4 ms·

Seems to me this is a kind of advanced persistent threat. You defeat them one day, but they're still there, and they keep trying, day after day after day.

sneak 10mo ago
The purpose of the state is continuity of the state. The state is always the natural enemy of the people - specifically the liberty and privacy of the people. Any time you have a government, you will have a government that wishes to spy on you to make sure you will never attempt a competing government/army.
- saubeidl 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - pasiaj 10mo ago
    You seem to mistake an ideal for reality and forgo a few difficult eventualities: eg. tyranny of the majority, corruption, regulatory capture, etc.
  - ptero 10mo ago
    Depends on the specific incarnation of the democracy. Not infrequently in elections the majority sees the choice as the one of the lesser evil.
  - d_k_f 10mo ago
    The state might be comprised of people, but unless everybody is directly involved in the final decision process you'll always have (at least) a principal-agent problem between the people acting as political representatives and everybody else.
    - saubeidl 10mo ago
      As you do in most things in life. Do you grow your own food? Do you refine your own oil? Do you write your own contracts? I would assume you pick somebody to do those things for you because one human can't do literally everything.
  - echelon_musk 10mo ago
    [flagged]
  - pessimizer 10mo ago
    "Democracy" is just a word. It means rule bu the mob, and adds no other details. Describe what you mean by it.
- anonym29 10mo ago
  States are responsible for orders of magnitude more innocent human deaths than every "terrorist" group in human history combined.
  - saubeidl 10mo ago
    Sure, but also for y'know, basic civilization and stuff like, idk, food safety, hospitals, roads, disaster preparedness, medicine approvals, building guidelines and all sorts of things that probably end up saving a lot more lives than they cost.
  - jounker 10mo ago
    They’re also responsible for the preservation of more human life and well being than any other organization.
  - tekla 10mo ago
    Man, some people really want humanity to be banging rocks against rocks to scare off the Jaguars again.
- xyzal 10mo ago
  What alternative do you propose?
  - stackedinserter 10mo ago
    There's no alternative, it's constant battle for freedoms and liberties.
  - pessimizer 10mo ago
    I've always advocated a proliferation of overlapping "states." Let them keep each other in check. Instead of having a tree with a king at the top and your local police station at the bottom, be a part of the governance for the river that you live near, for the city that surrounds you, for the grocery store in your neighborhood, for your local fire department, and let all of them have codified relationships with each other that are determined by codified processes. I believe the limitation on this was technological; that we had to get people into a room, get Robert's Rules out, and shout our way into decisions. Those limitations are gone; we all have phones. We should be able to participate in the governance of everything, or if we really don't want to think about that crap, hand our proxy to someone who does, get alerts on what they're doing with it, and revoke or transfer it instantly. Let's see some real social networking.
    - an0malous 10mo ago
      Well the VCs and tech elite read a lot of Curtis Yarvin and decided the masses are too stupid to have a say in government so in the US we’re getting a CEO/king instead
    - sneak 10mo ago
      So, the problem with all of these proposed replacement systems (such as IRV, for example) is that "democracy" is a meme. People, en masse, believe in these systems-as-written (for better or worse) - critically - even if that isn't how things actually work on the ground in the real world. So many people believe that, for example, the stuff written on the paper currency of the United States is legally binding. (It's irrelevant whether it is or not - people believe it, because they hear, believe, repeat, and teach the meme.) Representative government is the same way. There are much better systems, and anyone can easily think up a few of them. The problem is going from A to B, also known as "the tyranny of the installed base". No proposed new form of government or representation is worth the paper it's printed on unless it comes with a viable migration path from the status quo.
- _verandaguy 10mo ago
  This seems like a very one-dimensional take. It's not invalid per se, but it really overlooks why states emerged in the first place (and I'm talking more about large, geographically-cohesive groups of people more than nations as the concept's come to be known in the last 2-3 hundred years). The economic argument is that with states, you can benefit (to varying degrees, depending on the state's lowercase-c constitution) from the economies of scale. Fixed costs which might make things like electrical grids, public transit, and plumbing prohibitively expensive on an individual basis can now be built efficiently, and with the fixed overhead cost split so many ways, the cost to the individual becomes much easier to swallow. Almost as soon as systems benefiting from economies of scale arise, you'll want ways to govern them fairly -- the ideal here being a (relatively) neutral party outside of the services' regular users who can manage these services and the policies which surround them. Obviously, this is something we're still figuring out: we're always trying to balance cost, representation, efficiency, and effectiveness, but we've got a good idea of what doesn't work. I won't belabour the point since I think it's clear where I'm going with this, but to paint the two parties as natural enemies is a bit simplistic IMO. One arose in response to the natural needs of the other.
  - pear01 10mo ago
    Odd, I've never seen a theory of state creation that starts with the benefits of scaling "electrical grids, public transit, and plumbing". Those are quite modern benefits, so seem like odd choices to illustrate your point. I think the comment you were replying to has a better sense of things. Government becomes an entity onto itself, and prioritizes its own existence, far past the original mandate at its genesis. A constitution becomes acculturated as a default, not because each successive generation ratifies and legitimizes it anew, but simply because with its perpetuation comes power that is hard to displace. This isn't merely cultural. The powerful interests as the head of the state have an interest in maintaining such a thing. Yes there are benefits, but your modern list ignores the true driver, which is far less luxurious. State formation is simply another form of human domination. Dressing it up as economic efficiency might make for good academic papers after the fact, but the reality is they arose out of the need to dominate others or be dominated. Feats of engineering in the ancient world were constructed to revere the state or benefit in wartime. The United States used the same rocket technology it contemplated annihilating the Soviet Union with to put men on the moon. In all cases some benefits do trickle down to the common man, but always the state itself ends up as the highest priority. I think the issue today is, on balance if you look at the real equation between whose domination do I fear, increasingly it is your own state, there are less trickle down benefits occuring, and far more avenues for such "benefits" - like the phone in your pocket - to be deceptive, ie appear as a benefit while actually being another instrument of control. Plumbing doesn't spy on you. And it solved a real problem and improved lives. Increasingly today in modern societies people see states with more contrived demand, "bullshit jobs", less external threats, and yet more and more state domination. Democratic checks may prove even more fatal - turn over the ancient apparatuses of domination over to a mob. So anyway, I just ask you not ignore the obvious. People didn't want states to get cheap electrical grids. They submitted to it because they didn't want to be hacked and pillaged in their own beds. The true "natural needs" of our species are far more dire than any of those relative luxuries you have listed.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
throw20251127 10mo ago
[dead]
stackedinserter 10mo ago
This is "Red Queen" concept, constant battle between society and state (Leviathan). State always drives towards despotism and total control, society always drives to anarchy, and when there's balance, then you have Switzerland, otherwise slide towards Somali or Russia. https://news.mit.edu/2019/narrow-corridor-acemoglu-liberty-0924 https://news.mit.edu/2019/narrow-corridor-acemoglu-liberty-0...
- sph 10mo ago
  Hard to maintain a balance when the State, by definition, has monopoly over violence, and State interests have the propaganda machine of mass-media on their side; the media with their pathetic justification that "we're only reporting the news!" just repeat and perpetuate bullshit rhetoric. The real problem is that the State tends to grow like a cancer. When it gets to a point that it lords over tens or hundreds of millions of souls, it's already impossible to control and contain.
  - Ray20 10mo ago
    Until someone implements Jim Bell's ideas using encryption algorithms, distributed networks, and the cryptocurrencies, then there will be no government. Perhaps there won't be one anywhere. Perhaps we'll really miss the good old days.
    - stackedinserter 10mo ago
      You can't win against state with tech only.
  - stackedinserter 10mo ago
    At the same time, citizens get more tools and technologies to organize and push back.

sneak 10mo ago

The purpose of the state is continuity of the state. The state is always the natural enemy of the people - specifically the liberty and privacy of the people. Any time you have a government, you will have a government that wishes to spy on you to make sure you will never attempt a competing government/army.

saubeidl 10mo ago
[flagged]
- pasiaj 10mo ago
  You seem to mistake an ideal for reality and forgo a few difficult eventualities: eg. tyranny of the majority, corruption, regulatory capture, etc.
- ptero 10mo ago
  Depends on the specific incarnation of the democracy. Not infrequently in elections the majority sees the choice as the one of the lesser evil.
- d_k_f 10mo ago
  The state might be comprised of people, but unless everybody is directly involved in the final decision process you'll always have (at least) a principal-agent problem between the people acting as political representatives and everybody else.
  - saubeidl 10mo ago
    As you do in most things in life. Do you grow your own food? Do you refine your own oil? Do you write your own contracts? I would assume you pick somebody to do those things for you because one human can't do literally everything.
- echelon_musk 10mo ago
  [flagged]
- pessimizer 10mo ago
  "Democracy" is just a word. It means rule bu the mob, and adds no other details. Describe what you mean by it.
anonym29 10mo ago
States are responsible for orders of magnitude more innocent human deaths than every "terrorist" group in human history combined.
- saubeidl 10mo ago
  Sure, but also for y'know, basic civilization and stuff like, idk, food safety, hospitals, roads, disaster preparedness, medicine approvals, building guidelines and all sorts of things that probably end up saving a lot more lives than they cost.
- jounker 10mo ago
  They’re also responsible for the preservation of more human life and well being than any other organization.
- tekla 10mo ago
  Man, some people really want humanity to be banging rocks against rocks to scare off the Jaguars again.
xyzal 10mo ago
What alternative do you propose?
- stackedinserter 10mo ago
  There's no alternative, it's constant battle for freedoms and liberties.
- pessimizer 10mo ago
  I've always advocated a proliferation of overlapping "states." Let them keep each other in check. Instead of having a tree with a king at the top and your local police station at the bottom, be a part of the governance for the river that you live near, for the city that surrounds you, for the grocery store in your neighborhood, for your local fire department, and let all of them have codified relationships with each other that are determined by codified processes. I believe the limitation on this was technological; that we had to get people into a room, get Robert's Rules out, and shout our way into decisions. Those limitations are gone; we all have phones. We should be able to participate in the governance of everything, or if we really don't want to think about that crap, hand our proxy to someone who does, get alerts on what they're doing with it, and revoke or transfer it instantly. Let's see some real social networking.
  - an0malous 10mo ago
    Well the VCs and tech elite read a lot of Curtis Yarvin and decided the masses are too stupid to have a say in government so in the US we’re getting a CEO/king instead
  - sneak 10mo ago
    So, the problem with all of these proposed replacement systems (such as IRV, for example) is that "democracy" is a meme. People, en masse, believe in these systems-as-written (for better or worse) - critically - even if that isn't how things actually work on the ground in the real world. So many people believe that, for example, the stuff written on the paper currency of the United States is legally binding. (It's irrelevant whether it is or not - people believe it, because they hear, believe, repeat, and teach the meme.) Representative government is the same way. There are much better systems, and anyone can easily think up a few of them. The problem is going from A to B, also known as "the tyranny of the installed base". No proposed new form of government or representation is worth the paper it's printed on unless it comes with a viable migration path from the status quo.
_verandaguy 10mo ago
This seems like a very one-dimensional take. It's not invalid per se, but it really overlooks why states emerged in the first place (and I'm talking more about large, geographically-cohesive groups of people more than nations as the concept's come to be known in the last 2-3 hundred years). The economic argument is that with states, you can benefit (to varying degrees, depending on the state's lowercase-c constitution) from the economies of scale. Fixed costs which might make things like electrical grids, public transit, and plumbing prohibitively expensive on an individual basis can now be built efficiently, and with the fixed overhead cost split so many ways, the cost to the individual becomes much easier to swallow. Almost as soon as systems benefiting from economies of scale arise, you'll want ways to govern them fairly -- the ideal here being a (relatively) neutral party outside of the services' regular users who can manage these services and the policies which surround them. Obviously, this is something we're still figuring out: we're always trying to balance cost, representation, efficiency, and effectiveness, but we've got a good idea of what doesn't work. I won't belabour the point since I think it's clear where I'm going with this, but to paint the two parties as natural enemies is a bit simplistic IMO. One arose in response to the natural needs of the other.
- pear01 10mo ago
  Odd, I've never seen a theory of state creation that starts with the benefits of scaling "electrical grids, public transit, and plumbing". Those are quite modern benefits, so seem like odd choices to illustrate your point. I think the comment you were replying to has a better sense of things. Government becomes an entity onto itself, and prioritizes its own existence, far past the original mandate at its genesis. A constitution becomes acculturated as a default, not because each successive generation ratifies and legitimizes it anew, but simply because with its perpetuation comes power that is hard to displace. This isn't merely cultural. The powerful interests as the head of the state have an interest in maintaining such a thing. Yes there are benefits, but your modern list ignores the true driver, which is far less luxurious. State formation is simply another form of human domination. Dressing it up as economic efficiency might make for good academic papers after the fact, but the reality is they arose out of the need to dominate others or be dominated. Feats of engineering in the ancient world were constructed to revere the state or benefit in wartime. The United States used the same rocket technology it contemplated annihilating the Soviet Union with to put men on the moon. In all cases some benefits do trickle down to the common man, but always the state itself ends up as the highest priority. I think the issue today is, on balance if you look at the real equation between whose domination do I fear, increasingly it is your own state, there are less trickle down benefits occuring, and far more avenues for such "benefits" - like the phone in your pocket - to be deceptive, ie appear as a benefit while actually being another instrument of control. Plumbing doesn't spy on you. And it solved a real problem and improved lives. Increasingly today in modern societies people see states with more contrived demand, "bullshit jobs", less external threats, and yet more and more state domination. Democratic checks may prove even more fatal - turn over the ancient apparatuses of domination over to a mob. So anyway, I just ask you not ignore the obvious. People didn't want states to get cheap electrical grids. They submitted to it because they didn't want to be hacked and pillaged in their own beds. The true "natural needs" of our species are far more dire than any of those relative luxuries you have listed.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

throw20251127 10mo ago

[dead]

stackedinserter 10mo ago

This is "Red Queen" concept, constant battle between society and state (Leviathan). State always drives towards despotism and total control, society always drives to anarchy, and when there's balance, then you have Switzerland, otherwise slide towards Somali or Russia. https://news.mit.edu/2019/narrow-corridor-acemoglu-liberty-0924 https://news.mit.edu/2019/narrow-corridor-acemoglu-liberty-0...

sph 10mo ago
Hard to maintain a balance when the State, by definition, has monopoly over violence, and State interests have the propaganda machine of mass-media on their side; the media with their pathetic justification that "we're only reporting the news!" just repeat and perpetuate bullshit rhetoric. The real problem is that the State tends to grow like a cancer. When it gets to a point that it lords over tens or hundreds of millions of souls, it's already impossible to control and contain.
- Ray20 10mo ago
  Until someone implements Jim Bell's ideas using encryption algorithms, distributed networks, and the cryptocurrencies, then there will be no government. Perhaps there won't be one anywhere. Perhaps we'll really miss the good old days.
  - stackedinserter 10mo ago
    You can't win against state with tech only.
- stackedinserter 10mo ago
  At the same time, citizens get more tools and technologies to organize and push back.