5 ms·

I wonder if what you have in mind is like what Germany was before it was unified. Lots of city states that essentially ally together or don't. I don't think it

by abnry 5y ago

I wonder if what you have in mind is like what Germany was before it was unified. Lots of city states that essentially ally together or don't. I don't think it is a stable situation once someone gains the means to conquer by force.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
But if everyone agrees to prevent conquering-by-force, why wouldn't it work?
- ativzzz 5y ago
  Because whoever has the largest force wouldn't agree to it. For instance, if these counties chose to ignore all the rules and join Idaho, the U.S. has a very large force that it can use to prevent this from happening. In fact, it doesn't even have to use the force, simply having the force is probably enough.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Because you can break cities into boroughs and boroughs into neighborhoods and neighborhoods into blocks, and where does it stop? At some point, a tribe has to use force.
- krapp 5y ago
  Humans don't work that way. We always create hierarchies of power and control, it's innate to our primate nature.
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    Put more simply, no one would agree to the idealistic utopian-like rule of "no conquering".
    - krapp 5y ago
      Plenty would agree to it, with their fingers crossed behind their backs of course.
    - pharke 5y ago
      I'm reminded of a short sci-fi story I read long ago about an anarchical society where everyone possessed a weapon capable of destroying entire swathes of country side in an instant. It was some form of unlimited energy device that was also used for other less offensive purposes, but everyone carried a sidearm that could emit a beam of energy capable of melting a mountainside into glass. The story focusses around an attempted coup and has an illustrative ending demonstrating the power of such a weapon to deter the use of force to coerce others.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Many primates don't do that. Many humans haven't done that. Stop shilling for the patriarchy.
- light_hue_1 5y ago
  It doesn't work because of externalities. Like, you live in a city state, that's great, but the rural county that your water comes from decided to elect Trump as their leader-for-life and he decided that all water should now contain uranium and lead to ward off COVID-25. Good luck living!
jerf 5y ago
"I don't think it is a stable situation once someone gains the means to conquer by force." Obviously, it hasn't been historically. But an interesting long-term trend (across the last few centuries) is that "conquest by force" is becoming less and less effective. In the ancient world, "conquest by force" meant you got to take their land, take their food, take their livestock, and just in general take all their stuff that they worked for without you having to work for it, and this is clearly an advantageous move. If you destroyed their infrastructure, meh. It was easily replaced. As our world becomes more and more technological, though, an increasing amount of our wealth is in people, infrastructure, and relationships. It is effectively impossible today to "conquer" a country in the conventional sense and enjoy their wealth as a result. You can force a slave to harvest wheat, but you can't force them to participate at full capacity in a software engineering role with a hundred other people. (Part of why as many people have observed, slavery was on its way out in the South whether the civil war happened or not, albeit perhaps decades later.) Militaries remain an important component of how countries relate to each other, as a chess understanding would suggest, even the threat of mass destruction is (whether we like it or not) a very big and important stick, but today the threat is military destruction... not conquest. If we continue even farther into this direction, well... what would the effects be? (An interesting test case for the point of view I am propounding here is China's attempts to militarily conquer Taiwan. If they do undertake it, it would be one of the most interesting such conquest attempts in a long time, because unlike the Ukraine/Crimea where I think Russia wanted the land rights more than anything else, China wants the people of Taiwan. Will the people of Taiwan just acquiesce and continue generating wealth for China to take? Or will China discover that the jewel is much less desirable than they thought? Stay tuned.) I'll end with, please note the difference between "less and less effective" and "ineffective". Military conquest isn't necessarily ineffective. But it used to get you a much higher percentage of the "good stuff" of the conquered territory. Today, if you "conquer" a nation, but had to wipe out its entire industrial infrastructure in order to finally convince it to stop resisting you, percentage wise you've won a lot less of what there was before you started to conquer them. It's not hard to get to the point where you won less than you would have had you just taken what you put into your military effort and used it to build locally instead of destroy.
- kingsuper20 5y ago

by abnry 5y ago

wizzwizz4 5y ago

But if everyone agrees to prevent conquering-by-force, why wouldn't it work?

ativzzz 5y ago
Because whoever has the largest force wouldn't agree to it. For instance, if these counties chose to ignore all the rules and join Idaho, the U.S. has a very large force that it can use to prevent this from happening. In fact, it doesn't even have to use the force, simply having the force is probably enough.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
Because you can break cities into boroughs and boroughs into neighborhoods and neighborhoods into blocks, and where does it stop? At some point, a tribe has to use force.
krapp 5y ago
Humans don't work that way. We always create hierarchies of power and control, it's innate to our primate nature.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Put more simply, no one would agree to the idealistic utopian-like rule of "no conquering".
  - krapp 5y ago
    Plenty would agree to it, with their fingers crossed behind their backs of course.
  - pharke 5y ago
    I'm reminded of a short sci-fi story I read long ago about an anarchical society where everyone possessed a weapon capable of destroying entire swathes of country side in an instant. It was some form of unlimited energy device that was also used for other less offensive purposes, but everyone carried a sidearm that could emit a beam of energy capable of melting a mountainside into glass. The story focusses around an attempted coup and has an illustrative ending demonstrating the power of such a weapon to deter the use of force to coerce others.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Many primates don't do that. Many humans haven't done that. Stop shilling for the patriarchy.
light_hue_1 5y ago
It doesn't work because of externalities. Like, you live in a city state, that's great, but the rural county that your water comes from decided to elect Trump as their leader-for-life and he decided that all water should now contain uranium and lead to ward off COVID-25. Good luck living!

jerf 5y ago

"I don't think it is a stable situation once someone gains the means to conquer by force." Obviously, it hasn't been historically. But an interesting long-term trend (across the last few centuries) is that "conquest by force" is becoming less and less effective. In the ancient world, "conquest by force" meant you got to take their land, take their food, take their livestock, and just in general take all their stuff that they worked for without you having to work for it, and this is clearly an advantageous move. If you destroyed their infrastructure, meh. It was easily replaced. As our world becomes more and more technological, though, an increasing amount of our wealth is in people, infrastructure, and relationships. It is effectively impossible today to "conquer" a country in the conventional sense and enjoy their wealth as a result. You can force a slave to harvest wheat, but you can't force them to participate at full capacity in a software engineering role with a hundred other people. (Part of why as many people have observed, slavery was on its way out in the South whether the civil war happened or not, albeit perhaps decades later.) Militaries remain an important component of how countries relate to each other, as a chess understanding would suggest, even the threat of mass destruction is (whether we like it or not) a very big and important stick, but today the threat is military destruction... not conquest. If we continue even farther into this direction, well... what would the effects be? (An interesting test case for the point of view I am propounding here is China's attempts to militarily conquer Taiwan. If they do undertake it, it would be one of the most interesting such conquest attempts in a long time, because unlike the Ukraine/Crimea where I think Russia wanted the land rights more than anything else, China wants the people of Taiwan. Will the people of Taiwan just acquiesce and continue generating wealth for China to take? Or will China discover that the jewel is much less desirable than they thought? Stay tuned.) I'll end with, please note the difference between "less and less effective" and "ineffective". Military conquest isn't necessarily ineffective. But it used to get you a much higher percentage of the "good stuff" of the conquered territory. Today, if you "conquer" a nation, but had to wipe out its entire industrial infrastructure in order to finally convince it to stop resisting you, percentage wise you've won a lot less of what there was before you started to conquer them. It's not hard to get to the point where you won less than you would have had you just taken what you put into your military effort and used it to build locally instead of destroy.

kingsuper20 5y ago