it magically?
Packages = ways to "adapt" to the challenges of the world.
> look at Iran and US. Where is "rule of law"? Who is going to give it magically?
Rule of law - in this case, international law - has governed the Strait of Hormuz and relations between the US and Iran for decades. It's not magical or fantasy at all, but a very well-established and effective mechanism that has been the foundation of the most peaceful world arguably in human history. There is no valid argument that it doesn't work (saying it hasn't worked 100% of the time is not valid).
The Trump administration explicitly aims to destroy that rule of law. I think that's why they attacked Venezuala, Iran, civilian boats, etc. Stephen Miller advocates that power, not law, rules.
You can see the outcome when international law was used, and the outcome when it is intentionally destroyed: Look simply at the Strait, which had free navigation under international law, despite the extreme emnity between Iran, and the US and its Mideast allies.
And now, with international law under assault, free navigation has ended. To be clear, I don't only mean the US's and Israel's attack: Developing nuclear weapons would also violate international law, and maybe so does developing highly enriched fissile materials (e.g., uranium). I'm not sure about sponsoring insurgent proxies in other countries, but that has long been practiced by many countries, including the US and many in NATO.
The rule of law allows societies to function. We don't want the world or our communities to function like failed states - those people are poor, starving, and brutally oppressed.
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> In contrast, the American Revolution was founded on principles of freedom and law [...] did not embrace violence as desireable
That's pretty rich, since the United States only exists thanks to systemic, deliberate violence on a mass scale against the local population.
That's because that statement is marginal. The founding father's were very keen to the arguments given by political theorists of their time, such as Locke. It's a large reason why the 1st and 2nd amendment are the two first amendments. They believed the rights to speech and violence are foundational to protecting our natural liberties from succumbing to tyranny.
and has continued to this day with violence against non-local populations around the world
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The American revolution literally engaged in systemic attacks against British property.
The critical reality to understand is that people have always used violence. If they don't believe that they live in a successful society, or if they believe that the success of the society is not distributed fairly (or in a way that benefits them), violence starts looking attractive.
Enlightenment and industrialization created societies that were fairer, wealthier, and more free than anything before. They also created ideologies such as communism and nationalism that killed hundreds of millions. If your ideas are good and successful in the long term but create poverty, suffering, and feelings of unfairness in time scales people care about, there will be violence.
Compromises are the key tool in preventing violence. Unfortunately, the word itself carries negative connotations in too many languages, making effective compromises less likely.
>If they don't believe that they live in a successful society, or if they believe that the success of the society is not distributed fairly (or in a way that benefits them), violence starts looking attractive.
Especially when the answer to every "well why doesn't it work this way" you could possibly ask seems to come back to "state violence has put its thumb on the scale of society". The government or "the ruling order" or "the system" (whatever you want to call it kind of brought this on itself by taking so much crap under it's umbrella