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All countries exist as distinct entities because they can maintain what Max Weber called the monopoly on violence within their geographic bounds. https://en.wi

All countries exist as distinct entities because they can maintain what Max Weber called the monopoly on violence within their geographic bounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum In countries where we don't have trigger-happy cops, the story continues this way: * The person commits a crime or tort. Your courts fine the person. * The person doesn't pay the fine. You extract the fine forcibly from their bank account (or force their employer to dock their wages, or forcibly obtain and auction their assets; let's go with the bank example) * Why does the bank comply? Because you can revoke the bank's right to trade. * Why doesn't the bank just trade anyway? Because if they do that, you can enter their buildings and take their equipment, arrest their employees, etc. * What if the bank tries to stop you doing that? Then you send in armed police. * What if the bank shoots back? Then you send in the army, and at worst case encircle the bank and lay siege to it. * What if the bank has their own army which they use to break your siege? Send in your bigger army. Also have laws against private armies, and spend your time detecting private armies and breaking them up before they get bigger than the state's army. Most people comply with the state at the earlier steps in this chain, and the state runs all the smoother for it. But you can see in failed states, one of the main reasons for the failure is some group (or groups) inside the state have managed to develop a bigger army than the state itself, or parts of the official army break away from the current government or attempt a coup. At that point, it's not the current government's country any more, it's up for grabs. The government (and the entire system of law it represents) has lost the monopoly on violence. The point of the GP's post is that all laws are ultimately backed by violence. Most rational actors don't let law enforcement reach the explicitly violent part, but it's still there. To bring it on topic, what this highlights is it is much better to fight against bad laws while they are just proposals, it is much harder to fight against bad laws once enacted.

dataflow 1y ago
> Why doesn't the bank just trade anyway? Because if they do that, you can enter their buildings and take their equipment, arrest their employees, etc. Or just cut off their power (or network access, or whatever)? I know "monopoly on violence" is the term in the literature, but I think it's more like monopoly on coercion than monopoly on violence per se. The latter is one way to implement the former, but not the only way. To give a hypothetical larger-scale example, if the population relies on a dam for water/power, then an implicit threat to destroy the dam could coerce them without any violence.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  There is no functional difference between behavior coerced by violence and behavior coerced by the threat of violence.
  - dataflow 1y ago
    And neither is what I wrote. Threatening to destroy a dam or threatening to cut off a building's power is not threatening violence.
- kipchak 1y ago
  Is there a monopoly on coercion? An employer can for example coerce you into coming into the office with the threat of termination, or loss of access, but only the state can (legally) threaten you with violence to coerce you to do so. Both the state or a private entity seem like they could do the dam example.
  - dataflow 1y ago
    Depends what you consider coercion I guess. Perhaps if you view it that way there isn't a monopoly, I'm not sure. The way I'd look at it is that you could always quit your job, and you agreed to its terms beforehand anyway, so threatening to fire you is not exactly coercion... it's more like the contract stopping to be in effect. But I'm happy to see it as not-a-monopoly if that feels more sensible. The point I was disputing wasn't the existence of a monopoly on violence by the state, but the connection between that and "all laws are ultimately backed by violence" - I just don't believe every chain ultimately leads to violence, because states can (and do) coerce people in other ways.
    - amiga386 1y ago
      This is why the monopoly on violence is often formulated as "the monopoly on legitimate violence" or "legal use of force" If you you don't pay your drug dealer, he can't take you to court, because his entire business is illegal. So instead he beats you up to get you to comply with his payment demands. If a policeman catches him doing that, the policeman can legally arrest him for the crime of assault, and can legally use force to stop him beating you up.
Nursie 1y ago
I agree with your last line, but the rest not so much - Yes, the monopoly on violence exists, but the idea that one must always consider that the state will kill people on the introduction of a simple fine is just silly. Looking at the monopoly on violence as the backing to the entire system of law? Sure, it's absolutely there. It's something to consider when discussing the merits of the existence of the state at all. But within the context of the state already existing, looking at the introduction of an individual rule that may result in a fine through the lens of "is this worth someone's life" is nonsensical - it's just not going to cost anyone's life, it's not a reasonable thing to consider. Especially outside of countries where law enforcement are routinely armed and trigger-happy - there is no reasonable pathway to a fine costing lives. What we do see is fines just going unpaid if they can't be recovered by administrative means. It is notable that in both your and the GPs timelines, the other party turns to violence first. Your line - > What if the bank tries to stop you doing that? Then you send in armed police. really seems only to apply in places like the US where you have a bigger problem with police killings and a societal leaning towards firearms and escalation of violence. The UK (for example) will only send in armed police as a response to situations in which the other party is also armed and a credible threat to lives, they won't just start shooting. tl;dr - considering the consequences of complete societal breakdown as part of your scenario when deciding to introduce a new type of parking fine is... well it's fricken hilarious really.
- amiga386 1y ago
  As Dennis from Monty Python and the Holy Grail would say, "come and see the violence inherent in the system!" The thinking is rooted in exploring the full breadth of coercions available to the state, with both actual and implied violence. Of course it's vastly more likely a person who has been fined will pay the fine, or the other entities which he relies on for money (his employer, his bank) will extract it from his assets, or if he has no such assets, the state will start to go after his personally-held assets. As you know, the UK has safeguards, the state can't sieze your residence to make you pay a fine, but they can sieze second homes, or more relevant to this discussion, your car -- if they don't judge it essential for your livelyhood. The UK state isn't looking to reintroduce debtors' prisons, they prefer to keep a wrongdoer economically active, provided they don't think it'll lead to further harms; so in the case of someone fined to buggery, and banned from driving (let's imagine not just parking fines but persistent reckless driving), and could technically walk or get the bus to work, the state may well sieze the car and auction it. But then if the criminal tries to keep the forfeited car locked up, the state then authorises its burglary, and we can then keep upping the ante between the unstoppable force and immovable object; does the state give up trying to sieze the car (and thus not enact justice; the criminal ultimately did not pay his fine), or does it proceed? And if it proceeds, what can the criminal do to prevent it, that is "non-violent"? If baliffs turn up at his door with a warrant to seize the vehicle, do they just go away, empty-handed, if he politely says no? Or do they smash down the door and ransack the place looking for the keys? Do they wrench open the garage door and lift the car out? If they do that, are they being violent yet? If the man tries to resist the baliffs searching his abode for car keys, is that violent yet? If they then try to stop him resisting (e.g. by having authorised police attempt to restraint him, without using weapons), is that violent yet? If he arms himself in order to resist being restrained to resist having his car siezed, are we now at the point of violence, even if he doesn't need to use the arms? And so we can go on, action and counter-action, there is always a further escalation available, and it will, at some point, reach violence. You can't have a state that insists on a course of action and a citizen who insists on rejecting that course of action. Someone has to prevail. It is almost always the state. The cases we see where the state doesn't prevail look like Mexico vs drug gangs, or Lebanon vs Hezbollah. Places where armed paramilitary organisations are the de-facto government. That's the sort of place where, say, a Hezbollah fighter could get a parking fine, and the government would ultimately not collect and the criminal can lead a happy life, because he has a whole set of organisations (including employer and bank) who lead an armed resistance against the state, and are more powerful than the state, so they prevail.

dataflow 1y ago

> Why doesn't the bank just trade anyway? Because if they do that, you can enter their buildings and take their equipment, arrest their employees, etc. Or just cut off their power (or network access, or whatever)? I know "monopoly on violence" is the term in the literature, but I think it's more like monopoly on coercion than monopoly on violence per se. The latter is one way to implement the former, but not the only way. To give a hypothetical larger-scale example, if the population relies on a dam for water/power, then an implicit threat to destroy the dam could coerce them without any violence.

reverendsteveii 1y ago
There is no functional difference between behavior coerced by violence and behavior coerced by the threat of violence.
- dataflow 1y ago
  And neither is what I wrote. Threatening to destroy a dam or threatening to cut off a building's power is not threatening violence.
kipchak 1y ago
Is there a monopoly on coercion? An employer can for example coerce you into coming into the office with the threat of termination, or loss of access, but only the state can (legally) threaten you with violence to coerce you to do so. Both the state or a private entity seem like they could do the dam example.
- dataflow 1y ago
  Depends what you consider coercion I guess. Perhaps if you view it that way there isn't a monopoly, I'm not sure. The way I'd look at it is that you could always quit your job, and you agreed to its terms beforehand anyway, so threatening to fire you is not exactly coercion... it's more like the contract stopping to be in effect. But I'm happy to see it as not-a-monopoly if that feels more sensible. The point I was disputing wasn't the existence of a monopoly on violence by the state, but the connection between that and "all laws are ultimately backed by violence" - I just don't believe every chain ultimately leads to violence, because states can (and do) coerce people in other ways.
  - amiga386 1y ago
    This is why the monopoly on violence is often formulated as "the monopoly on legitimate violence" or "legal use of force" If you you don't pay your drug dealer, he can't take you to court, because his entire business is illegal. So instead he beats you up to get you to comply with his payment demands. If a policeman catches him doing that, the policeman can legally arrest him for the crime of assault, and can legally use force to stop him beating you up.

Nursie 1y ago

I agree with your last line, but the rest not so much - Yes, the monopoly on violence exists, but the idea that one must always consider that the state will kill people on the introduction of a simple fine is just silly. Looking at the monopoly on violence as the backing to the entire system of law? Sure, it's absolutely there. It's something to consider when discussing the merits of the existence of the state at all. But within the context of the state already existing, looking at the introduction of an individual rule that may result in a fine through the lens of "is this worth someone's life" is nonsensical - it's just not going to cost anyone's life, it's not a reasonable thing to consider. Especially outside of countries where law enforcement are routinely armed and trigger-happy - there is no reasonable pathway to a fine costing lives. What we do see is fines just going unpaid if they can't be recovered by administrative means. It is notable that in both your and the GPs timelines, the other party turns to violence first. Your line - > What if the bank tries to stop you doing that? Then you send in armed police. really seems only to apply in places like the US where you have a bigger problem with police killings and a societal leaning towards firearms and escalation of violence. The UK (for example) will only send in armed police as a response to situations in which the other party is also armed and a credible threat to lives, they won't just start shooting. tl;dr - considering the consequences of complete societal breakdown as part of your scenario when deciding to introduce a new type of parking fine is... well it's fricken hilarious really.

amiga386 1y ago
As Dennis from Monty Python and the Holy Grail would say, "come and see the violence inherent in the system!" The thinking is rooted in exploring the full breadth of coercions available to the state, with both actual and implied violence. Of course it's vastly more likely a person who has been fined will pay the fine, or the other entities which he relies on for money (his employer, his bank) will extract it from his assets, or if he has no such assets, the state will start to go after his personally-held assets. As you know, the UK has safeguards, the state can't sieze your residence to make you pay a fine, but they can sieze second homes, or more relevant to this discussion, your car -- if they don't judge it essential for your livelyhood. The UK state isn't looking to reintroduce debtors' prisons, they prefer to keep a wrongdoer economically active, provided they don't think it'll lead to further harms; so in the case of someone fined to buggery, and banned from driving (let's imagine not just parking fines but persistent reckless driving), and could technically walk or get the bus to work, the state may well sieze the car and auction it. But then if the criminal tries to keep the forfeited car locked up, the state then authorises its burglary, and we can then keep upping the ante between the unstoppable force and immovable object; does the state give up trying to sieze the car (and thus not enact justice; the criminal ultimately did not pay his fine), or does it proceed? And if it proceeds, what can the criminal do to prevent it, that is "non-violent"? If baliffs turn up at his door with a warrant to seize the vehicle, do they just go away, empty-handed, if he politely says no? Or do they smash down the door and ransack the place looking for the keys? Do they wrench open the garage door and lift the car out? If they do that, are they being violent yet? If the man tries to resist the baliffs searching his abode for car keys, is that violent yet? If they then try to stop him resisting (e.g. by having authorised police attempt to restraint him, without using weapons), is that violent yet? If he arms himself in order to resist being restrained to resist having his car siezed, are we now at the point of violence, even if he doesn't need to use the arms? And so we can go on, action and counter-action, there is always a further escalation available, and it will, at some point, reach violence. You can't have a state that insists on a course of action and a citizen who insists on rejecting that course of action. Someone has to prevail. It is almost always the state. The cases we see where the state doesn't prevail look like Mexico vs drug gangs, or Lebanon vs Hezbollah. Places where armed paramilitary organisations are the de-facto government. That's the sort of place where, say, a Hezbollah fighter could get a parking fine, and the government would ultimately not collect and the criminal can lead a happy life, because he has a whole set of organisations (including employer and bank) who lead an armed resistance against the state, and are more powerful than the state, so they prevail.