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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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Any system which says killing is generally wrong.

So... the Amish? I'm not Amish, and I'm pretty sure you're not Amish. America has never been ruled by such a system. No European, and indeed no Asian or African or South-American or Australian or Middle-Eastern nation I'm aware of has ever been ruled by such a system. I understand that hypothetical moral systems meeting this definition exist, and I understand that particular religious or philosophical communities exist attempting to follow such systems; these latter universally exist within much larger, far more complex systems which work the other way.

In a time before prisons one could say that less killing was likely to happen overall if murderers were executed in a timely fashion. However this is not timely or necessary under that standard since the prison prevents him from killing anyone else.

Prisons are for crimes that don't merit execution; those prisoners would be better off without having to cohabitate with the murderous. Prisons obviously do not prevent murder, and I am not buying arguments that this is due to lack of interest in preventing prison murder.

So was famine and many other maladies until recently.

I can point to complex societies without famine. You cannot point to complex societies without hierarchy.

Evidence required. With one caveat, I am not anti-hierarchy, I am anti state.

What is your definition of hierarchy? Can you point me to a real-world, actual example of a large-scale, complex, hierarchical non-state-run society?

Yes it is better because it is less territorial and violent.

It is often said that the police are just the largest gang. In a comparison between the police of a city and the non-police gangs, which do we observe being less territorial and less violent? Which do we observe normal citizens preferring to live under? We recently ran an experiment with drastically reducing or eliminating policing; does it seem to you that the results of this experiment supported the idea that policing was more violent and more territorial than non-policing?

Charlie Kirk was murdered by a private individual for political ends. Bryan Malinowski was, in my view, murdered by the federal government, likewise for political ends. I consider both murders serious problems. Nonetheless, it seems to me that Kirk's murder is a much more serious problem and a much harder problem to solve than Malinowski's. In the case of Malinowski, there is a legible off-switch to the murder machine, even if it's difficult to access and operate. In Kirk's case, there is no off switch and the threat is essentially unbounded.

So... the Amish? No. I said killing is generally wrong, which leaves room for exceptions like self-defense. You treat that as absolute pacifism. Almost every moral system, including Christianity, Kantian ethics and most secular law, treats killing as wrong unless something justifies it. The real question is whether executing someone who is already locked up counts as one of those exceptions. Why are you avoiding that?

No European, and indeed no Asian or African or South-American or Australian or Middle-Eastern nation I'm aware of has ever been ruled by such a system.

You attempt to describe merely what societies have done. It doesn't show what is right, possible, or newly possible due to technological development and other changes.

Prisons are for crimes that don't merit execution

You make excessive isolate demands for rigor / change the evidentiary basis of the conversation on the fly when it suits you. Where I use my brain to think about what could be down better, you shut yours down and and talk at me about what happens to be. Where you don't like what happens to be, you talk about «what merits what». But Most European countries have abolished the death penalty, and in 2018 the Catholic Church formally declared it «inadmissible.»

I can point to complex societies without famine. You cannot point to complex societies without hierarchy.

I assume you wrote this before you read what I wrote on this subject.

What is your definition of hierarchy? Can you point me to a real-world, actual example of a large-scale, complex, hierarchical non-state-run society?

A corporation is a non-territorial, non-violent organization with a hierarchy. To get out ahead of you here, there's loose empirical evidence we need one type of hierarchy, economic. The evidence for economic comes from the attempts to do communism that failed. But capitalism can be low state or stateless and has economic hierarchy distinct from the state. Tons of 20th century libertarians write about this. The other type of hierarchy is military and there is no empirical evidence that we need that. There is a game theoretical argument about what-if-someone-else-does-it-and-invades, but I think have a non-military, anti-state populace with nuclear weapons takes care of this. The USA doesn't escape invasion because of its standing army, it escapes it because of its nuclear arsenal. In a post-state or low-state North America, non-state organizations can take parts of this arsenal and promise China a proper glassing if a single Chinese state boot ever touches North America, just like the state does right now. It's a solved problem thanks to technology.

It is often said that the police are just the largest gang. In a comparison between the police of a city and the non-police gangs, which do we observe being less territorial and less violent? Which do we observe normal citizens preferring to live under? We recently ran an experiment with drastically reducing or eliminating policing; does it seem to you that the results of this experiment supported the idea that policing was more violent and more territorial than non-policing?

Two points. One, no, policing was not eliminated or else I would have seriously considered moving there, as it would have been Libertarian and tax free. Instead you did anarcho-tyranny, which means if someone walks around with a rifle in public he gets arrested, if someone stops paying taxes he gets arrested, but if a black guy robs a store he doesn't get arrested. But if a store owner shoots the thief he does get arrested. Don't try to make that state free, rather the state just stopped doing something it does to try to appease the people but it kept existing and extorting people for money.

Second, the gangs are created by the state through two ways. The first is biological and I discussed it above, although that seems to have bounced off your ears, like the name of the Gray Fox in TES IV Oblivion. Is this knowledge cursed by Nocturna or what? Second is economic. Gangs mostly operate in black markets the state itself creates through drug prohibition, and they have no legal way to settle disputes, which pushes them toward public violence. That's the state's fault.

Finally, states can be much worse. The state committed the Holocaust, for example.

Charlie Kirk was murdered by a private individual for political ends. Bryan Malinowski was, in my view, murdered by the federal government, likewise for political ends. I consider both murders serious problems. Nonetheless, it seems to me that Kirk's murder is a much more serious problem and a much harder problem to solve than Malinowski's.

Why do you have it backwards? Were Malinowski's murderers given a consequence for their bad behavior? No.

You can see this with basic numbers. States lash out for senseless reasons because POSIWID. They are a violent organization that employs the kinds of people that sign up for that. There is no off switch except to lower it's statelyness. You can try to get it to appease gun owners. It will keep lashing out for other senseless reasons, and it's good at making up reasons way faster than you can turn them off. The ATF enforces a shitload of gun laws, not just the one they were there for, all way more than should reasonably exist, enforced way more cruelly and violently than is reasonable, and on top of that there are 2 other letters in the name. All of those laws are also senseless. Then there's basically all of the other laws which are also senseless. Meanwhile the Charlie Kirk thing is limited by the intersection between people willing to troll in public and people crazy enough to murder over that. That's very small and self-contained, as opposed to a category of organization that routinely genocides people throughout history.