Comment by dns_snek
2 days ago
> unless you presume government is beneficial
That's the constitutional bedrock of our societies. That doesn't mean it's always true but if you denounce that as a legitimate and achievable goal then you don't have a society anymore.
The alternative is worse. No government at all implies anarchy which is worse that all but the very worst governments, and from which IMO some form of government will emerge anyway.
>No government at all implies anarchy*
No government at all can just imply anarchism, ie. a kind of self-governing that doesn't ascribe to our conventional ideas about government, presidents, pms, members of parliament, senators, etc.
That is what I meant by anarchy - the state anarchism wants to achieve. Collins dictionary says anarchy is "4. the theory or practice of political anarchism" but it seems it might be a British usage.
I do not think it is something that will work in practice, nor do I think it would be stable if it did.
4 replies →
Why is highly organized/systematized violence preferable?
A government that cannot commit violence is toothless.
How do you enforce court rulings?
We shouldn't be ignorant of how the violence is committed and restrictions should be numerous and enforced for sure.
But presuming a meaningful government that cannot commit violence can exist is unrealistic.
Why are you under the impression that you have a choice?
Those that are violent will always exist, and will always attempt to leverage their willingness for violence, and those that are able to - through luck or circumstance - gain leverage will be able to use that leverage to consolidate more until they have a hegemony on violence.
That's simply an observational fact of human history.
Governments are a way of occupying that opportunity space with some structure that _organizes_ that otherwise disorganized "cut people's faces up and flay them alive" sort of violence, and replaces it with "you get to grumble about the taxman every year" sort of violence. The averager person loses more freedom when there isn't a government around. The average violent psychopath gains more freedom (to become the government) when there isn't a government around.
That's why. Because I, and most people, prefer the paying taxes to getting flayed alive for insulting the duke. The government is a _binding_ of the monarchy and the warlord class to rules. If you look at the history of western democracy, it's extremely obvious.
I highly suspect that one of the reasons that Americans speak in this way.. that government as an idea is inherently some nonsensical or flawed concept - is compensation for their own sense of futility and inability to effect change on their own government.
It's hard for them to reconcile their self-image as "free thinking exemplars for the rest of the world" with the idea that they don't actually have control over their society. So they default to the idea that "all government is bad". If government by definition is bad, then obviously you can't accuse Americans and American culture of being particularly poor at creating a government that serves its people: it's just a fundamental structural problem, not a cultural problem.
To use internet slang: it's a cope.
2 replies →
Organized violence is self regulating if it wants to sustain itself.
The earnest answer is that it's more predictable than random violence, and its predictability makes it somewhat more preventable.
That said, there is a tendency for a system to drift away from this predictability as it's subjected to "review" by people who really, really want a particular outcome, regardless of the systemically-proscribed conclusion. "Bespoke" judgments for edge cases undermines the principle of predictability, which makes a return to "random" "coercion" desirable for some (as those who coerce in anarchy generally have less absolute power than a large system does).
But then, how do you show mercy (people are driven to do so) in a zero-tolerance environment?
This is the tension.
Is it? Don't know about other countries, but I am pretty sure the constitutional bedrock of the United States is to limit the federal government's ability to be malignant, even at the cost of some benefit. Whether that has been achieved is a separate question.
>That's the constitutional bedrock of our societies. That doesn't mean it's always true but if you denounce that as a legitimate and achievable goal then you don't have a society anymore.
Sure you do. You just don't have a society that looks like ours does. And that doesn't necessarily mean monarchy or fascism or chaos as the only alternative.
The society you do get, might still even have a government too! Thinking government is not beneficial doesn't mean you dispense altogether with one. It can mean you have very difference tolerance and guardrails for it, as opposed to when defaulting to "government is beneficial".
What's more "government is not beneficial" might not even mean "any and all government is not beneficial". It might mean government of the type that's the "constitutional bedrock of our societies", and the mockery they call "democratic rule" is not.
> Sure you do. You just don't have a society that looks like ours does.
You've skipped a few steps, until you overthrow the government all you have a broken society with a system of governance that's deemed to be illegitimate, therefore its rules and actions are illegitimate.
If you want to tear up the constitution and implement a new system of governance with "less government" then you're effectively advocating for a revolution. Just be honest and don't try to sell this as an incremental policy change.
>You've skipped a few steps, until you overthrow the government all you have a broken society with a system of governance that's deemed to be illegitimate, therefore its rules and actions are illegitimate.
Sure, so? We did that quite a few times in the past, that's how we dont' still have Pharaohs.
>If you want to tear up the constitution and implement a new system of governance with "less government" then you're effectively advocating for a revolution. Just be honest and don't try to sell this as an incremental policy change.
Who said it has to be an incremental policy change? The claim I responded to was:
"That's the constitutional bedrock of our societies. That doesn't mean it's always true but if you denounce that as a legitimate and achievable goal then you don't have a society anymore."
You still get one. It's just not something you get while conveniently sitting on your ass and voting once every few years.
1 reply →