domain:amphobian.info
crushedoranges
29m ago
I was more objecting to the provocative terminology that libertarians use: that taxation is theft, that bans are imprisonment and murder, that many straightforward and inoffensive things are in fact statist violence to the individual. It is no more convincing to me than the vegan framing of an industrial concentration camp of imprisoned bovine lifeforms is, in fact, a cattle pen. It is a stupid way to argue and no one is actually convinced by that sort of rhetoric.
The sacral force of the law has always held the connotation of life or death consequence: since Roman times it was thus. Not everyone follows laws because of moral duty: justice carries both the scales and the sword! It is so obvious that only libertarians feel smug about stating the obvious. Yes, the state has the power to enforce its directives with force. That is a good thing. If it did not, then it would not have the power to make anyone heed it. And that threshold of necessary violence is decided by the people of the nation, not libertarians!
If you don't have that, you don't really have a society: only a collection of strangers in an economic zone.
Only a libertarian would believe that without a state, men would follow laws. Thousands of years of history have taught us this, that ambitious men who break weak states soon place themselves above it, to rule like tyrants. Similarly as you have encountered hundreds of critiques of libertarianism, I have read just as much apologia for it and have emerged thoroughly unconvinced of its merit and totally dumbfounded by its complete unseriousness.
they just need enough to make the cost of a nuclear exchange so high Israel would never risk it
But this has further implications that you omit.
If Iran has the bomb, they can provide it to a smaller, far more suicidal group of allies (the Palestinians) to lock the Israelis into their current borders unless they negotiate with Iran. Technology transfers, taxes, religious rites/rights, not purchasing American weapons, etc. is what that looks like.
In this way, the Hamasi would serve as the permanent Iranian veto over the [Ashke]nazi. Because they simply don't care if the Israelis nuke them in response- the fact is, the Israelis get hurt far more than the Palestinians, the Palestinians are suicidal, and that is sufficient to accomplish this goal.
Conversely, if Israel believes that Iran will, or already has, or will inevitably soon obtain, a bomb like this... then their only response is to start removing the local kebab as fast as humanly possible. They didn't like the paragliders the first time; imagine how much they're not going to like them when the settlers further encroaching on their territory prompts an air-borne SADMization of the Israeli countryside.
The Iron Dome can stop a lot but the bomber is going to get through. And sure, Hamas could always attack from another country (perhaps one in which they seek refuge after the dust settles), but in that case that other country [and its people] are collateral the Israelis can threaten such that Hamas is kept down- since if Hamas manages to get an attack off then it's the entire host nation's problem, and Israel becomes the one with the nuclear veto.
I mean I think many of the Revolutions are less impressive as they always end up recreating the structures that actually work for human society.
I'm not sure I agree. My view of history is that technology often creates a latent possibility for change within society, and that if a Revolution happens "at the right time" it can radically alter the shape of society. If it happens "at the wrong time" it will either destroy a society completely, or just change who happens to be at the top, but reproduce the successful model that preceded it.
The best examples are the French and American revolutions. I think they happened at the perfect time to create a transition from feudalism to capitalism and from monarchy to constitutional republics. The printing press changed us from a network society to a broadcast society, the post-Renaissance engagement with Classical history was stronger than ever, the Age of Sail was exposing European societies to new resources and new ways of thinking, and the Scientific revolution was in full swing. Things were ready for a shake up.
But human nature doesn’t change and truth doesn’t change and the hard realities of life on earth doesn’t change.
I partly agree with you, and partly disagree.
I think there is something to a Stephen Pinker-esque argument about how much better our society is from those in the past: Less infant mortality, less war deaths, less starvation, etc. All of those things are tangible differences from the past. (I don't discount that a lot of these could be reframed in a more pessimistic light, where the threat of violence is just as strong as it has ever been - it is just the case that we have created a global system where the stakes are so high that all of the big players with survival instincts choose to engage in smaller scale proxy wars to avoid a nuclear apocalypse.)
However, I think many people feel like something has gone deeply wrong with modern society, and I personally think a lot of it stems from what I like to call "unenriched zoo enclosure syndrome." Anatomically modern humans evolved ~2 million years ago for an ancestral environment very different from anything we see in the modern day. I believe that our basic body plan and capabilities have been enough to give us a massive ability to shape our own environment, but that increased control has allowed us to create societies that aren't good matches for our psychology.
I think things like Bowling Alone, the male loneliness epidemic and many other societal problems fundamentally stem from the fact that we've designed a "zoo enclosure" for ourselves that doesn't fulfill our basic psychological and social needs as animals. It's like the birds that die of stress when put in captivity, or the lions that pace unhappily back and forth in a bad enclosure. Our instincts leave us expecting a highly social world of in person social interactions, full of green and certain kinds of stresses and challenges, and we have produced a world where we get none of that. Materially, we're better off than we've ever been, but psychologically I think we need to find new and better ways to deliver on experiences that "enrich" our zoo enclosures and leave us as happy human animals.
Great line. Reminds me of my travels there. Very lonely country.
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