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The common thread is some people thinking that laws are self-acting. People deep inside the first world bubble look around and see a surface appearance that fits nicely with laws being self-acting. One can explain this away, but the explanation must never-the-less explain why it looks that way, even though it isn't. Here is my attempt, focusing on incentive compatibility and Magic Special People, the MSP's.
Utopia, version one. There is an excellent rule book. Its excellence lies in how nice the world would be if people followed the rules. Its downfall is the lack of enforcement mechanisms. People break the rules and the utopia fails.
Utopia version two. A mostly free-market system. Most rules are incentive compatible. People obey those rules because it is in their interests to do so. But most isn't enough. Some necessary rules get broken and the utopia fails.
Utopia version three. Further compromise with Moloch. All the rules are incentive compatible. People fleeing the society say "Those were not compromises, they were surrenders." Version three turns out to be Hobbes' war of all against all. Works as planned, but is a dystopia.
Utopia version four. Built on version two. Yes, some rules are not naturally incentive compatible, but there is a police force. Break the rule and your punishment is worse than your gain from breaking the rule. So the rules are artificially incentive compatible. I'll use police as a synecdoche for police, courts, prisons, etc. There not just a rule book for the ordinary citizen. There is a rule book for the police. Some of it is incentive compatible. Some of the policemen believe in the utopia and follow all of the rule book for the police, even though it is an uphill struggle. But there are not enough of them, and there is no police-police enforcing the rule book that the police are supposed to follow. Too many doughnuts are eaten. Too few laws are enforced. The utopia fails.
Utopia version five. An Ourobos built on version four. The police-inspectors supervise the police, making sure that the police follow the rules. The common people watch the police-inpsectors and can vote them out of office. This is the basic idea of representative democracy. The record is mixed. The USSR had a constitution very like the American one, but with much less success. There is an extra, unrecognised ingredient. Most version five utopias fail quickly. Some last as long as supplies of the missing ingredient hold up.
Utopia version six. Ourobos + Magic Special People. Turn aside from contemplating the Ourobos and recall that utopia version four didn't fail as quickly as expected. Some of the policemen believe in it and went against their incentives out of religious conviction. There really are Magic Special People like that, just not enough off them. Notice the hierarchical structure of version five. Ordinary folk, police, police-inspectors. All but the top level face artificial incentives. The pyramid narrows towards the top. If society has 2 or 3 % MSPs, they could occupy the top level and make it work. If we sprinkle some fairy dust on society to get the MSPs to the top we would have a viable utopia.
How long would utopia version six last? People get old and die. Where is the new crop of Magic Special People to come from?
Perhaps from cultural transmission. Some MSP are teachers, encouraging children to cultivate and grow their inner MSP. So long as this is respected there is hope for continuity. But if the culture asks "If you are so smart, how come you aren't rich?" and mocks the self-sacrifice required to make cultural transmission happen, the supply of new, young MSP's will dwindle and the utopia fall.
Perhaps there is a genetic element. Some women seems to have a rather paleo-lithic taste in men, preferring those who win fights and grab an unfair share of resources for their own children. MSP's with their obsessions with justice, rules, fairness, and self-sacrifice, are not sexy and Magic Specialness is slowly bred out of the population, causing a type six utopia to fail.
Perhaps I'm understating the issue with magic fairly dust. Maybe MSP's are elbowed aside by grifters, and the top of the social heirarchy gets filled will muggles, who follow their incentives and the utopia fails.
Before answering my question about why it looks like the law is self-acting, I want to fill in some of the details of what life in a type six utopia is like.
There are ladies and gentleman. Some people are capable of understanding how society works and the need for rules, and are able to make and keep gentlemen's agreements about following the necessary rules. They lack the ruthlessness and self-sacrifice to count as Magic Special People, but provided the MSPs maintain order in society as a whole, the gentle folk have no need of MSPs within their bubble. Within their bubble, law is effectively self-acting.
There are rough folk. They push boundaries and break rules. They are sometimes caught and punished. Too seldom and things escalate and utopia fails. Too much? Is there a too much? It is a more subtle issue of the expensive of policing, and the corruption that results if police are granted too much latitude. There is also an issue that the more laws society has, the more police society needs, and the more MSPs society needs to supervise the police. MSPs are a scare resource; expand the need until society runs out of them and watch the utopia fail.
In between gentle and rough are ordinary folk, by far the most numerous. They have aspirations to be genteel. They want to be ladies and gentlemen, but when it comes to keeping gentlemen's agreements they find themselves hard pressed by tempation. They want to be street smart, not a mug or a mark. Not the one still trying to be a gentleman when every-thing has gone to shit and it is time to play for rough, to play for keeps.
The ordinary folk have rich inner lives, filled with psychological drama, which leads to the key distinction between the ordinary folk and the rough folk. Managing the rough folk requires that the police are efficient enough to keep the expected value of criminal activity negative. Managing the ordinary folk only requires the police to do their job occasionally. There is an inner struggle. Will the aspiration to be genteel win? Will the aspiration to be street smart win? It is enough that the gentle side can point to one or two middle class criminals caught and shamed. The street smart side might start figuring the odds but the gentle side scolds that as shameful in its self.
In the good times, the ordinary folk are kind of, somewhat in the same bubble as the ladies and gentlemen who honour their agreements and can see law as self-acting. Come the bad times and ordinary folk will flip to being street smart and things will go down hill fast and hard.
And that is my story of how society works, and how it comes to appear to nice middle class people that the law is self-acting, even though it really isn't.
You know except for the freedom of political organization outside the one party rule of the Communist party it was exactly the same.
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You could get MSP by giving them a stake in the system. I think that’s why the PMC is full of people who don’t understand rules don’t work magically is because they’re raised to understand that following the rules and doing what they’re told pays off, not just legally but in most situations. They got into good schools by ticking boxes, they were allowed special privileges for being teachers pet, they get kudos at work for doing what the boss wants. Obedience has worked well for them, and contrary wise breaking the rules has generally been punished.
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I think I get where you're going, but the civilians won't and can't. And it's a bit meandering. There's a core of truth here, but the presentation obscures rather than illuminates, at least for those whose minds don't run on this software.
Not that I could do better, I've been working on the philosophy of violence and the limits of rules for some time, and I can't make it sound anything but crazy to normies. This is what films like The Matrix and Fight Club (or American Beauty) are all about, and why they were such hits. They spoke to the underlying and terrifying reality that it really just is all sex and violence at the bottom, with ten thousand years of social, economic and political structures sitting wobbly on the narrow balance point of mass public opinion.
Civilization isn't even skin deep. It can vanish in an instant, and does, for millions of people every day.
There are those who know this, and those who desperately need to keep convincing themselves that it isn't true, because that would mean it was their responsibility to take care of themselves, rather than their parents/teachers/professors/police/government. This is what Dostoyevsky is talking about with "everything is permitted". "God" is the symbol of social control superseding human agency. But there is no god, and we can do anything. Only by careful consideration and long experimentation can we constrain this basic reality into a productive human civilization.
Normies have a fundamentally broken view. They think that when violence occurs it's completely unacceptable unless the state is doing it, but that some of the worst people can be excused for it because they cannot do any better. It's the same view, writ large, behind the idea that if someone rudely pre-empts you, the only polite thing to do is graciously allow them to. As I said it's fundamentally broken, and it would fall apart utterly if we didn't have an insanely powerful state freezing everything in place, bad ideas and all.
Calling it the normie view pretty much implies that it is the view of the majority, but from what I can tell only a small fraction of the population of the US has such a view.
The vast majority of Americans have never been in a fight, ergo have no recourse to violence, ergo rely on the state to do their violence for them. Everyone's had a reason to fight, sometime or another.
But for most people it almost never makes sense to do so. If you lose you go to the hospital, if you win you go to jail. If you go to jail and you're one of the "rough men" you might not suffer much as a result. If you're not you may not just lose your freedom but your job, your future, your friends, even your spouse, because now you're a barbaric criminal.
Solzhenitsyn quote you probably already know, but will come in handy if you don't:
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For a simple assault charge plead down to disturbing the peace or some shit? The fact that you think so shows my point more clearly than I could have. I've been in many fights, in jail a dozen times, caught charges twice, and my record is underage drinking and "recieving stolen goods" for having an old sign for a months-old hockey game in my dorm room. And that's only because it was campus police, rather than real cops.
You don't generally get done for fighting. The other guy has to press charges, they have to find him, you'd have to tell them etc. Your paranoia of being a "barbaric criminal" and your whole life collapsing for scrapping is simply perfect. That, that is the mentality I'm talking about.
We're likely not similarly situated. My sister got busted for minor in possession of alcohol, lost a college internship (teaching) as a result, and was unable to get another until she managed to get the record sealed. And that's as pissant a charge as you can get beyond traffic tickets. Of my co-workers in my past few jobs, judging from the reactions if I tell the story I'm probably the only one who has been arrested for anything serious as an adult (I was not convicted, or I'd likely be long dead by my own hand). I know of people who weren't hired because it turned out they had a criminal record, though for what I don't know.
The other guy doesn't have to press charges. If you get in a barfight, you can get busted for drunk-and-disorderly if not assault, for instance. Or if the cops break up the fight they can and sometimes do charge all concerned.
One can always find a reason why a course of action is too risky.
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Exactly. Unless it's an immediate mortal peril, it's generally best to be physical conflict avoidant in modern society due to the consequences of civilization being potentially levied on you.
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Just because a man decides to rely on state violence instead of doing violence himself does not mean that the man thinks that violence is unacceptable unless the state is doing it. More often, it means that the man thinks that it makes more sense from a benefit/risk perspective to rely on the state than to do it himself. It's not about personal violence being acceptable or unacceptable to him.
No, it doesn't. But it is a revealed preference that others do violence in one's stead.
It's the difference between eating meat and hunting. Between cheering for your team and being on the team. Between supporting a war and fighting it.
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Normies have surrendered to logic, but it is precisely the illogical, violent and insane passions of humanity that militate against any long-term oppression. You have to be willing to suffer wildly disproportionate consequences for the sake of internal principle to ever fight a structural issue. Hence religion.
Of course, this basic urge also produces many societal problems. Like beer, violence is the cause of and solution to many of our problems. This is a fundamental tension of humanity, that our most heroic impulses are also our most evil and destructive.
Long-term oppression is the story of history.
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I think that one of the ideas you are trying to get at is the difference between 'reality + imperfect methods for dealing with that reality' vs. 'the world as pure social construct'. Thus the distinction between 'you can't do this because the law says so' vs. 'you won't do this because you don't want to defy the law right now'.
To me it makes sense to see this on a spectrum. For example, as you move from rural to urban, the amount of your experience that is 'raw' reality unmediated by human systems decreases compared to the amount that is determined by social systems. The same is true for (most) startups, where you are very close to bankruptcy at any given time and exposed very closely to the needs of your client, vs. a large entrenched bureaucracy like the civil service or the (peacetime) army.
I've long had a theory that as America becomes fuller and more urbanised, the population whose day-to-day experience is very highly socially mediated will continually increase and that American society will consequently become more European, with a more entrenched class system and more complicated systems of deference. So far that theory seems to be holding up quite well.
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As others have pointed out aspects of, neither half of this seems even remotely true of the woke progressives I know or the ones I see online (two groups that are quite different in some other ways). Plenty of both break laws all the time or cheer on others' doing so, and they don't seem nearly as likely to complain about rampant criminality as deny or downplay it at best, and not infrequently cheer it on.
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Most woke urban progressives, and probably even most rationalists, are willing and often eager to break laws. For example, there are plenty of members of both groups who break drug laws all the time. And the reason why no woke urban progressive has shot Trump is not that it would have been illegal.
The number of people who are so over-socialized that the notion of disobeying a law does not exist within their philosophy is actually very small, I am sure.
What rationalists and also a large subset of woke urban progressives (especially the affluent ones) tend to be is hyper-cautious, probably cautious to the point that it interferes with quality of life rather than enhances it. Or, to be less charitable, they are cowardly.
They imagine the possible very negative outcomes of breaking the sorts of laws that carry large penalties and think to themselves, "even if me getting caught is very unlikely, when I multiply the possibility of getting caught by the penalty that I would receive, the result is still too large for it to be acceptable to me".
This may well be much more of a "middle class or higher" attitude than a blue tribe attitude.
Based on the 2020 protests/riots/etc. and the distribution of who, back then, most often threatened or actually used violence to achieve their goals, one could argue that it is actually the red tribe that is more overly law-abiding and hyper-cautious than the blue tribe. Think of all the red tribers who both own guns and believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Almost not a single one has done anything about it. This was true even before the heavy legal outcomes of the January 6 protest/riot/etc. became clear.
An entire nation of them exists. The Germans are real people.
Reoccurring anecdotes about them refusing to disobey even the most obviously miswritten law or mislabeled item, and acting agast or hurt if you suggest they could just ignore it are very common amongst anyone who interacts with them.
Hmm, well I was mainly thinking about Americans. I do not have much experience with Germans. I have heard similar things about the Japanese.
@Southkraut what do you think about this?
tl;dr: More true of Germans than of any other nation I know.
Germans aren't 100% law-abiding, many of them will ignore minor laws when it suits them and they feel they have the moral high ground and they know their social network wouldn't condemn them for it.
Some Germans, get this, are actual honest-to-god criminals. We have them! They break laws and often they get caught and fined or imprisoned for it.
And many are indeed exemplars of the stereotype. It is not without some basis in reality. There are many who will indeed do their utmost to obey every law and regulation, no matter how inane, counterproductive or obviously insane. They are genuinely afraid of going against the letter of the law, not out of fear of punishment, but because it would be against the cosmic order of things.
Some people will even invent new laws on the spot as an excuse to not do something they do not wish to do - it often sounds plausible enough.
We also have tens of millions of foreigners and "Germans" who aren't nearly as lawful, but probably behave more lawfully than they would prefer so as to not stand out too much.
But overall yeah, we make lots of rules and expect them to be obeyed and most of us obey most of the rules and it's serious business all the way down.
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Its really dramatic in German descended parts of rural America and Canada... as the laws are increasingly written with the assumption that no one will obey them and German descended small business people try desperately to comply with impossible contradictory laws.
I wonder what the Germans do about GDPR. That law seems particularly difficult to comply with.
Assiduously fill out a form every time you go to a public event, to the doctor, to a mechanic, to town hall, or generally have any interaction with anyone whatsoever that isn't bedroom-private or plain retail.
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They (and Europe in general) get around it by not having any meaningful tech industry.
My opinion of the European tech industry is also pretty low. Here's an anecdote about Italy. While I was there, I couldn't access ChatGPT without a VPN because it didn't comply with Italian privacy laws.
Meanwhile, because of Italian law, every hotel required that I enter my passport photo, city of birth, and other very personal details into their extremely shittily-designed web portal which I am sure is being hacked regularly. (I did lie when possible)
That's not the fault of the Italian tech industry, that's the fault of Italian regulations.
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Do people drive the speed limit there?
Rather famously, Germany has no speed limit on most of the Autobahn. German law-abidingness is a result of three linked phenomena - people believe the law simply codifies expected pro-social behaviour, people generally choose to behave pro-socially, and the legislators making laws (like speed limits on uncongested freeways) which would undermine the other two.
There's an underrated concept that I heard once about this concept generalized as having to make laws there be "beneath the dignity of the State".
Contrast the law in the neighboring countries and most of the English-speaking world where everyone recognizes that speed limits are not one of those laws that codifies pro-social behavior (because, quite simply, they're set far below the maximum safe speed of the road) and everyone drives 10 over as a consequence. It's almost like respect for the State is a two-way street or something.
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the missionary is acting as though there is a law to be followed, when there obviously is not. The checkpoint guard is a potential threat, the "service charge" is not optional, and these realities must be engaged with. The missionary is thinking there's some system in place such that these realities are Someone Else's Problem, that the proper response is to file a complaint form and let the system handle it. He's blind to the fact that there is no system, that this is the way things are.
The cat lady is doing the same thing. She acts as though there's a system to enforce her will over and above her immediate actions. She apparently thinks there's a system that prevents the cat from walking out an open door, ignoring that no such system exists. She wants such a system to exist, ignores the fact that it does not, and so suffers the consequences.
The "dishes" poem (one of my favorites, by the way) illustrates the disconnect between cooperative systems of the type the people in these two examples are imagining exist, and the reality of individual choice. Washing the dishes is supposed to preclude breaking them, but there's nothing innate to the task to actually prevent this. What prevents breaking dishes is something entirely different, a whole other complex of assumptions and interactions with no actual connection to the act of dish-washing itself, and the existence of those assumptions cannot simply be assumed when it's time for dish-washing.
Assuming the above is correct, let's see if I can extend the pattern.
This scene from The Wire is all about the divide between the power of a hypothetical system and the power of material reality. The guard wants it to be one way: his whole job is in fact to be that system, that's the whole reason he's there, the reason he draws a paycheck, he has a uniform and everything! And yet, it's the other way: the system doesn't actually exist, even though he wants it to, even though he's paid to implement it, because at the end of the day, cooperation has to either be consented to or enforced, nd mechanisms of enforcement are both very expensive and quite limited in what they can achieve. Stanfield refuses to consent, and the guard, and the people the guard represents, aren't actually prepared for enforcement. They're bluffing, and Stanfield calls it. The guard's response is to try to guilt-trip him over his defection, as though Stanfield doesn't understand what he's doing, as though he's just making a mistake, and once this is pointed out he'll fall in line with the system. This doesn't work because Stanfield is not making a mistake, has no intention of cooperating, and knows that neither the guard nor the people behind him have any way of enforcing the system they're claiming exists. In reality, he has all the cards, and recognizes no reason to pretend otherwise. He is able to inflict emotional whiplash on the guard at will, by allowing the guard to pretend the system exists, and then demonstrating that it does not.
Applying it to the Culture War, there's the argument I've made for a long time here that the Constitution is dead, or that it is ink and paper, or that it is whatever five justices say it is. The point of all these statements is to highlight different ways that this system vs reality disconnect applies to the system of the Constitution: the document itself is not the power, the justices aren't even the power. The paper and ink and the justices interpreting it are just coordination mechanisms. The power comes from the social consensus that they exist to coordinate, and that power can be manipulated in a whole variety of ways that have nothing to do with a fancy piece of parchment or five people in silly black robes. A foolish person might imagine that their ignition key is what powers their car: they turn the key and the car starts! But of course, the ignition key is only indirectly connected to the car's engine, and if there's something wrong with the engine the key certainly isn't going to help.
This is one of the serious issues our society is trying to deal with. Our established systems are failing en masse, and there's a blatant disconnect between the way things are hypothetically supposed to work, and the way they actually work. Some people fail or refuse to understand this reality, and so keep appealing to systems that used to exist, or that we pretended exist. They do this because they want it to be one way, but it's the other way.
I that scene it's not as if they're not prepared to enforce compliance and totally bluffing, they're just not prepared to enforce compliance on Marlo Stanfield. If Bubbles tried to steal something the security guard would have stopped him without a second thought.
Marlo takes two Lollipops he could easily pay for while looking the guard in the eyes. He's signalling his power and his ability to flaunt the rules and personally disrespecting the security guard. The security guard knows Marlo can have him killed on a whim, he's scared to look him in the eyes and says 'he's not stepping to" Marlo, but him having pride as a man means he can't let the slight to unanswered. He's not asking Marlo not to defect, he's not trying to get the lollipop's back, he just wants to be recognized as a working man outside "the game" who isn't going to interfere with the gangs but shouldn't have to tolerate such clear disrespect either. And Marlo of course says no, it's the other way.
One of the running themes in The Wire is that the code of honor that allows drug dealers to exist alongside the community is in decay. Omar takes pride in never robbing a citizen, he's gunned down by a child. They shoot at his mother on her way to church. Avon's generation might have stolen, but they wouldn't have personally humiliated the security guard in doing so. Marlo is the next generation, he's more ruthless and has people killed constantly for vague suspicions or minor slights. The system that no longer exists isn't state and federal law, it's the norm that people outside "the game", especially "citizens" are to be left alone and not really interfered with.
I guess it comes down to what it means to be a "bluff". You say that if Bubbles tried to steal something the guard would stop him, but would Bubbles actually try to steal something? Bubbles isn't Marlo, and he doesn't have the power or the understanding of that power that Marlo has.
The guard has no gun, only a radio, and no one he radios is going to do anything worth mentioning about Marlo's theft of two lollipops. Marlo would not do this in front of an actual cop, because the actual cop has an actual gun and an actual police force behind him. An actual cop can prosecute a fight, his organization will back him, and Marlo will definately lose. The guard is not a cop, only pretending to be one, hoping the actual power of the cops rubs off on him vicariously through a bit of social mimicry. He's hoping he has authority because he looks like authority, without actually backing it up. He's bluffing.
Yes, exactly, and it's the same with real-world issues as well. State and federal law, like the Constitution, are coordination mechanisms. Their goal is to create a norm of cooperation between all the members of society. That norm is where all the benefits come from, and it can be weakened or destroyed without those mechanisms changing in the slightest way. Breakdown of norms is a social problem, and systemic solutions might be necessary to solve them, they are by no means sufficient. If your counterparties aren't actually looking to cooperate, cooperation isn't on the table.
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The reasoning is true, but the problem with accepting it is it removes all legitimacy from government. If e.g. the constitution and the justices say I can carry a gun, and the real power says I can't, then for what reason should I not violate every single one of the state's edicts provided I can get away with it? Where does the state's legitimacy derive? Lysander Spooner's answer (it doesn't) seems to be the only one which makes sense.
Raw force.
Be nice until you can coordinate meanness.
Democracies end in military dictatorships, because eventually the best way to get to the top is simply to co-opt the raw force. As countries become more successful and peaceful, the more impact control of their shrinking military has.
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I think the question of legitimacy and power are separated here. Power rests with whoever can bring force to bear on the population. If you’re in a weak enough state, power might well rest with gangs. They wouldn’t be legitimate, obviously, but they’d have power. Legitimacy comes from whatever legal theory gives the rulers the right to rule. David could rule because God chose him as head of a theocratic state. Charles III rules because he’s the eldest son of the former Queen. Biden rules as President because he won the election and therefore has the right to the office.
Law is almost always an idealist thing. It gives rules but rules are merely the map and assume that everybody is doing exactly what they’re supposed to do and further that the enforcement and judicial branches are not compromised. This rarely happens perfectly simply because laws generally forbid things that people very much want to do. Businesses want to skirt labor laws (paid breaks and lunches are expensive. OSHA laws can be expensive to follow as well). Dumping stuff in the river is much cheaper than recapture. So there’s always an incentive to try to negate any laws that you don’t want to follow. As such a lot of laws simply aren’t enforced or if the cops bother judges overturn them.
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After your last warning, posting this appears to be a particularly obnoxious way to flounce.
Banned, permanent unless the other mods dissent.
His post may have been shitty, but the literary critique of Hlynka taking too long to make a simple point is not entirely off the mark.
Yeah I voted this was warning worthy because it was exceptionally rude but I 100% agreed with the basic point. We're forum posters and not professional writers and so most literary stuff is going to be not great but people should be allowed to experiment with writing style without extremely rude criticism.
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Okay? Feel free to say that. But not the way he said it.
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I was planning on berating you for not doing a trailer post first, so I appreciate this.
That aside, this is kinda cheap -
I mean, you could be right - you aren't about nybbler as he mentions below, but stripping away the hyperbole I have met people who seemed to think illegal = flat out impossible before. I don't think they're hanging out on the motte though. We pretty much have to talk in legalities about legal issues because the law is a shared baseline we might not all agree to, but we all agree exists. Arguments like "New York doesn't allow private citizens to concealed carry!" "Heh u still can 😎" don't really go anywhere.
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Sounds like in your anecdotes the rationalist casually DESTROYED stupid people with FACTS and LOGIC, but felt it was beneath him to elucidate and impart his wisdom to his lessers. The mormon missionary and friend are clearly uncomfortable with the ambiguity and grey moral area of bribes and use of force. The neighbour doesn’t understand that her intent has no causal influence on events. And it’s true, common people do not understand the finer points of why they should follow the king, his officers, the law or the ten commandments, it’s the cliff’s notes of morality, of course they haven’t read the book like you, oh enlightened one.
This is too antagonistic, you've had two warnings in the past for this same thing. 3 day ban.
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Who is the rationalist?
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That is not why I said that. I said that because if you CCW in New York (City) without a police uniform, either you are a habitual criminal and will stick to carrying in your own bad neighborhood, or you will be caught, probably sooner than later, end up in jail for a long time, and perhaps come out at the end with the choice of living a straight, narrow, and meager existence or retraining as a habitual criminal. State capacity is great enough nowadays that for those laws the state cares about (and weapons laws are included in NYC), it is not an option for a person to disobey without throwing away everything for the life of a habitual criminal.
From all I've heard I don't think the military is different; the Demos are no match for the Woke.
The woke live in the paradoxical confluence of complete confidence in the state's power to bring about their wishes while living in constant culture struggle against its enforcers. It's like being a sovereign citizen, but sometimes saying the right gibberish does make things happen. Just because in the West authority has become completely abstracted from force doesn't mean that the authority's power no longer requires it. The demos has great power that yet sleeps, yet.
If laws are passed that make people criminal, perhaps more people should be criminals: if you're the kind of person who wants to possess a gun you're already an enemy of the state: the bureaucracy just hasn't caught up with you yet.
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