4 ms·

> What's the difference between a feudal lord and a government again? I don't know. Do you? My prior interlocutor cited a state in example of this putative lor

> What's the difference between a feudal lord and a government again? I don't know. Do you? My prior interlocutor cited a state in example of this putative lordlet's theoretically plausible capabilities. I see you claim there is no difference in kind and none significant in degree. But you do actually need to make an argument about that. Just saying it won't do. It's interesting you mention asymmetrical warfare, the fundamental axiom of which as a concept is that the nonstate or nonpeer force has no chance whatsoever through conventional tactics, which are far more reliable and thus invariably used for practical reasons when practicable. (Americans always get this wrong because of Vietnam. The NVA and the VC were not the same force, dammit!) To cast the conflict in such terms, with the billionaire in place of the "asymmetrical" belligerent, thus makes my point for me in neater, more concise, and no less accurate terms than I myself expected to ever get away with on this website. You have my genuine thanks for that valuable assistance in clarifying my thinking.

fc417fc802 1y ago
I'm suggesting that there is no difference in the dictionary sense. I believe the burden is on you to clearly articulate the distinction that you are attempting to draw between the two. To put it differently, I suspect that when you say "government" your intent is to refer to something else. Hence my question. > the nonstate or nonpeer force has no chance whatsoever through conventional tactics, which are far more reliable and thus invariably used for practical reasons when practicable. I'd have to disagree. It refers broadly to tactics that don't favor size (ie expendable manpower, cash, physical resources, etc) to the same degree as conventional ones. Questions of reliability, cost, speed, user safety, and all sorts of other considerations apply in equal measure to any tactic that any party of any size might consider employing and tend to vary wildly depending on the context. > Americans always get this wrong because of Vietnam. The NVA and the VC were not the same force, dammit! ... NVA? Was the US pushed out by a non-peer adversary or not? Were any favorable alternatives available? Isn't that all that matters at the end of the day? > thus makes my point for me Unfortunately I remain in the dark.
- throwanem 1y ago
  I meant "state," and was sloppy in my terms ironically in hope of aiding understanding since no one here even seems to know what distinguishes a state from a nation. The distinction here between state and feudal (ie vassal) lord is in sovereignty and should be trivial to all but a Randite, which is what you argue like whether you claim the allegiance or not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44231857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44231857 I've always found it a bewildering irony that soi-disant "objectivists" should so constantly display such pervasive inclarity of thought, and the "rationalists" lately likewise. What you really want to talk about and don't know it is a warlord. But we do at least agree that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or any of that ilk, and any given Somali "general," deserve to be taken about as seriously as one another.
int_19h 1y ago
I cited a state as an example of the kind of scale that even a relatively poor state can pull off. But the point is that you don't need a million drones to have sufficient capacity for organized violence to be a state. FWIW I don't think drones count as "asymmetrical warfare". They might have been that ten years ago, but a lot has changed since then. Today, they are very much part of conventional warfare, and the state with more drones still wins, all else being equal.
- throwanem 1y ago
  "Asymmetrical warfare" is a strategic and operational concept, not a threshold on some notional tech tree. It's a mental tool that people reared in the paradigm of high-tech, high-intensity combined-arms mobile warfare - in other words, Americans - can try to use to think about warfare as pursued by people who don't have the logistical support or unassailable strategic reserve that makes it possible for us to win wars the way we do. This would certainly be the case for a billionaire, who simply cannot swing the resources to sustain the logistics to support the kind of formalistic, resource-intensive combat you envision. In a realistic scenario the strategic and economic balance is going to look like the American Civil War only much more so, inasmuch as where the Confederacy at least at the outset of the conflict had an economy it could dedicate to supporting the war, a billionaire, as I've already touched on nearby, not only lacks such power but indeed requires unfettered economic access to continue to exist, a vulnerability he constitutionally cannot answer since it inheres in the source of his power...again just like the Confederacy, which relied on trade in raw agricultural outputs to supply itself with the tools and materials of industrial warfare, and so saw its back broken after the Union suppressed that trade by blockading southern ports. But at least the Confederacy had an economy, however incompetent. What, I ask again, does a billionaire have that an army can't take away?

fc417fc802 1y ago

I'm suggesting that there is no difference in the dictionary sense. I believe the burden is on you to clearly articulate the distinction that you are attempting to draw between the two. To put it differently, I suspect that when you say "government" your intent is to refer to something else. Hence my question. > the nonstate or nonpeer force has no chance whatsoever through conventional tactics, which are far more reliable and thus invariably used for practical reasons when practicable. I'd have to disagree. It refers broadly to tactics that don't favor size (ie expendable manpower, cash, physical resources, etc) to the same degree as conventional ones. Questions of reliability, cost, speed, user safety, and all sorts of other considerations apply in equal measure to any tactic that any party of any size might consider employing and tend to vary wildly depending on the context. > Americans always get this wrong because of Vietnam. The NVA and the VC were not the same force, dammit! ... NVA? Was the US pushed out by a non-peer adversary or not? Were any favorable alternatives available? Isn't that all that matters at the end of the day? > thus makes my point for me Unfortunately I remain in the dark.

throwanem 1y ago
I meant "state," and was sloppy in my terms ironically in hope of aiding understanding since no one here even seems to know what distinguishes a state from a nation. The distinction here between state and feudal (ie vassal) lord is in sovereignty and should be trivial to all but a Randite, which is what you argue like whether you claim the allegiance or not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44231857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44231857 I've always found it a bewildering irony that soi-disant "objectivists" should so constantly display such pervasive inclarity of thought, and the "rationalists" lately likewise. What you really want to talk about and don't know it is a warlord. But we do at least agree that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or any of that ilk, and any given Somali "general," deserve to be taken about as seriously as one another.

int_19h 1y ago

I cited a state as an example of the kind of scale that even a relatively poor state can pull off. But the point is that you don't need a million drones to have sufficient capacity for organized violence to be a state. FWIW I don't think drones count as "asymmetrical warfare". They might have been that ten years ago, but a lot has changed since then. Today, they are very much part of conventional warfare, and the state with more drones still wins, all else being equal.

throwanem 1y ago
"Asymmetrical warfare" is a strategic and operational concept, not a threshold on some notional tech tree. It's a mental tool that people reared in the paradigm of high-tech, high-intensity combined-arms mobile warfare - in other words, Americans - can try to use to think about warfare as pursued by people who don't have the logistical support or unassailable strategic reserve that makes it possible for us to win wars the way we do. This would certainly be the case for a billionaire, who simply cannot swing the resources to sustain the logistics to support the kind of formalistic, resource-intensive combat you envision. In a realistic scenario the strategic and economic balance is going to look like the American Civil War only much more so, inasmuch as where the Confederacy at least at the outset of the conflict had an economy it could dedicate to supporting the war, a billionaire, as I've already touched on nearby, not only lacks such power but indeed requires unfettered economic access to continue to exist, a vulnerability he constitutionally cannot answer since it inheres in the source of his power...again just like the Confederacy, which relied on trade in raw agricultural outputs to supply itself with the tools and materials of industrial warfare, and so saw its back broken after the Union suppressed that trade by blockading southern ports. But at least the Confederacy had an economy, however incompetent. What, I ask again, does a billionaire have that an army can't take away?