Question about fundamental societal construction

[wufwugy]

You don't want to say this though. When I hire a contractor to build me a house, I'm saying he knows what I need better than him. He may bring me decisions and ask for my sign off but there are decisions I can not possibly make better than him.

Option 1 is like if people you never met and never will meet had final say on whether or not you hire the contractor in the first place.

This goes to the points I was earlier making to Ong. An absence of government doesn't mean no more authority, just a change in how authorities are chosen. When you hire a contractor, you are still the decider. When the government does anything that involves you, you were not the decider. It could be said you were 1/200MM the decider. The denominator is however many people voted for the politicians that put the policy in place.

I wish I could find it but there's a scene in House where Dr Foreman basically says to some parents, "It's crazy to think you'll understand what I'm saying and make an informed decision, so here it is: It's dangerous and you should do it."

This is exactly what we want. A person close to the situation made a judgment and others close to the situation made judgments about that person's credibility. Government policy can't do this, which is why we see such crazy things as millions in prison over weed. If we replaced the sick person in the show with everybody who smoked weed and ended up in prison, we would find that the choices made by House and the sick person's family would look nothing like putting him in prison.

Also, I remember conservative talk radio and this was a very persuasive point. Yes, gov't sucks a lot but don't lose sight of the fact that it's necessary. It solves a big problem with violence. Gov'ts struggle with violence is still seen today with the Charlie Hebdo nonsense. Some muzzies want to control how other people act and so they use violent force. The whole of France rises up and says, "we prefer our gov't being the violent ones thank you very much!"

And when you've got a gov't taking care of the violence problem, people will start asking it to take care of other problems... like stealing, and building roads, and preventing teen pregnancy because it's well positioned to.

Remember what that one guy said from that one link you once shared: A gov't of the people by the people requires the people to be the boss, and being the boss is a responsibility and people are too lazy for that shit.

And so we get all this shit.

The problem of violence hasn't been solved. Terrorism is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the amount of violence that governments use on their own people.

Conservatives love the state just as much as liberals. I suspect it is because of that nifty adage: the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. This is internalized, and we all end up rationalizing every which way that we think the state does good even though those rationalizations are total contradictions to the way we think about everything else

[a500lbgorilla]

The problem of violence hasn't been solved. Terrorism is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the amount of violence that governments use on their own people.

If you got rid of every gov't, where do you think all that violent power will go?

edit my typos have been pretty bad today

[wufwugy]

If you got ride of every gov't, where do you think all that violent power will go?

The same place it has gone (and is continuing to go) in countries that have large economies functioning mainly on capitalist principles. It couldn't be done overnight of course.

This goes with what I was getting at when I asked you why things are less violent these days. I think the answer is capitalism, and I think the monopoly on violence is an obsolete vestige that would not be replaced in these regions if they were to be deconstructed.

Advanced regions are already rapidly disassembling the amount of violence the people choose to do. We know it's not because of anything the state has done because the state is doing the same thing it has always done.

It also goes to my point about how we are in the transition between eras. The former era is one where violence is the ultimate arbiter; the one we're transitioning into is where violence holds little power. Profits are taking over the way the world runs, and profits hate violence more than just about anything.