10 ms·
What they meant back then is quite nearly irrelevant in the modern age. No group of civilians is mounting a meaningful military resistance against USG for too m
by sp527 8y ago
What they meant back then is quite nearly irrelevant in the modern age. No group of civilians is mounting a meaningful military resistance against USG for too many reasons to enumerate (though I did enumerate some of them above). The 2nd Amendment now arguably does more harm than good on balance and needs to be reevaluated.
Maybe the closest possible thing that can be managed is some vigilante or group of vigilantes assassinating provably corrupt politicians and the elite corrupting them, and publicizing the rationale while promising further retribution absent reform. But that person(s) would be a suicidal madman and might succeed only in instilling fear in potential targets and not in swaying public understanding or opinion. A short term solution that would serve only to drive corruption further underground and/or in said politicians and elite increasing their own physical security.
As for the doomsday scenario, you have to wait long enough for reasonably decent AI and robotics, but it will happen. There's no theoretical impediment to self-sustaining 'gated' (which will eventually move in meaning towards 'militarized', proportionate to deteriorating public sentiment) microecosystems. Incentives and rational behavior will almost certainly effect this outcome for people who happen to be capital owners (above a certain minimum threshold) in that technological epoch.
On the flip side, as we know, once we reach a certain end state of technological capability via AI and robotics, the employability deficit of the vast majority of humans will catalyze a crisis the likes of which our species has probably never dealt with before.
So now you get back to UBI and other questions of reform. Will humanity fix its shit in time? I doubt it.
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoI think your sentiment about the futility of resistance is reasonable, but not really well supported. Iraq is probably the best example here. The terrain there is absolutely awful for the insurgents with urban areas separated by vast empty flat mostly desert regions. In spite of this, they've managed to mount an incredibly effective resistance with little more than some rifles developed in the 50s and some homemade explosives. This reality is arguably a major reason the current establishment in politics has been working to agitate against the second amendment. It has very little to do with harm. For instance the focus is always on "assault style rifles" yet did you know that of all gun deaths (which make up less than 1% of all deaths) that < 3% of those are caused by rifles? Even in mass shootings - the primary weapon is low caliber pistols. As the UK is experiencing now it's not really weapons that are the problem. It once again comes back to the same problem of people. London earlier this year experienced a greater per capita murder rate than NYC, even though none of the attacks involved guns. --- But maybe more generally this division in society is the biggest protection of the establishment of politics. The 2016 election was an incredibly good example of this phenomena. How many people voted for Hillary thinking "Yes, this person accurately represents my views and feelings."? And similarly for Trump. But now how many people voted for one or the other thinking, "Oh dear god, this person is scum - but the alternative is unthinkable!" Societal division in a republic is phenomenally effective at killing peoples' self interest. You can even make people vote for people they don't like, just by making sure they hate 'the other side' enough. Divide and conquer is a strategy as old as they get.