War is inevitable… PROVE ME WRONG.
No one is saying that we can necessarily strip government of its powers without armed conflict. What I’m saying, at least, is that once government and nation have been destroyed, wars will no longer be inevitable. Northern and Southern Californians don’t go to war with one another, despite a certain level of antipathy in the North. Nations are just groups of people which have, unfortunately, placed a label on themselves and others. Wars are only possible when you have an “us” and a “them”. But this is demonstrably not inevitable.
To put it another way, we have largely peaceful societies NOW. The fact that some now go to war with far away peoples still is hardly a proof that it will always be so. Without borders, people can move freely from one place to another. With modern communication technologies, it becomes ever harder to dehumanize “foreigners” to the degree necessary for war. Nationalism is just large-scale tribalism, and the more cosmopolitan the world becomes, the less sustainable is such a mindset.
But what type of war will restrict the power of government? A violent overthrow probably would not work. However, an ECONOMIC war has not been tried before. That is the whole point of agorism. People should ignore all the taxes and regulations that prevent productive economic activity. If you’re clever about it, it would work. Just because an economic revolt hasn’t been tried before, doesn’t mean it won’t work in the future.
Of course I’m not saying that there has never been a peaceful society. I never said that war will be in everyone’s life every day of their life. I said that war is not going to go away, in general. In societies that do not have the root causes of war, it won’t happen there, will it? Truly egalitarian societies, with little or no contact with the outside world will have little reason to wage war. Unless we can find a way to operating nations of 100’s of millions of people the same way one would run a 20 member native village, I guess we should stop fantasizing about war disappearing. And seeing how the trend is away from those kinds of societies, I see war increasing rather than decreasing in the future.
So, you are saying that every peaceful society that ever was either was completely isolated or had no want? Also, you keep going back to this “war disappearing” bit, but that is a straw man. No one is saying we will live in a pacifist world. What I’m saying is that we can reduce war quite a bit. Does ending the nation-state mean there will never be war again? Of course not, but we can make them fewer and smaller in scale. Anarchists aren’t utopians, but we do think we advocate for a better world than we have today. You are effectively taking the position that the exact level of conflict we have today in the world is the least amount of conflict possible. Such a position is silly and untenable, and is in no way supported by your “5,000 years” of “evidence”.
Fantasy, fantasy, fantasy. When the Berlin Wall came down, the West Germans initially opened their arms to the East Germans. The honeymoon was soon over, however, and the things I heard my West Germans friends say about the East Germans would make a Clansman blush. And these were GERMANS talking about other GERMANS.
The “us verus them” is built into our DNA. It has to be. Xenophobia was a survival adaptation. We still have it, even if we try to deny it. Yes, our cultures and races mix much moreso now than in the past, but humans will always find something to seperate themselves. Whether it’s soccer hooligans fighting over their favorite teams or street gangs fighting over drug territories or antipathy towards immigrants, those feelings are built right into us.
Yes, nationalism is large scale tribalism, because, at our core, we are still tribal turds sprinkled with the glitter of civilization. Your borderless world will only last until one group of people realizes that another group of people, due to their renunciation of aggression, is an easy target. Your experiment would work here and there on a small scale, but what do you have, besides wishful thinking, that convinces you that it would ever work on a large scale?
Yes, I’m saying that every truly peaceful society has to be isolated and free of want. The minute you have one group of people with significantly more than another group of people, even within the same society, there will be conflict. Why should you have a larger hut than I do? Why should you have more fish or berries than I do? The minute two groups meet, there will be conflict. I’m not going to let the tribe that we see across the river get the fish that I need to feed my own tribe. I’m going to be suspicious of the intentions of the tribe that I met while wandering through the woods, as they will be suspicious of my own intentions. That is not my a wild assertation…that is based on history.
And I am certainly not taking the position that the level of conflict we have today is the least amount possible. The least amount possible, I would imagine, would have been several 10’s of thousands of years ago when we still lived as isolated groups. As population pressures mount and the competition for resources correspondingly increases, I see war becoming more and more common, no matter how “cosmopolitan” our world becomes.
Know why an economic war has never been tried? Because it won’t work, for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s hard to get people to fight, in any capacity, even when the reasons for fighting are overwhelming, and without massive numbers of people on board for this kind of thing, it’s even more doomed to failure than an actual shooting revolt. Second, if it’s only a few people waging this ecnomic war against an oppressive government, the government can very easily suppress them, making examples out of them. Third, even if you refuse to pay your taxes, the government has no problems going further into debt to fund itself.
That is not exactly what I have said, but you still raise an interesting point. Yes, war is inevitible. One can reasonably reach this conclusion by merely using the logic “it has always been, so it will always be”. This is faulty, of course, but in general, it’s true. Since war has been the default condition for as long as humans have been writing things down, I think it’s only logical to say that, if you disagree with the above statement, you need to come up with some pretty darn convincing reasons why you disagree.
So far, I have seen nothing here that even remotely resembles a convincing reasons. A lot of wishful thinking, but you can wish in one hand and, well, you know, in the other, right?
Here is a question for all of you. Well, maybe a couple questions that really get to the core of the issue.
Has there ever been true peace on Earth? Has there ever been a time when warfare was not the norm?
A reasonable person MUST answer these to questions with a resounding “NO”. So then I ask you this…why is that? Why, why, why? Why has there never been lasting peace?
Then, what has changed or is changing? Whatever you feel to be the causes of war (and some of you don’t like the causes I gave), are these things going away?
Please, answer these questions.
You are not aware that all your mistakes have been refuted by a philosophical school known as ‘classical liberalism’ ? I mean, since you know so much history, you must have heard something about the Enlightenment and that sort of thing ?
ps: This guy Malthus - he was wrong, you know.
boinks the Hobbesian premise
And yet we’re in the midst of tremendous population growth and increased competition for resources, as we speak. It’s nice how you can “refute” something that is happening at the moment that you’re refuting it. You’re like that Iraqi minister that went on TV saying that there were no American troops in Baghdad…as an American tank rolled through the frame behind him.
Now, I will grant you this…the situation is unsustainable as it currently stand. Right now, we are still producing enough of everything to sustain this massive population growth, but we can’t do that forever. Eventually, enough people will die, through warfare, disease, and starvation, that competition will also decrease. Then I guess the cycle will just start over again.
Ah, I see…you have convinced me. For every one of the last 5000 years of recorded human history, warfare was the norm. However, there IS a chance that 2009 (since we already blew it for 2008) will be the year peace spontaneously and permanetly breaks out. Why? Because, hey, you can never REALLY know, right?
Wow, just tremendous.
How do you stop someone from mugging you? How do you prevent it from happening in the first place? How do you stop it once the mugging is actually underway?
Mugging can be minimized, avoided and stopped - the same is true for war.
True to form, you have not provided anything that comes anywhere close to a real answer. In theory, anything is possible. I’m asking for specific, practical answers…I’m not expecting any, of course, but that is what I’m asking for.
Except that, properly speaking, that is not logic.
So you admit that your reasoning is wrong, but at the same time you say its conclusions are somehow right. Not taking into account that your position is contradictory and doesn’t make sense, and granting that there will always be war, what do you expect ‘us’ to do ?
What, exactly, are you proposing ?
So am I.
Yes, I said that you can reach correct conclusions by using simplistic and even faulty logic. That doesn’t make a correct conclusion any less correct. However, I also pointed out that I was not merely saying that it’s always been, so it will always be…I am, actually, giving good reasons why I think so. If you choose to ignore those reasons to make yourself feel better about your own position, that’s on you. On the other hand, saying that we can prevent, for example, mugging by preventing or avoiding it…um, yeah…
And, no, you’re not looking for practical answers. Practical answers will not fit in with your fantasy that you can reduce war by wishing that it was reduced.