5 ms·

You apparently live one hell of a privileged life in a fully functional country with a good legal system if you're saying such simplistic things. Striving for s

You apparently live one hell of a privileged life in a fully functional country with a good legal system if you're saying such simplistic things. Striving for such nice conditions in all jurisdictions is laudable, but the practical reality is that in much of the world, a normal person subjected to abuse often has to resort to extralegal and sometimes violence recourse. The law is next to useless in these places. I live in one such country and your platitude would have just maintained a status quo of abuse against innocent people in many situations where they had to use or pay for violence by others to solve major problems.

robbedpeter 5y ago
We live a civilized life, because our ancestors banded together, fought, and died to establish a government that was stable. That's not privilege, that's a way of life bought and fucking paid for. It doesn't just happen, and has to be guarded and cultivated. Unless and until similar costs in lives are paid, I honestly don't see a path to civilized life in much of the world. It keeps getting proved over and over that first world, well off countries can't pay or train or subjugate other cultures into civilized engagement with the world or even their own people. Nation building is an awful joke of a policy, and at some point people have to figure their own shit out. There are legal and illegal immigration and asylum possibilities all over the world, or you can take up arms against corruption and tyranny. It sucks, but being born doesn't entitle you to anything unless there's a culture and civilization to make good on those entitlements.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "you can take up arms against corruption and tyranny." Taking up arms is thr easy part mate, there is no shortage of thay going round. creating a functional society is the difficult one.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    There are lots of examples to use as templates. You can have hyper religious militant sharia, or you can have civilization compatible with the rest of the world. If you try for both, the community of nations is not going to let you participate meaningfully. I guess "hermit kingdom" is option 3, if you can get nukes.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Forget sharia, from Russia to Brazil many countries are still struggling with crime and corruption, despite drawing inspiration from existing examples and templates. To pretend this can be easilly achieved is just folly
- helloworld11 5y ago
  Okay, let me put it to you this way, straight from examples right here in the city I live in and many others in my country: You and your neighbors get along in the small residential/commercial community you inhabit. Things are fairly peaceful even though otherwise your country is riddled with corruption, police that are WORSE than useless (they're often highly criminal and/or collude with criminal gangs) and your little community of neighbors is trying to get by and largely watching over their neighborhood. Then, one day, a small group of thieves starts entering and assaulting stores, trying to extort people and robbing others on the streets, threatening more violence if people don't cooperate better. You try calling police, but they either don't show up at all or only do so late and never investigate anything worth a damn (remember, they collude, and they're likely colluding with your newly arrived local thugs). So, your neighbors and you organize together and ambush these thugs the next time they come along with their attempts at violence. You catch and badly beat a few of them then toss them out into a public area where an ambulance can pick them up. It sends a clear message, the extortions stop. Is this ideal? Nope. It's awful, but you want peace for your business, community and family, and what other recourse do you have? Should you and all your neighbors just spew platitudes about ideals of law and order while being assaulted regularly? Or should the whole neighborhood, as you say, apply for overseas asylum and wait months or years for a response (likely negative)? Maybe they should abandon their homes and everything else of their culture to illegally flee, letting the country sink further into chaos? They mostly won't do these things. because they want a peaceful home that is their real home, and with legal options having been marginalized, communities and groups sometimes really, no-shit-no-other-option have to take matters into their own hands. Maybe that clears things up about perspective from within a highly functional, lawful country that had decades or centuries before you were born to become like that, letting you simply enjoy it and criticize others who aren't so lucky yet.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    It's really clear. If your home is invaded and there is no rule of law, you ambush and kill the thugs. If that's not feasible, or if the retaliation can't be handled, then you leave for a place where you aren't chattel for a gang of thugs. Because it's no longer your home. If your country won't or can't protect you and your neighbors, it's not your country, so yes, fleeing is the only rational move. They can't extort you if you're not there anymore, and you run the chance of grouping up with enough like minded others that you might be able to return and take back your land with force. I'm not criticizing the people who find themselves in shitty situations. I'm criticizing your statement that the civilization I am fortunate enough to live in is "privilege." It is a carefully guarded and deliberately constructed civilization designed precisely to defend individuals from mobs and strongmen. That is a right, not a privilege, secured by violence and death and sacrifice. When there is no rule of law, might makes right. Securing civilization from lawlessness universally starts with blood and death and is a horror show. It's that, or leave for a better place. By staying, you're giving power to the exploiters. Worse, you're giving them the means to abuse and exploit more people, and more generations of people. There are no good or easy choices in such situations. You kill, you leave, or you perpetuate the hellscape, inflicting it on your local society. The idea of the state having a monopoly on violence is the foundation of all successful civilizations. The idea being that if there is no monopoly, the right and responsibility to use violence falls to individuals, and when individuals are wielding violence without consequences, rule of law is meaningless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

robbedpeter 5y ago

We live a civilized life, because our ancestors banded together, fought, and died to establish a government that was stable. That's not privilege, that's a way of life bought and fucking paid for. It doesn't just happen, and has to be guarded and cultivated. Unless and until similar costs in lives are paid, I honestly don't see a path to civilized life in much of the world. It keeps getting proved over and over that first world, well off countries can't pay or train or subjugate other cultures into civilized engagement with the world or even their own people. Nation building is an awful joke of a policy, and at some point people have to figure their own shit out. There are legal and illegal immigration and asylum possibilities all over the world, or you can take up arms against corruption and tyranny. It sucks, but being born doesn't entitle you to anything unless there's a culture and civilization to make good on those entitlements.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"you can take up arms against corruption and tyranny." Taking up arms is thr easy part mate, there is no shortage of thay going round. creating a functional society is the difficult one.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  There are lots of examples to use as templates. You can have hyper religious militant sharia, or you can have civilization compatible with the rest of the world. If you try for both, the community of nations is not going to let you participate meaningfully. I guess "hermit kingdom" is option 3, if you can get nukes.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Forget sharia, from Russia to Brazil many countries are still struggling with crime and corruption, despite drawing inspiration from existing examples and templates. To pretend this can be easilly achieved is just folly
helloworld11 5y ago
Okay, let me put it to you this way, straight from examples right here in the city I live in and many others in my country: You and your neighbors get along in the small residential/commercial community you inhabit. Things are fairly peaceful even though otherwise your country is riddled with corruption, police that are WORSE than useless (they're often highly criminal and/or collude with criminal gangs) and your little community of neighbors is trying to get by and largely watching over their neighborhood. Then, one day, a small group of thieves starts entering and assaulting stores, trying to extort people and robbing others on the streets, threatening more violence if people don't cooperate better. You try calling police, but they either don't show up at all or only do so late and never investigate anything worth a damn (remember, they collude, and they're likely colluding with your newly arrived local thugs). So, your neighbors and you organize together and ambush these thugs the next time they come along with their attempts at violence. You catch and badly beat a few of them then toss them out into a public area where an ambulance can pick them up. It sends a clear message, the extortions stop. Is this ideal? Nope. It's awful, but you want peace for your business, community and family, and what other recourse do you have? Should you and all your neighbors just spew platitudes about ideals of law and order while being assaulted regularly? Or should the whole neighborhood, as you say, apply for overseas asylum and wait months or years for a response (likely negative)? Maybe they should abandon their homes and everything else of their culture to illegally flee, letting the country sink further into chaos? They mostly won't do these things. because they want a peaceful home that is their real home, and with legal options having been marginalized, communities and groups sometimes really, no-shit-no-other-option have to take matters into their own hands. Maybe that clears things up about perspective from within a highly functional, lawful country that had decades or centuries before you were born to become like that, letting you simply enjoy it and criticize others who aren't so lucky yet.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  It's really clear. If your home is invaded and there is no rule of law, you ambush and kill the thugs. If that's not feasible, or if the retaliation can't be handled, then you leave for a place where you aren't chattel for a gang of thugs. Because it's no longer your home. If your country won't or can't protect you and your neighbors, it's not your country, so yes, fleeing is the only rational move. They can't extort you if you're not there anymore, and you run the chance of grouping up with enough like minded others that you might be able to return and take back your land with force. I'm not criticizing the people who find themselves in shitty situations. I'm criticizing your statement that the civilization I am fortunate enough to live in is "privilege." It is a carefully guarded and deliberately constructed civilization designed precisely to defend individuals from mobs and strongmen. That is a right, not a privilege, secured by violence and death and sacrifice. When there is no rule of law, might makes right. Securing civilization from lawlessness universally starts with blood and death and is a horror show. It's that, or leave for a better place. By staying, you're giving power to the exploiters. Worse, you're giving them the means to abuse and exploit more people, and more generations of people. There are no good or easy choices in such situations. You kill, you leave, or you perpetuate the hellscape, inflicting it on your local society. The idea of the state having a monopoly on violence is the foundation of all successful civilizations. The idea being that if there is no monopoly, the right and responsibility to use violence falls to individuals, and when individuals are wielding violence without consequences, rule of law is meaningless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence