> Second, not all violent entities are created equal. Cartel members are motivated by greed and lust for power. Many are willing to employ tactics such as tortu

> Second, not all violent entities are created equal. Cartel members are motivated by greed and lust for power. Many are willing to employ tactics such as torture and terrorism to advance those goals First world governments are known to employ torture and terrorism to achieve their goals, but it's abstracted away as much as possible. While I think the same motivations of greed and power lust exist in governments too, I do agree there is a big difference between cartels and "good" governments: a good government represents the will of the people, and has checks and balances to at least reduce the brazenness and frequency of their violent excesses. To me, the takeaway is that we can't really rely just on individuals to run moral power structures, but that we need to encode these values into the rules of structure itself - the democratic principles, laws, and enforcement - to get a decent approximation of a civil society. I don't know the details of cartel governance, but I imagine it's authoritarian without much oversight.