8 ms·

Interesting to combine this line of thinking with the transition from nation-states to market-states: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1744057060106

Interesting to combine this line of thinking with the transition from nation-states to market-states: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17440570601063864?journalCode=fglc20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1744057060106386... The power vacuum that's arisen from populism & isolationism is about to create a gigantic untapped market for firms that provide the services of a state - defense, dispute resolution, and currency - for a fee, to gigantic multinational corporations. At the same time, there are nascent technologies (drones and robotics for defense, blockchain and the Internet for dispute resolution & currency) that dramatically lower the cost of many of these services, to the point where we may see private companies that are more effective than nation-states at it. Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?

bombcar 4y ago
The modern Westphalian nation-state may just be an accident of history, eventually replaced by other mechanisms. Arguably it already has begun; tech monopolies are starting to provide "government-like" rules and enforcement.
- doliveira 4y ago
  Feudalism, here we go
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    It's worth noting that feudalism was stable for much longer than western style democracy has been so far.
    - walleeee 4y ago
      Any of this could easily be wrong and I'm by no means an historian or political theorist but I'm in the middle of a book called Absolutism and its Discontents and it's made me a little hesitant to draw too many parallels between medieval feudalism and modern/future corporate serfdom Feudal Europe, as I understand, was stabilized by the material independence of agrarian enclaves from one another, as well as an absence (in the wretched majority at least) of any conception of politics or a state or secular power over and above the will of the king or the local nobility, with the latter much more relevant to most people Although there seems to be much controversy among historians I have the impression many agree that the simultaneous (and often antipathetic) rise of absolutism and markets created the series of crises which brought the end of feudalism, and although absolutism is mostly gone, markets are now ubiquitous Even if supply chains and communications networks fragment I'm not sure the feudalism of old bears much on the modern day unless we lose nearly all the technology developed in the last 500 years
    - doliveira 4y ago
      I don't think that's worth noting at all. After all, we could also say the same about hunter gatherer communities, the Assyrian empire, the Egyptian empire, the Roman empire, etc... But anyway, way things are going libertarians and conservatives will get their dreamt feudalism.
- divided 4y ago
  It is a stretch to call enforcing terms of service “government-like” rules and enforcement. This is like calling a restaurant hanging up a “no shirt, no shoes, no service” sign the same. And thus far I haven’t seen them issue fines or imprisonment over breaking their rules.
  - Engineering-MD 4y ago
    It’s a continuum though. The restaurant example is limited scope and limited enforcement. Compare it instead to a school/university which does enforce code of conducts etc and suspends students. Similar with housing organisations.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      And you already have it happening to businesses; companies such as payment processors effectively wield life/death decisions over many types of businesses, for better or for worse. Can Google or PayPal legally kill you? No, but there are many other types of punishment in the world than imprisonment or death.
  - skciva 4y ago
    What happens when the terms of service change in real time? When you try to contact someone and you're met with a void? When your livelihood is tied to a platform that decides to shut down? When an algorithm determines you're a threat or you're not allowed to cross a boarder? Tech is integrating itself into daily life every day, for better and for worse. Leaders in the space need to slow down and realize the havoc they wreck when they "move fast and break things." As someone on HN you're likely privy to how to navigate these waters. Everyday people are buying into whatever they're being sold (because why wouldn't they when they've basically got no viable alternatives) from tech and then being left empty handed when the VCs and leaders get their payouts and move on to what ever shiny object they spot on the horizon. If you or your family and friends haven't been on the receiving end of fines or imprisonment due to technology consider yourself lucky and diversify your community.
    - 4y ago
- h2odragon 4y ago
tacker2000 4y ago
Interesting idea, but where might the physical boundaries of such a entity be? Since we are physical beings… would the corporations buy land to live on? Would we be all just living this in a virtual world? Would we be on a gigantic spaceship?
- nazgulnarsil 4y ago
  Gated communities, like Brazil
csomar 4y ago
That's like Brazil but for the whole world?
tacocataco 4y ago
Sounds like the analog version of what you're describing would be (IMO) the East Indian Trading Company.
prometheus76 4y ago
That's all government has ever been and will always be: a protection racket.
- r721 4y ago
  But in a "no-government world" protection racket will still exist, just without any restrictions at all.
- jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
  you're saying the quiet part out loud... it's supposed to be the arbiter of civil rights, fairness, and enablement, with the convenient side effect of enriching a very small group of people who actually pull the strings
  - ginjas 4y ago
    >it's supposed to be the arbiter of civil rights, fairness, and enablement, with the convenient side effect of enriching a very small group of people who actually pull the strings so the ends justify the means? Even the premise is wrong
    - marcinzm 4y ago
      Name a system that doesn't enrich a small group of people when actually implemented in real life. So yeah you pick the least bad of the options you have. edit: That also includes being stable against competing systems. A utopia that is conquered in 5 minutes and replaced with a dystopia is not a utopia.
      - ginjas 4y ago
        Imo let's be real, drop the pretension. I'd rather we get off the notion that these things are possible. I.e. we are ruled by smart people (aristocracy), that enrich themselves, but that are smart and have skin in the game. Rather than dumb (and impressionable) collective deciding in a popularity contest, probably _extremely_ influenced by a 3rd party (media), pretending it's fulfilling its duty, while it's actually falling in some 'cool' 'wolf's' song, that only accomplishes short term gains, while mortgaging our future. Just drop the pretension. Edit: maybe I'm schizo-ranting, but in my opinion, this is a very sober/hyperconscious perspective, that should be had by everyone. Not this Plato's Cave bs, that we live in a 'free democracy' where nobody questions status quo, except a minority of right-left non-npc people.
hprotagonist 4y ago
May i recommend Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong?
- ticklemyelmo 4y ago
  Almost worth it to be able to see a Rat Thing in action. Very briefly.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    People always complain about how inhumane it is to create those things. Nobody ever asks the Rat Things how they feel about it.
    - themadturk 4y ago
      Apparently the rat things are down with it. It's all puppy dog heaven until they have to go into action, and they like that as well.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        One of my favorite scenes in the story. IRL I've heard people criticize using dogs as weapons of war with the specific criticism "Do you think the dog actually likes jumping out of a plane?" And my immediate answer is "There's plenty of valid criticism you can levy at that use case, but this ain't it. Because the answer is 'yes.' Lots of dogs do. The ones that don't, wash out of military dog training. By-and-large, a dog's default is to go with the pack, so if its handler is chill with the jump so's the dog." Dogs aren't human beings and don't experience the world like human beings. The empathy circuitry they engage so effectively in us can make us forget that sometimes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chaosharmonic 4y ago
  I'm sorry, but Uncle Enzo and I go way back, and I couldn't do that to him -- not after I already promised him I'd go to the job fair coming up.
walleeee 4y ago
> Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers? How do you envision the deprecation of the nuclear-armed nation state unfolding? The USSR had a unipolar world outside to stabilize and manage its disintegration. How is this accomplished in a multipolar context, with tensions inflamed by intensifying scarcity, competition, environmental instability, etc? Serious questions, not a derogatory comment
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  there's no reason that things need to unfold such that a nuclear armed state exists one day and then doesn't the next. It could easily evolve from regulatory capture, increased influence of large corporations in governance, capture of public discourse by corporate sponsored narratives, and eventual de-facto private control of government. You'd end up with a nation with a nuclear force exists on paper but in fact the corporate interests were in control of that entity. In fact, of the preceding 5 conditions I would say 4 are already either done or in progress.
  - walleeee 4y ago
    Which condition do you figure is the weakest link?
- DubiousPusher 4y ago
  It's not just the multipolarity you have to consider. I actually think that's fairly resolvable for something like loose nukes as basically every stable power has an interest in catch-alls for such things. But the U.S. the EU and China are all facing internal shifts in thinking about how they relate to the rest of the world. And that's a true wildcard. Those swings, coupled with multipolarity create a very dynamic system that I think is impossible to predict. When a country may stick its thumb in the eye of international treaty simply because it satisfies a belligerent domestic constituency and that alienates a relatively equal strength power, that's a very volatile situation.
- BatFastard 4y ago
yoyohello13 4y ago
This is basically the premise of Metal Gear Solid 4.
- vecinu 4y ago
  As well as Borderlands!
- fartcannon 4y ago
  RoboCop, too.
mooreds 4y ago
> Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers? Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, explores this possible future. Great book.
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  The takeover of government functions by multinational corporations is a cyberpunk trope. See any of William Gibson's fiction from the early 80s.
  - UnpossibleJim 4y ago
    Yes it's a cyberpunk trope, but it's also based in history. Wealthy nobles of Rome and Medieval times were landowners and, to put it bluntly, warmongers... using armies to make profit by war. They were nothing if not the corporate warlords of their times, holding shares in agriculture, land ownership and armies. Collecting shares of their workers (commonly referred to as share cropping), much like taxation. If that isn't some form of pseudo governmental function, I'm not sure what is =/
  - danuker 4y ago
    Does that make it any less likely? https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/may/12/industry-of-inequality-why-world-is-obsessed-with-private-security https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/may/12/industry-... > For the 81 states for which estimates were available, private security workers appear to outnumber police forces in 44 countries – with a combined population of roughly 4 billion people – or more than half of the world’s total of 7.5 billion.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      There's a bit of a difference between a world in which it's common for rich people and big buildings to employ security guards (as it has been for most of history) and Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong...
  - MandieD 4y ago
giantg2 4y ago
"which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?" Governments have the monopoly on sanctioned use of violence. They could choose to outsource that to a 3rd party, such as privateers.
- anonAndOn 4y ago
  Don't forget aspiring politicians.[0] They also hire hit squads with the intent on sanctioning its use once they're in charge (presumably). [0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57762246 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57762246
- _jal 4y ago
  The discussion is about governments losing that monopoly. It is true that one plausible mechanism of that transition is outsourcing. Let a mercenary outfit become too competent and your vendor can become your rival.

bombcar 4y ago

The modern Westphalian nation-state may just be an accident of history, eventually replaced by other mechanisms. Arguably it already has begun; tech monopolies are starting to provide "government-like" rules and enforcement.

doliveira 4y ago
Feudalism, here we go
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  It's worth noting that feudalism was stable for much longer than western style democracy has been so far.
  - walleeee 4y ago
    Any of this could easily be wrong and I'm by no means an historian or political theorist but I'm in the middle of a book called Absolutism and its Discontents and it's made me a little hesitant to draw too many parallels between medieval feudalism and modern/future corporate serfdom Feudal Europe, as I understand, was stabilized by the material independence of agrarian enclaves from one another, as well as an absence (in the wretched majority at least) of any conception of politics or a state or secular power over and above the will of the king or the local nobility, with the latter much more relevant to most people Although there seems to be much controversy among historians I have the impression many agree that the simultaneous (and often antipathetic) rise of absolutism and markets created the series of crises which brought the end of feudalism, and although absolutism is mostly gone, markets are now ubiquitous Even if supply chains and communications networks fragment I'm not sure the feudalism of old bears much on the modern day unless we lose nearly all the technology developed in the last 500 years
  - doliveira 4y ago
    I don't think that's worth noting at all. After all, we could also say the same about hunter gatherer communities, the Assyrian empire, the Egyptian empire, the Roman empire, etc... But anyway, way things are going libertarians and conservatives will get their dreamt feudalism.
divided 4y ago
It is a stretch to call enforcing terms of service “government-like” rules and enforcement. This is like calling a restaurant hanging up a “no shirt, no shoes, no service” sign the same. And thus far I haven’t seen them issue fines or imprisonment over breaking their rules.
- Engineering-MD 4y ago
  It’s a continuum though. The restaurant example is limited scope and limited enforcement. Compare it instead to a school/university which does enforce code of conducts etc and suspends students. Similar with housing organisations.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    And you already have it happening to businesses; companies such as payment processors effectively wield life/death decisions over many types of businesses, for better or for worse. Can Google or PayPal legally kill you? No, but there are many other types of punishment in the world than imprisonment or death.
- skciva 4y ago
  What happens when the terms of service change in real time? When you try to contact someone and you're met with a void? When your livelihood is tied to a platform that decides to shut down? When an algorithm determines you're a threat or you're not allowed to cross a boarder? Tech is integrating itself into daily life every day, for better and for worse. Leaders in the space need to slow down and realize the havoc they wreck when they "move fast and break things." As someone on HN you're likely privy to how to navigate these waters. Everyday people are buying into whatever they're being sold (because why wouldn't they when they've basically got no viable alternatives) from tech and then being left empty handed when the VCs and leaders get their payouts and move on to what ever shiny object they spot on the horizon. If you or your family and friends haven't been on the receiving end of fines or imprisonment due to technology consider yourself lucky and diversify your community.
  - 4y ago
h2odragon 4y ago

tacker2000 4y ago

Interesting idea, but where might the physical boundaries of such a entity be? Since we are physical beings… would the corporations buy land to live on? Would we be all just living this in a virtual world? Would we be on a gigantic spaceship?

nazgulnarsil 4y ago
Gated communities, like Brazil

csomar 4y ago

That's like Brazil but for the whole world?

tacocataco 4y ago

Sounds like the analog version of what you're describing would be (IMO) the East Indian Trading Company.

prometheus76 4y ago

That's all government has ever been and will always be: a protection racket.

r721 4y ago
But in a "no-government world" protection racket will still exist, just without any restrictions at all.
jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
you're saying the quiet part out loud... it's supposed to be the arbiter of civil rights, fairness, and enablement, with the convenient side effect of enriching a very small group of people who actually pull the strings
- ginjas 4y ago
  >it's supposed to be the arbiter of civil rights, fairness, and enablement, with the convenient side effect of enriching a very small group of people who actually pull the strings so the ends justify the means? Even the premise is wrong
  - marcinzm 4y ago
    Name a system that doesn't enrich a small group of people when actually implemented in real life. So yeah you pick the least bad of the options you have. edit: That also includes being stable against competing systems. A utopia that is conquered in 5 minutes and replaced with a dystopia is not a utopia.
    - ginjas 4y ago
      Imo let's be real, drop the pretension. I'd rather we get off the notion that these things are possible. I.e. we are ruled by smart people (aristocracy), that enrich themselves, but that are smart and have skin in the game. Rather than dumb (and impressionable) collective deciding in a popularity contest, probably _extremely_ influenced by a 3rd party (media), pretending it's fulfilling its duty, while it's actually falling in some 'cool' 'wolf's' song, that only accomplishes short term gains, while mortgaging our future. Just drop the pretension. Edit: maybe I'm schizo-ranting, but in my opinion, this is a very sober/hyperconscious perspective, that should be had by everyone. Not this Plato's Cave bs, that we live in a 'free democracy' where nobody questions status quo, except a minority of right-left non-npc people.

hprotagonist 4y ago

May i recommend Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong?

ticklemyelmo 4y ago
Almost worth it to be able to see a Rat Thing in action. Very briefly.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  People always complain about how inhumane it is to create those things. Nobody ever asks the Rat Things how they feel about it.
  - themadturk 4y ago
    Apparently the rat things are down with it. It's all puppy dog heaven until they have to go into action, and they like that as well.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      One of my favorite scenes in the story. IRL I've heard people criticize using dogs as weapons of war with the specific criticism "Do you think the dog actually likes jumping out of a plane?" And my immediate answer is "There's plenty of valid criticism you can levy at that use case, but this ain't it. Because the answer is 'yes.' Lots of dogs do. The ones that don't, wash out of military dog training. By-and-large, a dog's default is to go with the pack, so if its handler is chill with the jump so's the dog." Dogs aren't human beings and don't experience the world like human beings. The empathy circuitry they engage so effectively in us can make us forget that sometimes.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
chaosharmonic 4y ago
I'm sorry, but Uncle Enzo and I go way back, and I couldn't do that to him -- not after I already promised him I'd go to the job fair coming up.

walleeee 4y ago

> Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers? How do you envision the deprecation of the nuclear-armed nation state unfolding? The USSR had a unipolar world outside to stabilize and manage its disintegration. How is this accomplished in a multipolar context, with tensions inflamed by intensifying scarcity, competition, environmental instability, etc? Serious questions, not a derogatory comment

idiotsecant 4y ago
there's no reason that things need to unfold such that a nuclear armed state exists one day and then doesn't the next. It could easily evolve from regulatory capture, increased influence of large corporations in governance, capture of public discourse by corporate sponsored narratives, and eventual de-facto private control of government. You'd end up with a nation with a nuclear force exists on paper but in fact the corporate interests were in control of that entity. In fact, of the preceding 5 conditions I would say 4 are already either done or in progress.
- walleeee 4y ago
  Which condition do you figure is the weakest link?
DubiousPusher 4y ago
It's not just the multipolarity you have to consider. I actually think that's fairly resolvable for something like loose nukes as basically every stable power has an interest in catch-alls for such things. But the U.S. the EU and China are all facing internal shifts in thinking about how they relate to the rest of the world. And that's a true wildcard. Those swings, coupled with multipolarity create a very dynamic system that I think is impossible to predict. When a country may stick its thumb in the eye of international treaty simply because it satisfies a belligerent domestic constituency and that alienates a relatively equal strength power, that's a very volatile situation.
BatFastard 4y ago

yoyohello13 4y ago

This is basically the premise of Metal Gear Solid 4.

vecinu 4y ago
As well as Borderlands!
fartcannon 4y ago
RoboCop, too.

mooreds 4y ago

> Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers? Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, explores this possible future. Great book.

timmytokyo 4y ago
The takeover of government functions by multinational corporations is a cyberpunk trope. See any of William Gibson's fiction from the early 80s.
- UnpossibleJim 4y ago
  Yes it's a cyberpunk trope, but it's also based in history. Wealthy nobles of Rome and Medieval times were landowners and, to put it bluntly, warmongers... using armies to make profit by war. They were nothing if not the corporate warlords of their times, holding shares in agriculture, land ownership and armies. Collecting shares of their workers (commonly referred to as share cropping), much like taxation. If that isn't some form of pseudo governmental function, I'm not sure what is =/
- danuker 4y ago
  Does that make it any less likely? https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/may/12/industry-of-inequality-why-world-is-obsessed-with-private-security https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/may/12/industry-... > For the 81 states for which estimates were available, private security workers appear to outnumber police forces in 44 countries – with a combined population of roughly 4 billion people – or more than half of the world’s total of 7.5 billion.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    There's a bit of a difference between a world in which it's common for rich people and big buildings to employ security guards (as it has been for most of history) and Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong...
- MandieD 4y ago

giantg2 4y ago

"which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?" Governments have the monopoly on sanctioned use of violence. They could choose to outsource that to a 3rd party, such as privateers.

anonAndOn 4y ago
Don't forget aspiring politicians.[0] They also hire hit squads with the intent on sanctioning its use once they're in charge (presumably). [0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57762246 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57762246
_jal 4y ago
The discussion is about governments losing that monopoly. It is true that one plausible mechanism of that transition is outsourcing. Let a mercenary outfit become too competent and your vendor can become your rival.