Anyone else think most violence is caused by governments and laws?

[TripleB]

Think about the majority of heavy violence in the world and think about why it's caused:

Because prostitution, gambling, and drugs are illegal, so there is huge sums of money to create and protect illegal black markets.

If all drugs were legal everywhere, how much power would the Mexican Cartel have?

On the flip side, if drugs were level, the government wouldn't "need" asset forfeiture laws, and wouldn't "need" to piss on the 4th amendment to capture "criminals."

It seems to me that one of the main reasons behind evil and violence in the world, is laws by government designed to "protect" us.

[MediumTex]

There are several sources and stages for violence to unfold.

One is organized warfare.  This is clearly government sponsored violence, as two or more governments use violence as a means of resolving political disputes.

Another stage for violence is when a government uses force to keep its own society in order.  This, too, is government sponsored violence, with the stated purpose being the maintenance of law and order.

The final stage for violence is just people being mean to each other, typically in person on person, group on person or group on group crime.

I would say that all over the world, most of the organized violence is probably government sponsored.  Some of this organized violence (and the credible threat of it) probably helps to prevent sporadic non-governmental violence from occurring.

The problem, though, is that when humans are asked to live in a situation involving competition for scarce resources, we tend to become more violent and our institutions seem to express this tendency toward violence more and more strongly.  Thus, it may not be that it is government that introduces violence into society, but rather a scarcity of resources that actually sets in motion the series of causes that ultimately manifest in the form of violence farther down the cause/effect chain, and that government is simply the conduit through which our collective desire for violence travels under certain social, cultural and political conditions.

If we had vastly smaller governments and fewer laws tomorrow, I think there might be a period of reduced violence in some places, but I think that in the years following such changes we would probably return to an equilibrium of violence not too different from what we have today (if not worse--see the dark ages following the decline of the Roman Empire for an example).

I look at places with little government and few laws like Somalia and Afghanistan and it makes me realize that violence can take root in almost any environment, and that its causes are not solely too much government or too many laws.

[Coffee]

Culture determines the level of violence in a society, not laws. 

[Gumby]

I suspect that religious violence has been responsible for more violence over the course of human history than governments and laws.

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

On the other hand, religions were an early form of law and government.

[TripleB]

Then there's the victimless crimes. The 17 year old girl who sends a shirtless picture to her 17 year old boyfriend. They are both registered sex offenders for their entire lives.

If I became emperor of the universe, I would make all crimes require there be a victim. There should be no such thing as a "crime against the state."

[Indices]

Every country without laws and government is a violence filled toilet. Countries with too many laws are like North Korea and Cuba. Somewhere in the middle is the right mix.

[murphy_p_t]

I suspect that religious violence has been responsible for more violence over the course of human history than governments and laws.

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

On the other hand, religions were an early form of law and government.

Gumby...you would be right, assuming you included Totalitarianism as a religion & its denominations to be Nazism, Marxism, Communistic atheism / secular humanism

[MediumTex]

I suspect that religious violence has been responsible for more violence over the course of human history than governments and laws.

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

On the other hand, religions were an early form of law and government.

Gumby...you would be right, assuming you included Totalitarianism as a religion & its denominations to be Nazism, Marxism, Communistic atheism / secular humanism

Ideology and dogma normally lead to bloodshed pretty quickly, whether they find expression in the form of religious or secular institutions.

[Tortoise]

MT has a good point that a lot of violence is rooted in shortages of resources. TripleB also has a good point that government restrictions on what would otherwise be peaceful, voluntary trade (e.g., outlawing the sale and use of certain drugs) often results in artificial shortages. Combining these two observations, we can conclude that government restrictions on voluntary trade often result in an increase in violence. The failed War on Drugs is certainly one of the best examples of this in modern times.

However, I also agree with Coffee that a society's overall level of violence is determined more by its culture than by its laws. Culture is the foundation on which every society's government and laws rest. For example, the culture in much of Africa and the Middle East has been predominantly tribal for centuries. That is why Western-style governments planted by Western empires have failed miserably in so many countries in that region--they are simply incompatible with the local culture and are therefore rejected like a foreign body from an organism.

[stone]

Indices "Every country without laws and government is a violence filled toilet."

Totally primative stone age societies with small tribal groups seem to be able to get along without too much violence. Were the Inuit or Laplanders at war much? I wonder whether metal is what makes large government essential. If you have metal then you get serious weapons. In the UK the population actually decreased significantly with the advent of the iron age and did not recover until colonial periods with loot from around the world.

[stone]

I guess I was wrong:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit
Inuit, such as the Nunatamiut (Uummarmiut) who inhabited the Mackenzie River delta area, often engaged in warfare. The Central Arctic Inuit lacked the population density to do so.

I do wonder though whether hand to hand combat with sticks and stones leaves things OK most of the time whilst heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks (as in Somalia) are quite different.

[Indices]

Indices "Every country without laws and government is a violence filled toilet."

Totally primative stone age societies with small tribal groups seem to be able to get along without too much violence. Were the Inuit or Laplanders at war much? I wonder whether metal is what makes large government essential. If you have metal then you get serious weapons. In the UK the population actually decreased significantly with the advent of the iron age and did not recover until colonial periods with loot from around the world.

Actually most studies show tribal societies are very violent with blood feuds being common.

[Lone Wolf]

Totally primative stone age societies with small tribal groups seem to be able to get along without too much violence.

Unfortunately, this is not true.  For a long time this was a sort of "Garden of Eden" ideal that I held in my head, but it just doesn't turn out to be the case.

Lawrence Keeley's "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage" gives a thorough, eye-opening treatment of this topic.  Homicide rates were high, almost certainly far higher than today.  Violent warfare at the time was dominated by raids and ambushes rather than clashes between assembled armies as you so often see in Western warfare.  Casualty rates in such skirmishes were very high, few prisoners were taken, and women and children were often not spared.

I suspect that religious violence has been responsible for more violence over the course of human history than governments and laws.

Nah, it's not even close.  Religion and violence are orthogonal (although not at all incompatible, given events like the Crusades, September 11th, etc.)

Chinese Communism killed something like 50 million people over the years.  Soviet repression killed around 20 million.  The Khmer Rouge killed about 2 million.  These are all explicitly atheist societies.

World War II, an entirely secular conflict, killed 60 million people.

[stone]

Thanks Lone Wolf, I just checked out the wikipedia artical about that book and as you say it shows eye popping levels of violence amongst stone age societies:

One half of the people found in a Nubian cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago had died of violence. The Yellowknives tribe in Canada was effectively obliterated by massacres committed by Dogrib Indians, and disappeared from history shortly thereafter.[citation needed] Similar massacres occurred among the Eskimos, the Crow Indians, and countless others. These mass killings occurred well before any contact with the West. In Arnhem Land in northern Australia, a study of warfare among the Indigenous Australian Murngin people in the late-19th century found that over a 20-year period no less than 200 out of 800 men, or 25% of all adult males, had been killed in intertribal warfare.[citation needed] The accounts of missionaries to the area in the borderlands between Brazil and Venezuela have recounted constant infighting in the Yanomami tribes for women or prestige, and evidence of continuous warfare for the enslavement of neighboring tribes such as the Macu before the arrival of European settlers and government. More than a third of the Yanomamo males, on average, died from warfare.

According to Keeley, among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, only 13% did not engage in wars with their neighbors at least once per year. The natives' pre-Columbian ancient practice of using human scalps as trophies is well documented. Iroquois routinely slowly tortured to death and cannibalized captured enemy warriors. See Captives in American Indian Wars. In some regions of the American Southwest, the violent destruction of prehistoric settlements is well documented and during some periods was even common. For example, the large pueblo at Sand Canyon in Colorado, although protected by a defensive wall, was almost entirely burned; artifacts in the rooms had been deliberately smashed; and bodies of some victims were left lying on the floors. After this catastrophe in the late thirteenth century, the pueblo was never reoccupied.

For example, at Crow Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave containing the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village a century and a half before Columbus's arrival (ca. A.D. 1325). The Crow Creek massacre seems to have occurred just when the village's fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses were burned, and most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death toll represented more than 60% of the village's population, estimated from the number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear to have been primarily young women, as their skeletons are underrepresented among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away as captives. Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the attack because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging animals for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole village was annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied.[3]

He makes three conclusions which the New York Times considers unexpected:

    * that the most important part of any society, even the most war-like ones, are the peaceful aspects such as art
    * that neither frequency nor intensity of war is correlated with population density
    * that societies frequently trading with one another fight more wars with one another

[Gumby]

World War II, an entirely secular conflict, killed 60 million people.

Entirely secular?? Are you saying that the Nazis didn't commit genocide against Jews for religious reasons?

[stone]

Gumby, my (ignorant) impression is that the Nazi genocide against the Jews was more about racism and possibly envy of the prosperity and cultural prominance of European Jews. The holocoust was against Gypsies as well as Jews. That suggests pure racism/cultural intolerance rather than religious intolerance (I guess Gypsies were poor and so that argues somewhat against the envy idea).
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... psies.html

[moda0306]

I tend to think religious genocide is simply a placeholder for feelings of cultural superiority that would manifest themselves without religion... Nazi Germany for example.   If Germany had been a more intensely religious society, maybe that would have fanned the flames a bit, but it seems to me their religion was nationalism.

For the record I am agnostic and don't rush to defend religion but for a few instances.

Lastly, I am not schooled on these governments, but I think the millions of deaths as a result of regime change, relocation, or government error have to be looked at in a different context than marching millions of innocent people into gas chambers.   I am all ears if somebody could discuss in a bit more detail how exactly China and Russia managed to kill so many people.

[stone]

moda, it is a tricky question whether it is as bad to kill a million people due to callous inepitutude as to deliberately murder them. In WWII, the Bengal famine also killed millions. It was down to maladministration (mostly by the British). I guess if you were avoidably starving to death it would have been hard to think that it didn't matter because it wasn't being done on purpose?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

I guess we also have to face up to how many people starved to death in 2009 due to the grain price spike. The people who died were in Mozambique etc but they died due to what was happening in Wall Street and the City of London. To my mind those deaths are like our equivalent of the Chinese communist induced famines.

[jackely]

I can't agree with the blanket statement in your subject line but the points you make about specific ways in which government and laws cause violence seem quite valid to me.

Did you see the recent Ken Burns documentary on prohibition? If not, I highly recommend it. Perfect example of what you are saying.