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Comment by anonporridge | Hacker News Reader

The interesting thing is that this is literally how all governments originally emerged.

The strongest local gang establishes a monopoly on violence in their territory. They then extract tribute (taxes) from the local population in various ways. If they get too greedy and extract too much, then eventually the plebs have little enough to lose to break their established order and fight the establishment gang. The most competent gangs find the equilibrium of taxation that is the maximum they can extract without suffocating production and innovation or creating an opposing revolution.

So, in locations where this has happened in modern states, it simply demonstrates that the "official" police and state have failed to manage their monopoly on violence properly, and are being actively out competed by a more effective organization that, if it continues to sustainably control its territory, will eventually become recognized as the new legitimate state.

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The interesting thing is that this is literally how all governments originally emerged.

No - there are also revolutions and secessionist movements. Which already in their formation can be better thought of as mini-governments than "gangs" per se.

The basic problem with the idea of saying "it all started from gang rule" is that it brings to mind an image of criminal networks that just happened to fall into government-like activities (e.g. muscling out other gangs, running basic services) as a way of staying in business. Certainly true in some cases, but in most cases ... not a particularly meaningful description.

Our history books tend to glorify ancient gangs and call them things like "nobles" and "royalty". But if you look beneath the veneer, they were gangs very much like the street gangs and crime organizations we have now.

History is written by the victors.

Actually it's written by anthropologists. If you look at how our species came to self-organize, there has always been a strong component of innate, voluntary cooperation (and of course violent subjugation as well). It's a mixed bag for sure, but I just think your characterization is way too oversimplified -- and it probably wouldn't get too far you tried to pass it by people who have devoted their lives to studying these things.

Who pays the anthropologists? And what cultural biases do they infuse in their work?

Modern gangs also sometimes organize via voluntary cooperation. Their ability to commit violence and control their territory is merely the foundation of their legitimacy in any non violent agreement. Same foundation as all "official" governments.

Who pays the anthropologists?

Yeah I guess they're all just paid shills, and have no idea of what they're talking about.

I think the poster above is suggesting something much more nuanced than that. I think they're trying to say that the anthropologists do know what they research, to the best of their abilities. However, I think they're suggesting that anthropology projects are less likely to get funding if the likely reported results would heavily suggest theories that are ultimately critical of whichever seated establishment funded them in the first place.

Think about it this way - would you be willing to pay me 5% of your pay for this month to have me generate a report of your productivity, if you already knew I was highly likely to send a result that suggests your boss might want to fire you? If you were expected to pay me to do such a report for some reason, I think you'd prefer to pay me to report on someone else's productivity instead.

I don't think it was that nuanced, actually.

Basically it came down to an attempt at FUD: "Everyone is biased, you can't really trust anyone, therefore I don't need to acknowledge of any of the substantive points you are making."

Misdirection, in other words.

Agreed with one addendum, the missing phrase: "I am objectively right."

I'm trying to imagine a good counterargument to anonporridge's actual stated position. If they're fundamentally wrong about violence as the legitimizing factor of authority, then there has to be some more important/more powerful legitimizing factor. Something that trumps violence without using violence or the threat of it.

What works in the place of violence? Escape? Maybe you can have a diaspora society willing to run away and rebuild in any territory it can ever reach and live in. Nullifying defense? Say you have some kind of structure or device that makes you invincible without fighting back and all violence against you is a pointless waste of energy. Then you could just be, and voluntarily agree to some social contract you never use violence to uphold. Love? Maybe all violence could hypothetically be stopped if the violent person's emotions could be negotiated with to circumvent their desires and everyone ends up happy. These all seem totally utopian to depend on 100% purely at a societal level, but these are all nonviolent approaches I know people take to resist violence on a practical 1 to 1 level.

The problem I see in anonporridge's argumentation is that it seems to ignore the question of legitimacy. Using terms like "gangs' implies criminality, right? (not native English speaker, correct me if I am wrong). Not all violence is criminal. Not all violence is perceived as illegitimate. There are scenarios of monopoly on violence I would certainly not label as 'gangs' - obeying the pharaoh because he is believed to be a God, respecting the leader of the tribe because he is the most experienced hunter who can use his knowledge and physical strength to provide food for the tribe...

I think that's a worthwhile concern too. How do we know the current authority is legitimate/illegitimate? What if the pharoah is really not a god but behaving more like a devil? What if the most experienced hunter is stuck in his ways and pushes aside new, innovative methods that are absolutely needed to help the tribe? Their perceived legitimacy is bottlenecked by their efficacy - and the efficacy of a leader seems to be some combination of peaceful trust and violent control.

> How do we know the current authority is legitimate/illegitimate?

That is a very good question and I do not have a good answer. Maybe subjectively... that legitimate power is perceived as justified. I grew up in a communist regime and had the opportunity to experience the difference between obeying rules because you are afraid not to vs obeying rules because they are at least somewhat correlated to what the majority considers to be good. Sure, even in democracy you obey some rules just because you are afraid not to, but you also understand that you live in an imperfect world that is not centered around you and you can accept some level of power you don't perceive as justified as long as it is about something like zoning rules and not your fundamental freedoms.

But it seems highly subjective... maybe if I grew up in ancient Egypt I would believe that the pharaoh has the right do whatever he pleases and who am I to judge whether it is evil or not.

I personally believe in something like the "Divine Right of Kings" or the "Mandate of Heaven". So basically I think the current ruler of a locale, even a drug cartel in its territory considered criminal by a larger government, is on some level be it great or small, the legitimate authority for that time because of providence, and their legitimacy can be fortified by the leader's justice or weakened by a lack thereof. How they treat people irrespective of what the local policy is is one important aspect of justice, and this is why I think democracy can feel like you describe, because the system was at least set up with the intention of serving a majority of the people (gerrymandering not withstanding). Compare that to 20th century attempts to implement communism which claims to enact another aspect of justice (striving for equality for the worker; fairness), and in practice created a system where the state ruled with an unjust level of fear. With those in light I can understand why different people would espouse these systems of government. It's complicated, it's wrapped up in current ideological battles, but I think these philosophical quandries point beyond our millieu, to meanings and maxims that can help us become better people.

This is right.

Everyone is a slave to their incentives. You have to weed through multiple narratives of different perspectives if you want a chance of piecing together "the truth", whatever that actually means.

I get it; you want to avoid circularity. Unfortunately there's always going to be some in our conjectures, because we're all humans almost always trying to justify some set of implementations of human societies because we like the incentivized benefits of collective organization. People reach for something they think is truer than their own context to guide them. For vanusa, that's the value of knowledge, developed in academic institutions. I don't blame them for that.

I think "the truth" means what brings us simultaneously to the greatest understanding, peace, respect for existence and consciousness, freedom from misery, and victory over cruelty. Anything that, over the long run, takes these away in greater amounts than it gives them back is a falsehood. If truth is not this thing, then why ought we seek it in the first place? I think that's how we can all be less of a slave to our incentives (except the incentive for the truth), even if they are to spread FUD and assert our own objective correctness :>

What you're saying applies to some modern and historical states, but not all. Would you consider the IRA in the early 1900s to be nothing more than a gang looking to control territory? Or were they an independence movement? What about the Continental Congress? What about the Viet Cong? The former two led to a democracy and the latter to an authoritarian dictatorship; all engaged in violence; but none was a gang whose primary motivation was to gain personal wealth by criminal activity. The IRA would be the closest to a "gang" but even there, the state they produced renounced violence.

> The former two led to a democracy

The Continental Congress did not lead a democracy, any more than the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States does.

Led to, not led.

Victors don't necessarily write the history, but they greatly influence what part of history survives and how it is presented to the general public.

Trying to get rid other cultures herritage is quite a common activity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_heritage

History classes in primary and secondary school are often extremely light on any criticism of the own nations past if mentioned at all. In my own case in Switzerland, some things we were taught were outright lies, fabricated by a historian from Zürich almost a century earlier to promote patriotism. The European colonial period is another thing that got completely misrepresented for example.

That innate voluntary cooperation stops at the tribe level. Further you need organized violence and focused indoctrination.

Apropos, I read some anthropology for my PhD, it became quite common to call the German nobility of the Middle Ages warlords, to stress the commonality between today's criminal regimes.

...and before those proto-gangs, you had extend families acting as a power structure. (and many places still have them, competing against gangs/state/corporations, with a noticeable organisation efficiency cost from murky loyalties)

"They then extract tribute (taxes) from the local population in various ways."

And in modern observations, if they emerged out of drug dealing, there's even the possibility (though that's certainly not a given) that they never diversify into tribute/protection, while still providing order.

It would be the exact same thing as the "we done do drugs!" ethics portrayed in The Goodfather, only reversed. I wouldn't even consider that all too unlikely, because violent gangsters want to consider themselves as the good guys just like everyone else, and adhering to a code that rules out some forms of unethical behavior goes a long way for that.

I read somewhere that governments rose from theater troupes

The current Ukrainian government arose from a bunch of clowns and jokers!

This is very true and it paints a dim view on the XXI century- we are going to be ruled by thugs and gangsters because we “vote” them in, until it’s too late.

Democracy only works well if serving the people and giving them a strong voice and control accrues more power to the state than alternative forms of governance.

If the people, or more specifically the democratic majority, end up becoming more extractive than they are productive towards enhancing their state's power, then eventually some alternative organizing governance structure will emerge that accumulates power more effectively.

This isn't making an ethical judgement about one system or another, just an observation on what appears to be base level reality.

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