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> "Political Violence is Never The Answer". But our country (and a lot of them) were literally founded on political violence. How do people square those 2 ideas

> "Political Violence is Never The Answer". But our country (and a lot of them) were literally founded on political violence. How do people square those 2 ideas? The is just survivorship bias. Violence sits at the root of ALL human societies. The vast majority throughout history have failed or are currently failing. If you're on HN you're probably sitting in one of the lucky, relatively prosperous ones. Violence didn't create the prosperity, otherwise Sudan and Liberia should be the richest countries in the world. Your relative prosperity came from your ancestors being smart enough to build frameworks to allow a society to mediate scarcity without the need for violence (common law, markets and trade, property rights, etc all enforced via a government monopoly on violence). In fact, any rich country is the result of systems of decentralized scarcity mediation without decentralized violence. It's the lack of violence which built the relative prosperity you enjoy today. Not the other way around.

jjk166 6mo ago
> The is just survivorship bias. Violence sits at the root of ALL human societies. The vast majority throughout history have failed or are currently failing. That only strengthens the argument that violence is sometimes the answer. It doesn't matter that it's not always the right answer, the fact is sometimes it has been, and no society has ever managed to survive without choosing it at some point or another. Indeed, there is the argument to be made that the capability to choose violence is critical even if you never actually need to choose it. This is the basis of deterrence theory which has arguably been the cornerstone of international peace for decades and the theory of the social contract which has been the source of most people's freedoms and political power. A people who will never stand up for themselves and their friends, no matter what injustice is done upon them, invites that injustice. By simply acknowledging there exists a point beyond which you would retaliate, you discourage others from risking going past that point.
- pembrook 6mo ago
  Sure, you can't monopolize violence under the state (and enforce laws) without the state demonstrating its willingness to use said violence (ie. forcibly put people who violate in prison or use actual violence against them if they resist). But OP was referring to political violence...which...how do I put this delicately...let's just say political polarization has led certain very-online members of the US populist-left, some of who hang out here for example, to try to expand the Overton Window into bolshevism. See also: Luigi fans. My point is that the most likely outcome of violent political overthrow is not utopia. The most likely outcome is a failed state and another violent overthrow. Political violence doesn't create anything, it only destroys. And creating is the hard part. It's like saying; "at the birth of all successful people was a person who shit their pants. So why not try shitting your pants as an adult?" Yes, one always precedes the other. But it has no correlation to whether the person becomes successful or not.
  - sylos 6mo ago
    My guy, the vast majority of political violence is committed by the right. It's not zero from the left, but it is much less.
    - pembrook 6mo ago
      I see you've addressed none of my points and instead were triggered by my suggestion your team may have some bad people on it. Yes, in recent times in the US right wing violence has been more prevalent. But HN is not a right wing place, it's a left filter bubble like reddit and leftist violence is a growing phenomenon in US politics. Arguing against the right wing here would be like clapping along with a giant crowd, providing zero interesting discussion. The bolshevik revival in the world's wealthiest country is far more interesting to discuss. Also historically, we have to remember that the left's utopian socialist vision (communism) is responsible for the absolute highest body counts, including 30 million starved to death and thousands of incidents of cannibalism in just Mao's great leap forward alone.
      - pksebben 6mo ago
        I'm not going to go to bat for Mao(1), but I think you're underplaying the body count that capitalist countries have had - this is kind of easy to do because a lot of the damage that we do is obfuscated behind proxies. Besides the obvious and direct war crimes like Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, and now I guess Iran again, there's the second order stuff like Israel's Bad Neighbor Syndrome (which we have enabled financially for basically the duration), Pinochet who we put in charge, heck - pick any country south of the border and we've done some damage there at least once. Then there's the spiderweb of damage that flows out to the global south continuously through NAFTA and similar foreign policy. I suppose the principal difference is that we externalize a lot of our violence (and somehow are shocked when it comes back to bite us that we trained Osama Bin Laden). Nobody's asking for Maoist China, I think mostly we're clamoring for something closer to Norway. I'm sure plenty of people would be happy to settle for UK-style socialized services but even those folks get lambasted for being "too far left" too so whaddyagonnado. 1 - I think he and 'bolshevism' are a bit of a strawman here anyway, as I've not heard a ton of pro-Mao people but a TON of people who identify as leftists - they are not the same thing

jjk166 6mo ago

> The is just survivorship bias. Violence sits at the root of ALL human societies. The vast majority throughout history have failed or are currently failing. That only strengthens the argument that violence is sometimes the answer. It doesn't matter that it's not always the right answer, the fact is sometimes it has been, and no society has ever managed to survive without choosing it at some point or another. Indeed, there is the argument to be made that the capability to choose violence is critical even if you never actually need to choose it. This is the basis of deterrence theory which has arguably been the cornerstone of international peace for decades and the theory of the social contract which has been the source of most people's freedoms and political power. A people who will never stand up for themselves and their friends, no matter what injustice is done upon them, invites that injustice. By simply acknowledging there exists a point beyond which you would retaliate, you discourage others from risking going past that point.

pembrook 6mo ago
Sure, you can't monopolize violence under the state (and enforce laws) without the state demonstrating its willingness to use said violence (ie. forcibly put people who violate in prison or use actual violence against them if they resist). But OP was referring to political violence...which...how do I put this delicately...let's just say political polarization has led certain very-online members of the US populist-left, some of who hang out here for example, to try to expand the Overton Window into bolshevism. See also: Luigi fans. My point is that the most likely outcome of violent political overthrow is not utopia. The most likely outcome is a failed state and another violent overthrow. Political violence doesn't create anything, it only destroys. And creating is the hard part. It's like saying; "at the birth of all successful people was a person who shit their pants. So why not try shitting your pants as an adult?" Yes, one always precedes the other. But it has no correlation to whether the person becomes successful or not.
- sylos 6mo ago
  My guy, the vast majority of political violence is committed by the right. It's not zero from the left, but it is much less.
  - pembrook 6mo ago
    I see you've addressed none of my points and instead were triggered by my suggestion your team may have some bad people on it. Yes, in recent times in the US right wing violence has been more prevalent. But HN is not a right wing place, it's a left filter bubble like reddit and leftist violence is a growing phenomenon in US politics. Arguing against the right wing here would be like clapping along with a giant crowd, providing zero interesting discussion. The bolshevik revival in the world's wealthiest country is far more interesting to discuss. Also historically, we have to remember that the left's utopian socialist vision (communism) is responsible for the absolute highest body counts, including 30 million starved to death and thousands of incidents of cannibalism in just Mao's great leap forward alone.
    - pksebben 6mo ago
      I'm not going to go to bat for Mao(1), but I think you're underplaying the body count that capitalist countries have had - this is kind of easy to do because a lot of the damage that we do is obfuscated behind proxies. Besides the obvious and direct war crimes like Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, and now I guess Iran again, there's the second order stuff like Israel's Bad Neighbor Syndrome (which we have enabled financially for basically the duration), Pinochet who we put in charge, heck - pick any country south of the border and we've done some damage there at least once. Then there's the spiderweb of damage that flows out to the global south continuously through NAFTA and similar foreign policy. I suppose the principal difference is that we externalize a lot of our violence (and somehow are shocked when it comes back to bite us that we trained Osama Bin Laden). Nobody's asking for Maoist China, I think mostly we're clamoring for something closer to Norway. I'm sure plenty of people would be happy to settle for UK-style socialized services but even those folks get lambasted for being "too far left" too so whaddyagonnado. 1 - I think he and 'bolshevism' are a bit of a strawman here anyway, as I've not heard a ton of pro-Mao people but a TON of people who identify as leftists - they are not the same thing