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This reminds me of a point I feel progressives (usually steeped in several generations of western living) tend to miss. The underwritten currency of human soci

This reminds me of a point I feel progressives (usually steeped in several generations of western living) tend to miss. The underwritten currency of human society is violence. Using it, you can take what you want and the only way to stop you is more violence. If you are part of an ideological tribe that wants to protect humans from each others' petty brutality you must seize land, establish the rule of law, and murder or expel people who challenge your regime. Organized crime like gangs, cartels, the mafia, corrupt cops--these are not "unfortunate byproducts of imperialism and capitalism", they are the basest, fundamental expression of human dominance. If they central government weakens, they will take over. I deeply hate people who violate the safety and freedom of civilized society, and it sometimes frustrates me that so many westerners who believe in "human rights" are convinced these problems can be solved with a light touch.

duxup 4y ago
I’m not sure what that has to do with “progressives”.
- quacked 4y ago
  The majority of people in the US who bother to care about human rights abuses and exploitation of vulnerable populations are "progressives".
  - duxup 4y ago
    But what does that mean? Isn't that just people who care generally? And if they do what should they do differently?
    - quacked 4y ago
      Did you read my first comment with intent to understand my point or just to nitpick me? I said pretty clearly: > If you are part of an ideological tribe that wants to protect humans from each others' petty brutality you must seize land, establish the rule of law, and murder or expel people who challenge your regime. If people care about human rights abuses, they need to seize land, establish the rule of law, and murder or expel people who challenge their regime. For instance: there are known sex traffickers inside the United States who are sent to prison for years when they're caught and then they get out. If you want to curtail that practice to a greater degree than it is, you need to murder or expel people who do it, not just give them an official time-out and then make life more difficult for them afterwards by reducing their employment options and curtailing their right to vote. Another option is indefinite containment, but that's a large drain on resources and extremely difficult to operate without simply ending up with a prison system like the US has, which is low-status and overtly corrupt and underfunded (in the sense that the funding goes to profit rather than to the effective operations of the prisons). In short: the safety of civilized people who participate in society in good faith needs to be violently protected from people who take advantage of them. This is obviously not the case in the US, and it's certainly not the case in outlying rural regions in Asia and Africa, where people are forced to scam under threat of punishment.
      - duxup 4y ago
        So invade other countries? Establish new governments that do what we like? That doesn't have a history of good outcomes for anyone.
        quacked 4y ago
        > So invade other countries? Establish new governments that do what we like? You have described the history of every single western country, within which the majority of dominant-ethnicity citizens enjoy a physical safety and quality of life unprecedented in world history. Modern human rights campaigns and progressive philosophy spring mostly from western countries with ideologies downstream of the Enlightenment. (Note that I am not claiming that only Europeans ever developed sub-societies where human rights were respected, merely that out of the surviving capable violent states today, the western ones are the ones more focused on progressive ideals.) The Western countries were invented after violent conquer and rebellion against regional warlords by sub-factions within their own lands, and the rule of law and power of finance was allocated mostly to people who had ties to the most powerful warlords at the time of the founding of the countries. One example is England, which conquered Wales, Ireland, and Scotland through a military alliance of the internal (English) territories that recognized a seat of power based in London and an ethnic identity manufactured whole-cloth to encompass Danish, Angle, Saxon, and Scandinavian immigrants to the Isle. The "United Kingdom", once a brutally violent and despotic place, is now one of the number one immigration targets for people freeing lawless, economically depressed war-torn regions.
        duxup 4y ago
        Every nation is a result of a series of events, revolts, etc... I don't see that as unique in any way to any type of nation nor does it change the history of attempting to make a nation into what some outsider would like it to be.
      - rendall 4y ago
        > If you want to curtail that practice to a greater degree than it is, you need to murder or expel people who do it, not just give them an official time-out and then make life more difficult for them afterwards by reducing their employment options and curtailing their right to vote Interesting. Upstream you said that human rights was mostly a progressive issue, but this is a decidedly conservative, perhaps even regressive, approach. edit - later, I see that you refer to yourself as conservative > the safety of civilized people who participate in society in good faith needs to be violently protected from people who take advantage of them I associate civilization with staunch defense of the humanity and dignity even of the worst of us. It might for me even be the primary defining characteristic of the term. We could publically behead those who "take advantage", but then, that would be uncivilized. Medieval and barbaric, actually. Or, we could create the circumstances to enable atonement and redemption. A "time out", as you say, followed by a reintegration into society. The effects can be monitored for optimal outcomes, empirically. Use only the bare minimum violence necessary to maintain actual, real civilized society, constantly vigilant against its overuse
  - rendall 4y ago
    I think this is untrue, if you're contrasting to "conservatives"* Conservatives fear the effects of fast change and unintended consequences, but do still care about human rights and the exploitation of vulnerable populations. * The caveat here is that I do think there is a significant minority of people who call themselves conservative or progressive or whatever, who are not on the side of a better society, but are only for themselves.
    - quacked 4y ago
      I have sympathy for the semantic point you're making, as I call myself "conservative", but match ideologies with very few people in the US that self-identify using the same word.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    That's simply not true. Libertarianism holds human rights above all else. The entire purpose of a libertarians government is guaranteeing peoples' rights.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Libertarianism holds human rights above all else. Libertarianism holds a very particular and highly contentious conception of human rights (which differs radically, but with some common elements, between different flavors of libertarianism) above everything else. So do several other ideologies, with different conceptions of human rights.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        What's highly contentious about rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?
        dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? Those are slogans, not substantive conceptions of rights, and the last of those a slogan that was used because the thing many then-contemporary liberals would have preferred and that reflects (but still does bot substantively specify) what they and most modern libertarians value most, property, was too contentious even at the level of a slogan.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Sure, they are short, that doesn't make them slogans. For example, you have the right to your life. That means you have a right to not be murdered by others or the state. How is that difficult to understand? > most modern libertarians value most That's an invention on your part. > property Yes, I know the original wording was "pursuit of property". Property rights have turned out to be a very fundamental right. Not being allowed to own anything has proved disastrous again and again and again.
archon1410 4y ago
>The underwritten currency of human society is violence. Using it, you can take what you want and the only way to stop you is more violence. If you are part of an ideological tribe that wants to protect humans from each others' petty brutality you must seize land, establish the rule of law, and murder or expel people who challenge your regime. I don't think any progressives deny the state's "monopoly on violence". Of course the state must establish the rule of law, and possibly murder (or is it not murder before the rule of law is established?) those who seek to overthrow the state. >it sometimes frustrates me that so many westerners who believe in "human rights" are convinced these problems can be solved with a light touch. But do you really need to murder scammers and slave owners unless they try to resist with insurrectionery violence? A light touch of a long prison sentence can work. I feel you want the state to gun down these people immediately without a trial or anything. I don't think that's right, and you haven't argued for why it's right, just ranted on barely related things.
- quacked 4y ago
  I never said anything about "no trial", I said that murder and exile are the only two effective sentences for people like slavers. There's no amount of "personal rehabilitation" that excuses it. A light touch only ensures that people who are effective at manipulation of those with better goodwill than them can avoid the two fair sentences. Long prison sentences are unnecessarily cruel and a net drain on resources. The only reason to forgive slave-owners is if you're grandfathering them into a new nation-state and offering amnesty under threat of death for their participation.
  - archon1410 4y ago
    >The only reason to forgive slave-owners is if you're grandfathering them into a new nation-state and offering amnesty under threat of death for their participation. But Britain did this and it wasn't a new state at all. It worked out well enough and was apparently cheaper than the American Civil War.
booleandilemma 4y ago
A government isn't much different. Stop giving the government your money and watch what happens to you. I agree with everything you've written though.
- quacked 4y ago
  Oh I completely agree with you. "All laws are enforced at gunpoint". Even if the current US government was somehow reformed into something I didn't find reprehensible evil and incompetent there would still be a necessary armed standoff between the government and the citizens.
SkyBelow 4y ago
>The underwritten currency of human society is violence. Perhaps this should be changed to life in general, with a possible exception for the forms of life that produce their own energy. All others engage in some form of violence to secure their energy, even if it is against plant life, something we don't often consider as violence.
- quacked 4y ago
  I thought about saying it that way, but a lot of biological violence between organisms is outside of morality. I wanted to draw a very specific connection between "civilized society" and "the deliberate application of violence".
- inkcapmushroom 4y ago
  And plants too compete for energy, in a less directly violent way towards each other but with the same outcome: causing other plants to die from deprivation so that they may live. Life's prime directive to spread itself into every available space necessitates violence.

duxup 4y ago

I’m not sure what that has to do with “progressives”.

quacked 4y ago
The majority of people in the US who bother to care about human rights abuses and exploitation of vulnerable populations are "progressives".
- duxup 4y ago
  But what does that mean? Isn't that just people who care generally? And if they do what should they do differently?
  - quacked 4y ago
    Did you read my first comment with intent to understand my point or just to nitpick me? I said pretty clearly: > If you are part of an ideological tribe that wants to protect humans from each others' petty brutality you must seize land, establish the rule of law, and murder or expel people who challenge your regime. If people care about human rights abuses, they need to seize land, establish the rule of law, and murder or expel people who challenge their regime. For instance: there are known sex traffickers inside the United States who are sent to prison for years when they're caught and then they get out. If you want to curtail that practice to a greater degree than it is, you need to murder or expel people who do it, not just give them an official time-out and then make life more difficult for them afterwards by reducing their employment options and curtailing their right to vote. Another option is indefinite containment, but that's a large drain on resources and extremely difficult to operate without simply ending up with a prison system like the US has, which is low-status and overtly corrupt and underfunded (in the sense that the funding goes to profit rather than to the effective operations of the prisons). In short: the safety of civilized people who participate in society in good faith needs to be violently protected from people who take advantage of them. This is obviously not the case in the US, and it's certainly not the case in outlying rural regions in Asia and Africa, where people are forced to scam under threat of punishment.
    - duxup 4y ago
      So invade other countries? Establish new governments that do what we like? That doesn't have a history of good outcomes for anyone.
      - quacked 4y ago
        > So invade other countries? Establish new governments that do what we like? You have described the history of every single western country, within which the majority of dominant-ethnicity citizens enjoy a physical safety and quality of life unprecedented in world history. Modern human rights campaigns and progressive philosophy spring mostly from western countries with ideologies downstream of the Enlightenment. (Note that I am not claiming that only Europeans ever developed sub-societies where human rights were respected, merely that out of the surviving capable violent states today, the western ones are the ones more focused on progressive ideals.) The Western countries were invented after violent conquer and rebellion against regional warlords by sub-factions within their own lands, and the rule of law and power of finance was allocated mostly to people who had ties to the most powerful warlords at the time of the founding of the countries. One example is England, which conquered Wales, Ireland, and Scotland through a military alliance of the internal (English) territories that recognized a seat of power based in London and an ethnic identity manufactured whole-cloth to encompass Danish, Angle, Saxon, and Scandinavian immigrants to the Isle. The "United Kingdom", once a brutally violent and despotic place, is now one of the number one immigration targets for people freeing lawless, economically depressed war-torn regions.
        duxup 4y ago
        Every nation is a result of a series of events, revolts, etc... I don't see that as unique in any way to any type of nation nor does it change the history of attempting to make a nation into what some outsider would like it to be.
    - rendall 4y ago
      > If you want to curtail that practice to a greater degree than it is, you need to murder or expel people who do it, not just give them an official time-out and then make life more difficult for them afterwards by reducing their employment options and curtailing their right to vote Interesting. Upstream you said that human rights was mostly a progressive issue, but this is a decidedly conservative, perhaps even regressive, approach. edit - later, I see that you refer to yourself as conservative > the safety of civilized people who participate in society in good faith needs to be violently protected from people who take advantage of them I associate civilization with staunch defense of the humanity and dignity even of the worst of us. It might for me even be the primary defining characteristic of the term. We could publically behead those who "take advantage", but then, that would be uncivilized. Medieval and barbaric, actually. Or, we could create the circumstances to enable atonement and redemption. A "time out", as you say, followed by a reintegration into society. The effects can be monitored for optimal outcomes, empirically. Use only the bare minimum violence necessary to maintain actual, real civilized society, constantly vigilant against its overuse
- rendall 4y ago
  I think this is untrue, if you're contrasting to "conservatives"* Conservatives fear the effects of fast change and unintended consequences, but do still care about human rights and the exploitation of vulnerable populations. * The caveat here is that I do think there is a significant minority of people who call themselves conservative or progressive or whatever, who are not on the side of a better society, but are only for themselves.
  - quacked 4y ago
    I have sympathy for the semantic point you're making, as I call myself "conservative", but match ideologies with very few people in the US that self-identify using the same word.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  That's simply not true. Libertarianism holds human rights above all else. The entire purpose of a libertarians government is guaranteeing peoples' rights.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Libertarianism holds human rights above all else. Libertarianism holds a very particular and highly contentious conception of human rights (which differs radically, but with some common elements, between different flavors of libertarianism) above everything else. So do several other ideologies, with different conceptions of human rights.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      What's highly contentious about rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? Those are slogans, not substantive conceptions of rights, and the last of those a slogan that was used because the thing many then-contemporary liberals would have preferred and that reflects (but still does bot substantively specify) what they and most modern libertarians value most, property, was too contentious even at the level of a slogan.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Sure, they are short, that doesn't make them slogans. For example, you have the right to your life. That means you have a right to not be murdered by others or the state. How is that difficult to understand? > most modern libertarians value most That's an invention on your part. > property Yes, I know the original wording was "pursuit of property". Property rights have turned out to be a very fundamental right. Not being allowed to own anything has proved disastrous again and again and again.

archon1410 4y ago

>The underwritten currency of human society is violence. Using it, you can take what you want and the only way to stop you is more violence. If you are part of an ideological tribe that wants to protect humans from each others' petty brutality you must seize land, establish the rule of law, and murder or expel people who challenge your regime. I don't think any progressives deny the state's "monopoly on violence". Of course the state must establish the rule of law, and possibly murder (or is it not murder before the rule of law is established?) those who seek to overthrow the state. >it sometimes frustrates me that so many westerners who believe in "human rights" are convinced these problems can be solved with a light touch. But do you really need to murder scammers and slave owners unless they try to resist with insurrectionery violence? A light touch of a long prison sentence can work. I feel you want the state to gun down these people immediately without a trial or anything. I don't think that's right, and you haven't argued for why it's right, just ranted on barely related things.

quacked 4y ago
I never said anything about "no trial", I said that murder and exile are the only two effective sentences for people like slavers. There's no amount of "personal rehabilitation" that excuses it. A light touch only ensures that people who are effective at manipulation of those with better goodwill than them can avoid the two fair sentences. Long prison sentences are unnecessarily cruel and a net drain on resources. The only reason to forgive slave-owners is if you're grandfathering them into a new nation-state and offering amnesty under threat of death for their participation.
- archon1410 4y ago
  >The only reason to forgive slave-owners is if you're grandfathering them into a new nation-state and offering amnesty under threat of death for their participation. But Britain did this and it wasn't a new state at all. It worked out well enough and was apparently cheaper than the American Civil War.

booleandilemma 4y ago

A government isn't much different. Stop giving the government your money and watch what happens to you. I agree with everything you've written though.

quacked 4y ago
Oh I completely agree with you. "All laws are enforced at gunpoint". Even if the current US government was somehow reformed into something I didn't find reprehensible evil and incompetent there would still be a necessary armed standoff between the government and the citizens.

SkyBelow 4y ago

>The underwritten currency of human society is violence. Perhaps this should be changed to life in general, with a possible exception for the forms of life that produce their own energy. All others engage in some form of violence to secure their energy, even if it is against plant life, something we don't often consider as violence.

quacked 4y ago
I thought about saying it that way, but a lot of biological violence between organisms is outside of morality. I wanted to draw a very specific connection between "civilized society" and "the deliberate application of violence".
inkcapmushroom 4y ago
And plants too compete for energy, in a less directly violent way towards each other but with the same outcome: causing other plants to die from deprivation so that they may live. Life's prime directive to spread itself into every available space necessitates violence.