The Gaming Den

Most fantasy games don't put a lot of effort into explaining how the hell the social order sticks together. Which is a shame, because social orders are actually rather contrived and delicate things that people have spent literally the entire history of civilization trying to hold together and they still fall apart at the rate of about one entire country a year.

Social orders have very strong reasons to exist. They allow people to work together to accomplish larger tasks than anyone is individually able to attempt. They allow increased productive efficiency through specialization. And they allow people to have sufficient faith in the future to conduct long term investment. They defend peoples' persons and their investments, making them safer and wealthier. These are incentives so strong that the social order is a strict advantage over the Mad Maxian hellscape of not having one even if you are on the bottom of said social order. And if you're on the top, there's no comparison at all. Nonetheless, social orders are inherently unstable and historically just don't last very long.

The basic stresses: that people crime exists, that opinions are like assholes in that everyone has one and yours stinks, and that inequality is going to ensure that some people want things other people have, are going to exist in every single social order. Additional shocks to the social order can come in the form of resource depletion, natural disasters, ethnic & religious conflict, and even plain old technological progress. That is to say that the needs, resources, and division of labor of the people within the social order don't stay constant generation to generation or even day to day.

Holding Together
"It is entirely possible for people acting sensibly as individuals to add up to a whole which is without sane foundations. It is the responsibility of government to ensure that does not happen."

Leviathan
"None of us is as powerful as all of us."

The power inherent to a single individual might be considered small or large depending on your frame of reference, but it is importantly true that it is not much different from the power inherent to another single individual. This means that groups of individuals can trivially overpower any one man no matter how strong or dedicated they are. So it is that society as a whole can slap down rebellion, and thieves and scoundrels must hide in the darkness lest the state come down on them in force.

The entire concept of Leviathan is predicated on a rough equality between man. In the standard fantasy fare, that conceit is almost always false. The difference in power between Steve the crap covered farmer and Ralgor the Sorcerer is not merely night and day, it is beyond comparison. And if one individual need not fear the wrath of a pair or score of other individuals, the entire coercive force of society simply does not exist.

The Social Contract
"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farsical aquatic ceremony."

The social contract is a relatively modern setup in which society comes together by mutual agreement. The governors rule with the consent of the governed, and leadership is what we would call "legitimate". This system can become unstable if the government is unable to provide basic services, but that is true of virtually any government. And in the meantime, the seal of approval upon the government allows the government to make demands on the people.

The social contract is a modern concept, and one which has no particular place in medievalesque kingdoms and baronies and shit. When standard fantasy worlds trot out knights and kings, they are essentially passing on any real possibility to rule with the consent of the governed. This entire problem was demonstrated quite nicely in Monty Python.

The Trappings of Tradition
"The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty."

Let's just get this out of the way right now: things you do are not ancient. Your manner of speech is specific to your time and place, and your great grandparents wouldn't understand what you were talking about even if they nominally spoke the same language. Nevertheless, you probably feel a (frankly unwarranted) line of continuity between whatever the hell it is that you do and some imaginary ancient past. That's the result
of a phenomenally successful piece of social engineering to make you feel that way. You're told that the past was continuous with the present, and your mind naturally fills in things you are familiar with for portions of the past that you don't know anything about. When you think about historical figures, you imagine them eating foods you eat or using an accent you used, even though they didn't.

A fantasy world has things change in really obvious ways all the time, breaking the illusion. But worse than that, it generally has people who live stupid long times. Which means that the blatant discontinuity between the Lion Tribe humans who live here now and the fucking Hyena people who lived here a few decades ago is blatantly obvious to everyone. Both because the historical figures had god damn hyena heads, and because some of those guys are immortal or something and are seriously right over there, doing things in some incomprehensible and essentially foreign manner. Like in the actual old days.

Nationalism
"The blood of the people unites us and compels us to acts of great sacrifice."

Nationalism is at its core a lie. The concept is that you share some imaginary "nation-ness" with other people who come from the same arbitrary country, and you don't have a comparable fictive family connection with other people in different countries even if you happen to be physically or genetically closer to them. Everyone in this completely arbitrary colored blob on the map is part of a super-family of togetherness that is defined by... being located in this completely arbitrary colored blob on the map. It's incredibly effective at gluing society together, and it is one of the most powerful tools developed in recent history.

Yeah, I just said "recent history". Nationalism was invented in the 1770s. Before the United States of America there was literally no such thing. Any fantasy world which is even vaguely passable as medieval in bad light still isn't even a hundred years from developing nationalism. And there's no idea that the idea would even find traction if some of the people involved had pointy ears or breathed fire.

Nationalism doesn't always even hold things together. Right now in Africa, people are nationalist about a number of regions that are not specifically countries. How much worse would that be if there were nomadic people with cow heads who were actually different from the people living in the town?

Falling Apart
"The general inclination of all mankind is a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death."

Coup D'etat
"Because I have all the soldiers?"

Society persists in no small part because it has a monopoly of force. If one individual or interest group can seriously challenge that monopoly, that is a tremendous threat to that society. There are uprisings going on in countries all over the world, right now. Most of them will fail, but a number of them will succeed. Coups are triggered by all kinds of things. But perhaps the biggest thing they are triggered by is opportunity. If someone counts up the military force under their control and the military force under the rest of society's control and finds that they can reach out and take the Mercedes full of cheerleaders, they are quite likely to do that.

The very Dragon Slaying scenario is predicated on the idea that the dragon is a bigger military presence than society, and the dragon slayer is a bigger military presence than the dragon. Once you have that hard coded into your fantasy world, what is left to stop a litany of coups and counter coups to rival the histories of Myanmar or Pakistan?

Procedural Irrelevance
"As High Graaf, you are entitled to first listen to any phonograph produced in the Barony."

As residents in post-industrial society, you're used to things becoming superfluous due to the ever grinding wheels of technology. But even in the absence of technological progress, needs become addressed as capitalization increases, and threats and pressures appear and vanish. Dealing with the mosquito problem is a big deal and deserves an investment from the social order to handle it, but when the swamp is drained and the mosquitoes are gone, then what?

A fantasy world is not immune to this sort of thing, and indeed most presented worlds are actually much more susceptible to it. Both because they posit a gajillion magical things that do various stuff and cause or solve an equally vast array of problems, and because the very "event oriented" nature of most fantasy stories has problems coming and going in a manner both final and unprecedented in virtually all cases. The need for a "Dragon Slayer" to have a place in the social order begins when a dragon shows up that needs slaying and ends when said dragon has been slain. The very concept involves giant and unique pressures on the social order coming down like hard rain.

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
"Would you say it is time for us to bash open our neighbors' heads and feast on the delicious brains inside?"

Following "the rules" is a long term game. Investing in the social order pays off eventually, but taking things that don't "belong" to you pays off right now. If people do not believe that society will exist tomorrow, the threat of society punishing them for current misdeeds becomes substantially less. This is why the men in suits are always trying to stop a panic in science fiction movies. People believing that there is an existential threat to society is itself an existential threat to society. Rioting, looting, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

The generic fantasy plotline pretty much calls for all hope to seem lost at some point. The thing is: that's the point at which people stop paying their taxes or respecting fences. Whether or not the heroes stop the demon cataclysm, society itself has to come to grips with people hedging their bets on society surviving the ordeal. How long do you really think things can chug along when farmers are hoarding food rather than ship it to market because they don't know if winter will end this year?

-Username17

Where do you put societies predicated on greatest force? i.e. There is no contract, nationalism, tradition or even leviathan. Ralgor has a staff with a knob on the end, or Fred has has fanatically loyal henchmen and if you don't do what X says, your head explodes.

Challengers get put down quickly, to avert coups. Society continues, because X says so. It seems to be the dominant structure, not only in fantasy, but history in general. Tyrannies continue because no group is able to bring enough force to bear.

Having force and being able to bring that force to bear are 2 different things.

A king could order his knights to put down a rebellion, but at what cost? In a large society with a population over broad geographical expanse it will certainly send a powerful message. In a small community, killing off the peasants means less people are working the fields, producing goods or procreating.

Not to mention the issues that arise when a ruler or ruling body places too much power in the hands of an army or other powerful group. History is filled with ambitious generals and administrators.

FrankTrollman wrote: Social orders have very strong reasons to exist. They allow people to work together to accomplish larger tasks than anyone is individually able to attempt. They allow increased productive efficiency through specialization. And they allow people to have sufficient faith in the future to conduct long term investment. They defend peoples' persons and their investments, making them safer and wealthier. These are incentives so strong that the social order is a strict advantage over the Mad Maxian hellscape of not having one even if you are on the bottom of said social order.

Isn't this belied pretty much every time the bottom of the social order takes up arms and tries to burn down the current establishment? i.e. relatively often?

The entire concept of Leviathan is predicated on a rough equality between man. In the standard fantasy fare, that conceit is almost always false. The difference in power between Steve the crap covered farmer and Ralgor the Sorcerer is not merely night and day, it is beyond comparison. And if one individual need not fear the wrath of a pair or score of other individuals, the entire coercive force of society simply does not exist.

Um, what? While this (that wizards are on an entirely different level from muggles) is admittedly a common fantasy trope, it is a LOOONG way from universal. Do I need to rattle off all the fantasy works out there where Ralgor can get stabbed in the face by Steve? Or at least, by a mob of Steves? (note: D&D is included in this list, at least for low-level wizards)

Even in D&D terms, at what level does the comparison between a wizard and a commoner (or warrior, let's say) become "not merely night and day", but "beyond comparison"?

Nationalism is at its core a lie. The concept is that you share some imaginary "nation-ness" with other people who come from the same arbitrary country, and you don't have a comparable fictive family connection with other people in different countries even if you happen to be physically or genetically closer to them. Everyone in this completely arbitrary colored blob on the map is part of a super-family of togetherness that is defined by... being located in this completely arbitrary colored blob on the map.

Why are you defining nationalism in terms of arbitrary geography, rather than politics?

Politenewb wrote:Isn't this belied pretty much every time the bottom of the social order takes up arms and tries to burn down the current establishment? i.e. relatively often?

Not really. People can be getting an amazingly shitty deal and still be getting a better deal than they'd get under every-man-for-himself chaos. Life expectancy in Palestine is 23 years longer than it is in Somalia. When the people on the bottom rise up against their oppressors, they are normally fighting for a better social order, not merely to abolish order. There is still down things can go, which is why slave revolts while very common didn't happen every single day.

Blasted wrote:Where do you put societies predicated on greatest force? i.e. There is no contract, nationalism, tradition or even leviathan. Ralgor has a staff with a knob on the end, or Fred has has fanatically loyal henchmen and if you don't do what X says, your head explodes.

Such systems are inherently unstable. That's a coup, and it lasts until the perceived strength of the coup is less than those of something else.

Many of the fantasy world are predicated on areas ruled by thousand year coups and such, for which there is no precedent in Earth's history.

-Username17

I think you've got it backward frank, nationalism starts with an arbitrary group of people and they try to get their own blotch on the map. either by ripping chunks out of an existing blotch (sepratists) or by mushing places together,( unificiation movements).

FrankTrollman wrote: Such systems are inherently unstable. That's a coup, and it lasts until the perceived strength of the coup is less than those of something else.

Many of the fantasy world are predicated on areas ruled by thousand year coups and such, for which there is no precedent in Earth's history.

By that definition Imperial Rome was a 300-odd year coup. Power was very much up for the taking, every emperor I can think of was backed by a loyal army, or ceased to be emperor.
Once a coup is successful in replacing (note replacing, not just deposing) a leader, it is no longer a coup.

I think when considering social order, you focus too strongly on modern concepts like nationhood. It's true that in the 12th century, many people didn't feel particularly connected to their nation. However, common culture and common religion did exist, and offered a greater stability than the changing regimes.

Despite the coup d'etats Blasted mentioned, nobody would argue that the Roman empire lacked continuity - because who currently rules doesn't really fundamentally change anything about the society and the social order.

Blasted wrote: By that definition Imperial Rome was a 300-odd year coup. Power was very much up for the taking, every emperor I can think of was backed by a loyal army, or ceased to be emperor.

I think what he meant was that a coup whose victors (and their heirs) go on for a thousand years was unprecedented. And in that context, a much better counterexample is actually the Capetian kings of France. While there are points when it's not "son of the last guy" and is instead "distant cousin of the last guy", there's a succession of kings who follow a recognizable and predictable algorithm of relationship to the last guy all the way from 987 AD to "Jacques de Molai, you are avenged!" That's a pretty impressive span of 800 years; not 1000, but close.

The thing is, the main reason that example springs so easily to mind is because it's extremely unusual in the pre-modern era for kingship to go a long time without being determined by who can stab who more successfully. Sure, the Kings of England have gone a long time being descendents of William the Conqueror, but it would be pretty difficult for anyone to argue with a straight face that Henry IV became king by right of succession.

Imperial Rome couldn't quite get to a hundred years even once until the division of the Empire, and even of the times they came close, one required an extremely generous interpretation of "predicable algorithm of relationship" and the other reduced that algorithm to "whoever the last guy said was next, is next."

It's not completely absurd that a human kingdom could go on for a thousand years in the real world without being interrupted by stabbing. (Someone probably has an example they've already thought of, probably involving Asian history.) It's unlikely and rare, but it's not totally out of the question ... in a world where peasants can't become 30th level wizards. I'd expect things to be much less stable in D&D land.

One exception might be the nonhuman kingdoms. An elven thousand-year Reich could plausibly be just two guys.

Nationalism is one of those weird concepts that once introduced, people start to apply backwards in time to earlier peoples and civilizations. Rome never existed as a nation-state in the same sense as France exists as a nation-state today. Modern countries rely on an artificial kinship bond, created through careful cultivation of belief and concepts. It is not enough, these days, to speak the same language and eat the same foods, to live in the same place and worship the same god. Nationalism is a deliberate evocation of Us versus Them, and there must be a Them or there can be no Us. Nationalists are so dedicated to selling the lie that they turn to anything to support it - why do you think the Nazis put so much effort into archeology? Why do you think Palestine is so desperate for international recognition?

PoliteNewb wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: Social orders have very strong reasons to exist. They allow people to work together to accomplish larger tasks than anyone is individually able to attempt. They allow increased productive efficiency through specialization. And they allow people to have sufficient faith in the future to conduct long term investment. They defend peoples' persons and their investments, making them safer and wealthier. These are incentives so strong that the social order is a strict advantage over the Mad Maxian hellscape of not having one even if you are on the bottom of said social order.

Isn't this belied pretty much every time the bottom of the social order takes up arms and tries to burn down the current establishment? i.e. relatively often?

As Frank noted, in (almost?) none of those cases is someone trying to burn down the current establishment and replace it with anarchy. They're trying to swap one social order for another one (with varying degrees of success).

hogarth wrote:

PoliteNewb wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: Social orders have very strong reasons to exist. They allow people to work together to accomplish larger tasks than anyone is individually able to attempt. They allow increased productive efficiency through specialization. And they allow people to have sufficient faith in the future to conduct long term investment. They defend peoples' persons and their investments, making them safer and wealthier. These are incentives so strong that the social order is a strict advantage over the Mad Maxian hellscape of not having one even if you are on the bottom of said social order.

Isn't this belied pretty much every time the bottom of the social order takes up arms and tries to burn down the current establishment? i.e. relatively often?

As Frank noted, in (almost?) none of those cases is someone trying to burn down the current establishment and replace it with anarchy. They're trying to swap one social order for another one (with varying degrees of success).

But if so, that is still not a situation where being at the bottom is preferable to having none...it's a situation where trying to get to the top is better than being on the bottom (big surprise).

Since you can pretty much always try to set up a new social order with yourself higher up the ladder, isn't this kind of a false dilemma? If you are at the bottom of social order A, you can either go for total anarchy (no social order) or social order B (where you are at the top, or at any rate not so far down). You and Frank may have a point that B is better than nothing, but that does not prove that A is better than nothing.

Blasted wrote:Where do you put societies predicated on greatest force? i.e. There is no contract, nationalism, tradition or even leviathan. Ralgor has a staff with a knob on the end, or Fred has has fanatically loyal henchmen and if you don't do what X says, your head explodes.

Challengers get put down quickly, to avert coups. Society continues, because X says so. It seems to be the dominant structure, not only in fantasy, but history in general. Tyrannies continue because no group is able to bring enough force to bear.

Honestly, even the Leviathan is a social contract. While Frank is correct that social contract philsophy is modern to the past say 300 years, the underlying concept is actually central to all government - which all social contract philsophers including Hobbs found freaking obvious.

The situation you present is a social contract that funcations in pretty much 2 parts.

Part 1: If you do what Ralgor says he won't murder you.
Part 2: Ralgor will protect you from people who are not Ralgor who try and tell you want to do especially if what they tell you to do is contrary to the desires or Ralgor.

Part 1 must be true becuase if you cannot trust that doing what Ralgor wants won't still result in him murdering you most of the time, then all you can do is hope to never encounter Ralgor. Seriously, Ralgor the mad butcher cannot effectively Rule any area beyond his immedaite ability to destroy. Further, Ralgor who cannot be truested to not murder you for following his every whim cannot even do fairly mundane things like "buy food or services" because the people he would do so from flee in terror of him. Of course he can steal these things or even possibly magic them up. However, that takes a lot more effort on a day to day basis than having servants or slaves or even just shopkeeps that willingly meet Ralgor's needs. No matter how many kingdoms Ralgor slaughters he can never have a "great feast" if all the cooks are slaughtered or fleeing. There are fantasyland creatures for whom the lifestyle where they have no humanoid contact and everything hopes to just never encounter them but they are fewer in number than most other things.

Part 2 of the social contract must be true becuase if Ralgor does not prevent others from exercising their every whim of a particular populace then they may not be able to meet his every whim. If Ralgor demands that the people of hamlet give their entire wheat crop to him and they have already given it to the man eating troll lord because said troll lord came and started eating people no amount of slaughtering villagers can get him a winters worth of food. He must prove to the people that not following him is more harmful than being eaten. Further, he must prevent the man eating troll lord from interfering with his own designs. So even if Ralgor's view of other humans is as brutally simple as "they all belong to me" he must protect them from others if he wishes to hold onto them.

This socail contract is pretty terrible but its not so terrible as to be unlivable.

Further, from these rudimentary elements Ralgor has a lot of choices he has to make. For instance, while he might not care if the people sluaghter each other in the streets, if someone is able to cow a signifcant portion of the population they might follow the new murderer instead of Ralgor. Is it easier to wait until they develop some power and reveal themselves or you have guards who just punish murders. Unless you want to rule a land of mindless undead (which some overlords will and for them no social contract exists because you have nothing they want), you have to be somewhat aware of how well crops are performing in your lands. If you want to become a god you need worshipers. Again, this requires that you at least keep your populace alive. This actually is harder than it looks to do alone even with tons of D&D magic. Especially if your plan is to NOT have to PERSONALLY beat up every person who doesn't follow your whim. Indeed the need for vassals, which you can control and defeat, stems from Ralgor's desire to spend his afternoons doing shit he wants and not forcing everybody to bend to his will.

Really Feudalism seem like only possible government of a world in which personal strength is the only aribter of power. Ralgor doesn't have the time to personally subjugate everybody. He must use enforcers. These enforcers defacto have status above the subjugated. Several layers of such enforcers may develop becuase of physical contratains on each level of enforcer.

Even beggining with a permis as simple as "Do what Ralgor says or your head explodes" we get a semi-feudal society excluding the case where Ralgor simply wants to make everybodies head explode. The only thing this society is missing is a way to move beyond the death of Ralgor. This is something not every social contract plans for (See the empire of alexander the great). However, for this simple society the rule would have to be "whoever can make everybody do what they say is the next Ralgor." So really massive civil war that probably overturns the entire enforcer community is the way the society moves past Ralgor.

Honestly, this society doesn't look much different than the middle Roman empire other than the power differential between the Ceasar/Ralgor and the enforcers is considerably larger.

PoliteNewb wrote:Since you can pretty much always try to set up a new social order with yourself higher up the ladder, isn't this kind of a false dilemma?

What dilemma? "Anarchy sucks" is not a dilemma.

The point is: Probably more French commoners were killed, robbed or starved per day during the storming of the Bastille and the Reign of Terror than under the Kings.

hogarth wrote:

PoliteNewb wrote:Since you can pretty much always try to set up a new social order with yourself higher up the ladder, isn't this kind of a false dilemma?

What dilemma? "Anarchy sucks" is not a dilemma.

Does it suck worse than a social order where you are a slave and have no rights? Ask the African-Americans of the old South whether no social order would be preferable to one where they can be raped or beaten at will, and what answer do you think you'd get?

Frank made a fairly controversial statement: a social order where you are at the bottom is better (for YOU) than no social order at all. I want some evidence in defense of that statement, because it doesn't make sense to me. If you are already at the bottom, there is no "down" for things to go for you...you literally have nothing to lose by burning down whatever social order there is, and then trying to build something else. This is especially true if the social order in question has no provisions for advancement within it. If you can never rise above the rank of "gooey dirt", what benefits does abiding by the social order get you? Not dying? You can sometimes get that kind of deal by stabbing everyone you meet in their sleep.

The only circumstance under which this is true is when even the lowest rung of the social ladder is accorded rights and protections by the social order...in that case, you may get a shittier deal than everyone else, but at least you get a deal. But this is not the situation in many social orders, where "the bottom" can get pretty bad.

Anarchy may suck, but there are degrees of suck.

Politenewb wrote:Frank made a fairly controversial statement: a social order where you are at the bottom is better (for YOU) than no social order at all. I want some evidence in defense of that statement, because it doesn't make sense to me

I already provided it. The life expectancy in Palestine is twenty three years longer than the life expectancy in Somalia. 23 years. Yes, they are oppressed, and the government periodically runs one of them over with a bulldozer, and the government reserves the right to kick them out of their homes at any time and give the land to higher class citizens, and all that. But life in an actual Mad Maxian hellscape is objectively worse than that. That wasn't an ass-pull number, that was the real demographic data.

-Username17

Ask the African-Americans of the old South whether no social order would be preferable to one where they can be raped or beaten at will, and what answer do you think you'd get?

Well, in the comparison between their current situation of have the social status of furniture and total anarchy, their preference and what is actually better for them may still provide different answers.
Ignoring that I'm totally justifying Slavery, Anarchy gives you absolutely no guarantees as far as Safety and well-being is concerned and that is bad for everyone.

Wrathzog wrote: Ignoring that I'm totally justifying Slavery, Anarchy gives you absolutely no guarantees as far as Safety and well-being is concerned and that is bad for everyone.

I don't think that it's a justification for slavery, merely mentioning that anarchy maybe even worse. In the same way, waterboarding is not justifiable just because being impaled is a worse form of torture.

Ancient History wrote:Nationalism is one of those weird concepts that once introduced, people start to apply backwards in time to earlier peoples and civilizations. Rome never existed as a nation-state in the same sense as France exists as a nation-state today.

However the concept of being a Roman citizen did exist. It was distinct from the concept of being an Etruscan ruled by the thugs of some guy in Rome.

Consider also China

Exactly what real-estate made up "China" varies, but the general concept of 'the middle kingdom' and the Han culture have existed for for about far back as written history exists. Different groups have ruled China, some of which were not Chinese at all, but the view of their being at least a vague amorphous "China" persisted even when it was divided into numerous kingdoms.

Blasted wrote:I don't think that it's a justification for slavery, merely mentioning that anarchy maybe even worse. In the same way, waterboarding is not justifiable just because being impaled is a worse form of torture.

Well, Yeah, you're right... but some people get all uppity about Slavery.

-e-
Added Quote Tags

Wrathzog wrote:

Ask the African-Americans of the old South whether no social order would be preferable to one where they can be raped or beaten at will, and what answer do you think you'd get?

Well, in the comparison between their current situation of have the social status of furniture and total anarchy, their preference and what is actually better for them may still provide different answers.
Ignoring that I'm totally justifying Slavery, Anarchy gives you absolutely no guarantees as far as Safety and well-being is concerned and that is bad for everyone.

First, agreeing that you are not (per se) justifying slavery.

Second, while anarchy does indeed give you no guarantees about safety and well-being, neither does slavery. And since in an anarchy situation you can totally murder people, whereas in a slavery situation the social order denies you weapons and is going to lynch you for that, how is it preferable?

And finally...there is no difference between what people prefer and what is better for them. Telling people that you know better than they do what's best for them is fine, if the people in question are children. If they are not, it's called paternalism and it's not a good thing. It's taking steps towards actually justifying slavery, since that's what slave-owners did to justify slavery...claim that slaves were better off being owned and taken care of than allowed to "run wild", because they were too stupid/ignorant/savage to know what was best for themselves.

Frank wrote:I already provided it. The life expectancy in Palestine is twenty three years longer than the life expectancy in Somalia. 23 years. Yes, they are oppressed, and the government periodically runs one of them over with a bulldozer, and the government reserves the right to kick them out of their homes at any time and give the land to higher class citizens, and all that. But life in an actual Mad Maxian hellscape is objectively worse than that. That wasn't an ass-pull number, that was the real demographic data.

Bullshit you did. Your "real demographic data" includes exactly 2 data points. If I provided an argument about gun control and showed you Switzerland and Mexico and nothing else, you would call me an idiot and my "data" anecdotal...and you'd be right.

There are social orders where people are worse off than the Palestinians. There are possibly anarchist situations where people are better off than Somalians.
There are certainly more ways to judge whether a situation is better or worse than simply "life expectancy"...if you give me 30 years of good times or 100 years of crap, I know which I'm taking.

You're oversimplifying the hell out of this, for the sole purpose of saying "anarchy sucks, and social order is awesome".

kzt wrote: However the concept of being a Roman citizen did exist. It was distinct from the concept of being an Etruscan ruled by the thugs of some guy in Rome.

I was reading about the Hundred Years' War recently, and one of the things that the author -- I forget who -- called out was that, despite England's winning a number of decisive battles and even capturing the King of France, the devastation wrought on the French countryside by the wars actually wound up making the country more unified. By the end of the war, the French thought of themselves as French, and that attitude made it substantially more difficult for the English to hold onto what they gained through battle.

being a slave =/= being under apartheid

not being a slave =/= being in an anarchy

The preference order goes:

You are king
Free, not apartheided
Free, but apartheided
Slave
Anarchy
Genocide against you

PoliteNewb wrote:There are social orders where people are worse off than the Palestinians. There are possibly anarchist situations where people are better off than Somalians.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb- ... l=en&dl=en

Zimbabwe's recent social order wins a prize for "worse than Somalia".

I'm going to guess that Anarchist Catalonia wins the prize for anarchist society "better than Somalia".