Non-Governmental violence

[doodle]

Seems like most death and violence is not occurring by the hands of government, but between individual citizens.

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/cont ... 01015.html

A new report finds that only a small percentage of violent deaths are a direct result of war. The report is called the Small Arms Survey 2013. It says hundreds of thousands of people die every year because of armed violence in places other than conflict areas. Christopher Cruise has the story.
 
News media report daily on people killed by machine gun fire, shelling or other weapons in conflicts such as Syria, Mali and Afghanistan.
 
But the new report says these deaths represent only 10 percent of a yearly average of 526,000 violent deaths between 2004 and 2009. Ninety percent of those killed are dying because of everyday dangers far from battlefields.
 
The Small Arms Survey is an independent research project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Its report explores many sides of armed violence, including organized crime activity, land disputes and conflict and community violence.
 
The report notes civilians hold about 75 percent of the estimated 875 million guns and other firearms owned worldwide. It says firearms are responsible for 42 to 62 percent of all deadly violence. And it says for each person killed this way, three others survive with gunshot injuries.

[Pointedstick]

We sure are a violent people.

[Libertarian666]

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

[doodle]

Combining this information with what I am learning in my class on the violent history of humankind, I now understand why social power structures evolved. The reality is that humans  never biologically evolved to live in very large groups and we still haven't. In pregovernmental agricultural societies the levels of violence were extremely high because there was no group cohesion. In order to facilitate group cohesion and keep people from killing each other within a society it was necessary to invent shared stories and institutions which bound everyone together. Religious power structures and caste systems did a good job of doing this and kings or emperors provided the enforcement mechanism to deal with those people who fought against the social order and risked destabilizing things and throwing everything back into chaos.

[doodle]

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

So is it government that makes people violent, or people that make government violent?

Certainly a lot of deaths happened in the 20th century. When you bind up large numbers of people into groups, arm them with machine guns, and square them off against each other...lots of people die.

However, I would say it isn't necessarily the governments which caused the killing in these cases but rather it was differing ideologies. Just as in the middle ages people killed one another during the Crusades for religious ideology. In the 20th century we killed each other for differing political ideologies.

So maybe we should focus our criticism on ideologies. However, then comes the question....if people cannot live peacefully together in large groups without a unifying ideology, then how can you ban ideologies? So we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

The fundamental problem I think is that humans have not biologically evolved yet to live in large societies peacefully. We are much too aggressive and violent to do so effectively.

[MediumTex]

Aren't 100,000 or more supposed to have died in Syria alone in recent years?

How about that production of Springtime for Hitler in Rwanda in 1994 that left a million or so dead?

It takes a lot of drunken brawls and fights over girlfriends to match events like those.

Harry Truman killed almost 100,000 Japanese in just two afternoons.

[doodle]

Aren't 100,000 or more supposed to have died in Syria alone in recent years?

How about that production of Springtime for Hitler in Rwanda in 1994 that left a million or so dead?

It takes a lot of drunken brawls and fights over girlfriends to match events like those.

Harry Truman killed almost 100,000 Japanese in just two afternoons.

Yes, MT....but I think you are looking at a lot of violence among humans and trying to project the cause for that on governments. As anthropological studies indicate, 12,000 years ago at the start of the agricultural revolution in a world that was much less overcrowded than ours today approximately 25% of all males died violent deaths at the hands of other humans before governments existed.

If you scale those numbers up to today, you would have billions of deaths....not millions.

There is a reason why governments and power structures quickly began to form in these early agricultural societies. There was a need for them either to protect against external threats, or to internally unite a large group of people that a few generations before had only lived in small groups of a few dozen people.

What is happening in Syria, or Rwanda, or in World War 2 are simply large scale conflicts with very modern weaponry that stem from differences in religious, cultural, or political ideologies.

The modern weaponry and high death rates in these wars are the double edged sword of government. On the one hand, governments provided the social stability to create great wealth....on the other hand this great wealth in the hands of ape like creatures can wreak enormous damage.

You cant have it both ways. You cant have the stability and social cohesion to create great societies and wealth without ideology, indoctrination, power structures........if you remove those ideologies that bind humans together, then societies fall apart through internal strife.

Humans don't have the hive mentality of ants or bees to cooperate in large numbers. We need to bind ourselves together with stories and common shared beliefs in order to work together effectively in large numbers. Those beliefs must be sacrosanct and therefore if violated there must be punishment. The government is merely the representative body of the people carrying out the task of upholding those unifying beliefs.

[Kshartle]

How much violence comes from the outlawing of victimless voluntary transactions being outlawed like drugs and prostitution.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the end of prohabition saw a large decrease in the murder rate. Wasn't that less government not more?

Seems using force to prevent people from doing what they want to do peacefully creates violence. Maybe we could try not using force to prevent people from doing what they want peacefully if we want less violence?

Maybe.

[doodle]

Uhhhh.....I'm not talking about prohibition. I'm talking about why governments and social structures came into existence in nascent agricultural societies.

Humans are violent. Your solution to this problem seems to be to abolish all power structures and simply tell everyone to play nice. Does that sound realistic to you?

[Pointedstick]

I feel like acknowledging all of this is might push one towards conservatism, which acknowledges the importance of shared traditions, social cohesiveness, and violent enforcement of them. If libertarianism is unrealistic for the reasons doodle has stated, liberalism is as well for different reasons; because it encourages diversity, individuation, and rebellion against social norms at the expense of the social cohesiveness that is so necessary to prevent society from devolving into a warre of all againste all.

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-H ... Unraveling
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-H ... ry#Prophet

[Pointedstick]

Humans are violent. Your solution to this problem seems to be to abolish all power structures and simply tell everyone to play nice. Does that sound realistic to you?

abolish all power structures straw man... (and a repeat of a mis-caricaturisation you commonly make) he has not claimed to be an anarchist or want the abolishing of ALL power structures, he only suggested the benefits of abolishing those associated with limiting peoples ability to do as they want when it does no harm to others..

Actually, Kshartle has indeed claimed to be an anarchist:

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ot ... /#msg60524

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ot ... /#msg78288

my bad .. i was going by the argument he made in the previous post that doodle replied to....

i tend to see a lot of arguments made against "libertarianish" thinking, that fail to see the distinction between a foundational understanding of the nature of government, that sounds like (or maybe is anarchist) and the arguments for "some government is necessary" but we must limit it and arrange it in a manor that works toward the goal of having and needing as little as possible .

[Libertarian666]

my bad .. i was going by the argument he made in the previous post that doodle replied to....

i tend to see a lot of arguments made against "libertarianish" thinking, that fail to see the distinction between a foundational understanding of the nature of government, that sounds like (or maybe is anarchist) and the arguments for "some government is necessary" but we must limit it and arrange it in a manor that works toward the goal of having and needing as little as possible .

How exactly do you limit a government against its will, if you aren't a government yourself?

(Answer below in white text).

If you could do that, it wouldn't be a government.

[MediumTex]

If a government doesn't have a lot of guns, it's harder to use them on others.

Take Switzerland, for example.  How many people has the Swiss government killed in recent years?

I don't know the answer, but I'll bet it's less than the Syrian, Russian or U.S. governments (just to name three that seem pretty good at killing).

[Mdraf]

Immanuel Kant has said that no two true democracies will ever go to war with one another because if they are true democracies the people will throw out the leaders before a war begins. I can't think of an example when this was not true

[Libertarian666]

Immanuel Kant has said that no two true democracies will ever go to war with one another because if they are true democracies the people will throw out the leaders before a war begins. I can't think of an example when this was not true

If you define "true democracy" as a situation in which the people will throw out the leaders before the war begins, then it is definitely true.

Tautologically true, in fact. 

[Mdraf]

Immanuel Kant has said that no two true democracies will ever go to war with one another because if they are true democracies the people will throw out the leaders before a war begins. I can't think of an example when this was not true

If you define "true democracy" as a situation in which the people will throw out the leaders before the war begins, then it is definitely true.

Tautologically true, in fact. 

Just to quote another guy...Nathan Shcharansky said that "true democracy" is when someone can stand in the village square and rail against the government without being taken away.

[Kshartle]

Humans are violent. Your solution to this problem seems to be to abolish all power structures and simply tell everyone to play nice. Does that sound realistic to you?

abolish all power structures  straw man... (and a repeat of a mis-caricaturisation you commonly make)  he has not claimed to be an anarchist or want the abolishing of ALL power structures, he only suggested the benefits of abolishing those associated with limiting peoples ability to do as they want when it does no harm to others..

+++++++ yes although I don't think this is strawman. This is an illogical conclusion that is [ui]if certain memebers in society doen't perscribe the rules there will be no rules[/u].

It's like saying if murder were legal we'd have more murders. It does nothing to address the reason for the action logically.

Now......I will ALWAYS claim to be an anarchist. Does this abolish all so-called power sturctures? No. Does the individual not retain his power to act?


Does anyone doubt that the neighborhood can better deal with a child molester than the state? Can we deal better with they guy who wants to smoke pot also?

Do the benefits of the state outweigh the absolute horrors!?!?!??!

Please try to think of every way the state Fu@#!$s with your life.

well it would have been a straw-man if you weren't on record as being an anarchist (or if the reply is taken as only a refutation of your actual post and not as referring to your overall views)

to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition, without ever having actually refuted the original position

[doodle]

Humans are violent. Your solution to this problem seems to be to abolish all power structures and simply tell everyone to play nice. Does that sound realistic to you?

abolish all power structures  straw man... (and a repeat of a mis-caricaturisation you commonly make)  he has not claimed to be an anarchist or want the abolishing of ALL power structures, he only suggested the benefits of abolishing those associated with limiting peoples ability to do as they want when it does no harm to others..

+++++++ yes although I don't think this is strawman. This is an illogical conclusion that is [ui]if certain memebers in society doen't perscribe the rules there will be no rules[/u].

It's like saying if murder were legal we'd have more murders. It does nothing to address the reason for the action logically.

Now......I will ALWAYS claim to be an anarchist. Does this abolish all so-called power sturctures? No. Does the individual not retain his power to act?


Does anyone doubt that the newighborhood can better deal with a child molester than the state? Can we deal better with they guy who wants to smoke pot also?

Do the benefits of the state outweigh the absolute horrors!?!?!??!

Please try to think of everyway the state Fu@#!$s with your life.

So in other words you just want to transfer the power structures of society from the state to the neighborhood? When someone molests a child, the neighborhood should round up a posse and drag the offender into the street and stone him to death or something.

And yes, if certain members of society don't prescribe to the rules, and those infractions are not met by punishment or consequences...there will be no rules. If there is a rule against stealing, but people can just walk into any store and steal without consequences then in essence there is no law against stealing. If the law of gravity states that what goes up, must come down....if I then throw a ball in the air and it doesn't come down...is there really a law of gravity?

[Kshartle]

If there is a rule against stealing, but people can just walk into any store and steal without consequences then in essence there is no law against stealing.

You just described our current system.

There are laws against stealing....unless you're called a government official. Then you can come in and take as much as the law says is legal.

If you have rulers there are no rules becaues they are exempt.

[moda0306]

my bad .. i was going by the argument he made in the previous post that doodle replied to....

i tend to see a lot of arguments made against "libertarianish" thinking, that fail to see the distinction between a foundational understanding of the nature of government, that sounds like (or maybe is anarchist) and the arguments for "some government is necessary" but we must limit it and arrange it in a manor that works toward the goal of having and needing as little as possible .

How exactly do you limit a government against its will, if you aren't a government yourself?

(Answer below in white text).

If you could do that, it wouldn't be a government.

Government doesn't have a will. Only conscious beings have wills.

[moda0306]

Humans are violent. Your solution to this problem seems to be to abolish all power structures and simply tell everyone to play nice. Does that sound realistic to you?

abolish all power structures  straw man... (and a repeat of a mis-caricaturisation you commonly make)  he has not claimed to be an anarchist or want the abolishing of ALL power structures, he only suggested the benefits of abolishing those associated with limiting peoples ability to do as they want when it does no harm to others..

+++++++ yes although I don't think this is strawman. This is an illogical conclusion that is [ui]if certain memebers in society doen't perscribe the rules there will be no rules[/u].

It's like saying if murder were legal we'd have more murders. It does nothing to address the reason for the action logically.

Now......I will ALWAYS claim to be an anarchist. Does this abolish all so-called power sturctures? No. Does the individual not retain his power to act?


Does anyone doubt that the neighborhood can better deal with a child molester than the state? Can we deal better with they guy who wants to smoke pot also?

Do the benefits of the state outweigh the absolute horrors!?!?!??!

Please try to think of every way the state Fu@#!$s with your life.

A lot of times, "the neighborhood" will lynch some guy they don't like and think is the child molester.  Also, they've exerted an organized form of force recognized by the community, or most in it, as legitimate.  They have essentially formed a state.  A state of mob rule.

Once communities start banding together to exert force, you are dealing with government.

[Kshartle]

A lot of times, "the neighborhood" will lynch some guy they don't like and think is the child molester. 

Where do you live that this happens? You think people can get away with just going around lynching people in the absence of a government?

Everyone will be free to defend themselves and their friends and family as well.

Who is going to just go around lynching people unless they know it's a bad guy that hurts people (particularly children) and is not going to have a lot of support?

What is this world you guys often talk about where everyone has some latent violent fantasies they would all act out in the absence of government? In 34 years I've never come across people who I think would go on murderous rampages but for the law. It's weird.

[Kshartle]

A lot of times, "the neighborhood" will lynch some guy they don't like and think is the child molester. 

Where do you live that this happens? You think people can get away with just going around lynching people in the absence of a government?

Everyone will be free to defend themselves and their friends and family as well.

Who is going to just go around lynching people unless they know it's a bad guy that hurts people (particularly children) and is not going to have a lot of support?

What is this world you guys often talk about where everyone has some latent violent fantasies they would all act out in the absence of government? In 34 years I've never come across people who I think would go on murderous rampages but for the law. It's weird.

It wasn't so weird in 1930, when government was alot smaller than it is now.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =129025516

I stand corrected. lynchings will be happening all over the place if we don't entrust a monoply of violence to certain people.

[Kshartle]

Or Salem in the 1690's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials

Uhhhh..isn't the court part of the government?

[Kshartle]

It wasn't so weird in 1930, when government was alot smaller than it is now.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =129025516

I stand corrected. lynchings will be happening all over the place if we don't entrust a monoply of violence to certain people.

Straw man.

I will add this one to my field.