5 ms·

This is simultaneously way, way too much and not enough at once. The 'political part' that covers justice and supposedly replaces governments and courts seems

• spiritplumber 13y ago
  The state does not have a monopoly on violent retribution, the state attempts to enforce its own monopoly on violent retribution and succeeds in varying degrees. If you live in Naples or Sicily for a while, you will find out.
  • bcoates 13y ago
    Organized crime is a government and vice versa
    • saraid216 13y ago
      Only if you consider yourself God.
      • loup-vaillant 13y ago
        Compare: not paying taxes on the one hand, and not paying the local extortionist. In both cases, you get violence inflicted upon you. State tend to be gentler about it however. Structurally, organized crime is about enforcing rules that don't fit with the rules set by the country where you commit those crimes. For your own profit, I might add. I find it eerily similar to the local warlord trying to carve a little country by force. The real difference between a country and organized crime is one of size and comprehensiveness. (I'm tempted to add legitimacy, but then there's North Korea.)
        • saraid216 13y ago
          Right. And secular governments enforce rules that don't fit with the moral rules set by God where you commit those immoralities. Like taxes.
          • loup-vaillant 13y ago
            Actually… yes. It is again a question of size (God is quite greater than any one government), and of comprehensiveness (secular governments are quite lenient with religious, sexual, and reproductive practices). Just two minor details: First, thanks to having eaten the Forbidden Fruit, we no longer need to consult God to know what's immoral. We are now quite capable of making our own decisions. If my moral standard sufficiently diverges from God's, that just makes us enemies. Second, to the best of my knowledge, there is no God. At least, nothing resembling Yahweh.
            • saraid216 13y ago
              If you'd like to debate theology, you're welcome to state a position and stick to it. You either consider yourself the final arbiter on morals, and thus whether or not taxation is moral, or you don't. If you'd like to introduce nuance into the dichotomy, you are welcome to. But it sounds to me like you are not a person who recognizes the validity of any argument that doesn't extend from force in one way or another, so I'm having trouble seeing how your concept of God works with your agreement with people who pretend to be God.
              • loup-vaillant 13y ago
                If possible, I'd avoid debating theology. It would take months for us to agree on the existence of God alone, and provided it does exist, you likely know far more about God's morality than I do. > Only if you consider yourself God. That one pushes us way back, but my initial response was a "proving the other wrong" knee-jerk reaction, and I failed to ask: what did you actually mean by that? More precisely, how one needs to consider oneself God to believe in the similarities between states and organized crime? > You either consider yourself the final arbiter on morals, and thus whether or not taxation is moral, or you don't. That I can answer. Strictly speaking, I do consider myself the final arbiter on morals. Meaning, what I want has priority over anything else. There's a couple of catches however. First, I do care about other people, and I do care about what they want and what they consider moral. If I were to impose my will on everyone, I'd leave considerable leeway for others to do as they please. Second, I don't really know what I want, and what I consider "moral". Third, even if I knew, I'm not sure how to achieve it. Take taxes for instance. They have a host of consequences, some of which are obviously desirable (like, money to build schools), some of which are obviously undesirable (like, kicking some people out of their houses). And when I compare the benefits and the costs, I'm not sure which outweigh the other. > But it sounds to me like you are not a person who recognizes the validity of any argument that doesn't extend from force in one way or another, so I'm having trouble seeing how your concept of God works with your agreement with people who pretend to be God. Sorry, I cannot make sense of this one. What does it mean for an argument to "extend from force"? What do you think my concept of God is? What is your model of people who pretend to be God?
    • RyanMcGreal 13y ago
      Organized crime (and more generally warlordism) is what happens when the state does not have an effective monopoly on the use of violence.
• anigbrowl 13y ago
  state's monopoly on violent retribution Feuds are awesome! I love the excitement of drive-bys and the potential for involvement of by-standers or people who are sitting inside unaware that anything is even going on. What's not to like?
  • dmix 13y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is? No monopoly is realistically absolute in economic/political/social systems due to inherent resource limitations (plus some chaos theory thrown in). But the state still has a legal monopoly on violence.
    • saraid216 13y ago
      > But the state still has a legal monopoly on violence. Absolutely! That's why drive-bys are illegal! HEINOUS.
      • dmix 13y ago
        > I'm not sure what your point is?
        • anigbrowl 13y ago
          His point (and mine) is that a free market in retributive violence is a bad thing because it tends to affect people besides the intended targets. I have lived in neighborhoods where drive-bys were common and found myself staring down a gun barrel of someone who happened to be be looking for someone else. The town where I grew up in a different country also had a string of long-running feuds between particular families. The thing about feuds is that they tend to go on and on despite the seeming futility of tit-for-tat violence. So I suggest to you that mutual delegation of the police power to the state is a Good Thing. I don't see the state as some sort of external imposition upon people who were living in some anarcho-primitivist state of harmony. That idealistic view is a bunch of bullshit, much like hippies' habit of blaming technology for our ills.
• loup-vaillant 13y ago
  May I ask what is wrong with the state's monopoly on violent retribution? What are the alternatives? What do you think would happen if there is not such a monopoly? The way I see it, we don't have much of a choice. I'd rather try and ensure that the state is actually benevolent and competent. Once we guarantee that, giving it monopole over violence should be cool. As for building a good state, I'd start by trying democracy. Not the "representative" government we have now, but something where the people would, say, directly vote for their laws. Like ancient Athens, except without slave and with gender equality.
  • bcoates 13y ago
    I don't think anything's wrong with it, and I'm not aware of any alternatives that would be worth the cost. If the OP is planning on replacing government he'll need to replace that state function within his system and he's given no hint as to how he'll possibly do that.
    • loup-vaillant 13y ago
      Oops, my bad. I assumed the negative connotation in "monopoly on violence" was intended. Maybe we should talk about the "enforcement mechanisms" or something?
• baddox 13y ago
  Not all self-proclaimed libertarians support the state's monopoly on violent retribution. In fact, not all self-proclaimed libertarians support the existence of states. I'm thinking particularly of anarcho-capitalists. David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom, for example, is a seminal libertarian work that rejects the state altogether but is hardly what I would call anarcho-primitivism.