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Comment by pwthornton | Hacker News Reader

This is not uncommon behavior from groups like this or even the old Italian mob in the U.S. Doing humanitarian things like this with the locals helps buy you support and protection. Hamas has done this for years (including schools and healthcare), which helped buy it good will and even win elections.

A lot of times these groups are doing more for local populations in terms of making sure they have food and basic necessities than the government. Usually when this is happening, it's a pretty strong indictment of the official government.

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The line between organized crime and government can be surprisingly thin. I actually don't intend this as a criticism of government; I intend it as an interesting question to muse over. I believe it has good answers, but the question is richer than you might initially think.

(For instance, you might be inclined to try drawing a simple line between the two based on "the consent of the governed". Which is all fine and dandy at a social scale, but what does that mean to you as an individual? Have you tried removing your consent from your local government? The question is not as easy as it may look at first. Even as, again, I want to emphasize that I think it can be answered reasonably; just not easily.)

Which organization would you use as an example for which it's not clear whether they are 'organized crime' or a 'government'?

While I wasn't thinking of a particular case, ISIS is certainly an instance of trying to cross the line.

(Which I suppose also further underlines the point I want to emphasize about how I'm trying to promote a food-for-thought question, not a value judgment. Personally I find ISIS contemptible as an organized crime mob, and I find them contemptible as a government. I have no plans to change my opinions based on which side of the line they fall on. Which one are they on, though? Honestly the answer probably varies by region at this point. You can make a case that Westphalian-style countries are dead in the Middle East, and a stronger case that they are at least trending down. Whether that trend will be permanent is anyone's guess.)

warlords in the DRC vs local government in the DRC.

except for outside recognition of legitimacy, the line can be thin.

(and it is, since people jump from one to another easily)

Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hamas before they were elected.

This largely comes down to the state being primarily defined as a monopoly of force. When non-state actors end up wielding the most threat of force, then collective decision-making is effectively deferred to those most capable of enforcing its will.

This is why I cannot give much credibility to anarcho-capitalist states. Simply removing a visible state does not preclude shadow governments from forming.

> This is why I cannot give much credibility to anarcho-capitalist states. Simply removing a visible state does not preclude shadow governments from forming.

If a government is formed, shadow or not, wouldn't that necessitate removal of the "anarcho" qualifier?

In a similar vein, it seems to me that the term "anarcho-anything state" is logically inconsistent, unless one exclusively uses the "chaos; disorder" definition for "anarcho-" instead of the "without rulers" definition.

I've mused over the same thing. A conclusion I have is that the only real difference is their perceived legitimacy. If we call one a state and another gang, we are really attaching legitimacy values to them.

Absolutely. There are only benefits in acquiring the support from the local population, specially when people feel "neglected" by their current official government. This happens a lot in Brazilian poorest locations, where drug dealing gangs mix violence with "community support", creating a combination of fear and "acceptance" in the locals, getting them not only to not help the police, but also to "accept" their relatives getting into crime, as if it wasn't "completely wrong". There is also special behavior targeted at children, in order to drag them to crime later (or as soon as possible).

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