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Interesting to combine this line of thinking with the transition from nation-states to market-states:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1744057060106386...

The power vacuum that's arisen from populism & isolationism is about to create a gigantic untapped market for firms that provide the services of a state - defense, dispute resolution, and currency - for a fee, to gigantic multinational corporations. At the same time, there are nascent technologies (drones and robotics for defense, blockchain and the Internet for dispute resolution & currency) that dramatically lower the cost of many of these services, to the point where we may see private companies that are more effective than nation-states at it. Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?

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> Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, explores this possible future. Great book.

I think Snowcrash is intentionally campy and satirical?

At any rate I don't think what science fiction writers do is "exploring possible futures" so much as "telling lies for fun and profit" as one author entitled his fiction writing craft book.

Exploring possible futures is exactly what sf writers do as is telling lies for fun and profit. Predicting possible futures is not part of their job description, though sometimes it seems that way.

What the science fiction writers explores doesn't have to be possible futures, it can be impossible ones. And some science fiction, like Stranger Things, is set in the past.

In fact it's been a while since I read Snowcrash but it's set implausibly close to when it was written in 1992. This is presumably intentional.

"Intentionally campy and satirical" and "chillingly predictive" are not mutually exclusive. The movie Idiocracy has probably become the canonical example in that space.

In any case, speculative fiction is usually more about the present than it is about the future. The original Star Trek, for instance, dealt quite a bit with the racial politics of the 1960s, even though it was set in the 2260s. The hypercapitalism in Snow Crash (and other cyberpunk works around that time) reflected the trend of American society in the 1980s and 90s. It was less "telling lies" and more logical extrapolation of the existing trend, which hasn't really been arrested since, either.

It's "telling lies" in the sense that I wouldn't expect the author to think that the plot of the book, or anything like it, is a logical extrapolation of existing trends.

Could hyper corporatization of America continue? Sure. Might the author be commenting on present trends? Absolutely.

Does the book's author actually believe the mafia might hire street samurai to do pizza deliveries? Probably not.

The takeover of government functions by multinational corporations is a cyberpunk trope. See any of William Gibson's fiction from the early 80s.

Yes it's a cyberpunk trope, but it's also based in history. Wealthy nobles of Rome and Medieval times were landowners and, to put it bluntly, warmongers... using armies to make profit by war. They were nothing if not the corporate warlords of their times, holding shares in agriculture, land ownership and armies. Collecting shares of their workers (commonly referred to as share cropping), much like taxation. If that isn't some form of pseudo governmental function, I'm not sure what is =/

Does that make it any less likely?

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/may/12/industry-...

> For the 81 states for which estimates were available, private security workers appear to outnumber police forces in 44 countries – with a combined population of roughly 4 billion people – or more than half of the world’s total of 7.5 billion.

There's a bit of a difference between a world in which it's common for rich people and big buildings to employ security guards (as it has been for most of history) and Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong...

WALL-E: entry-level cyberpunk?

One thing about WALL-E that bothers me is: this was a civilization that mastered interstellar travel, to the point where it was trivial enough for vacations. They seriously couldn’t come up with a better plan than burning all the trash? Just send it to the sun lol

We're a civilization that has mastered sea travel. It would take a massive, and likely, impossible, effort to move all our trash into the ocean.

I imagine that same would be true of trying to move trash to the sun.

Fun fact, it takes more fuel to send a mass to the Sun than it does to send it to Pluto[0].

[0] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/its-surprisingly-h...

Red Mars doesn't go quite as far, but does look at a world in which multinational corporations are competitive with countries in terms of global power.

In many[1] of those countries, private security workers do not have the power of pit, gallows, judicial, or extrajudicial execution. The police, on the other hand, do [2].

[1] Yes, there are parts of the world where the local mining firm's private security will happily intimidate, beat, and murder problem people. It's generally the exception, rather than the rule. Your local mall cop can't do that to you, and is generally held to a far higher standard of conduct and legal accountability than the police.

[2] Yes, if you squint a bunch, stuff like forced arbitration encroaches on the space occupied by the legal system, but it is ultimately subservient to it.

> Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?

How do you envision the deprecation of the nuclear-armed nation state unfolding? The USSR had a unipolar world outside to stabilize and manage its disintegration. How is this accomplished in a multipolar context, with tensions inflamed by intensifying scarcity, competition, environmental instability, etc?

Serious questions, not a derogatory comment

I'm not too worried about loose nukes or nuclear terrorism. Every major nuclear power other than China incorporates PALs [1] into the design of their nuclear weapons. Without a centrally generated & authenticated code, they don't function. The PAL is designed such that disabling it requires dismantling the nuclear weapon, which means you need to have the know-how to build nukes in the first place to re-enable it.

This, incidentally, is why Ukraine gave Russia back its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union. Without the codes in Moscow's possession they were just radioactive waste.

I do expect a number of smaller conventional conflicts to break out in the transition, because that's what always happens when a hegemon loses its monopoly on physical force. It's going to be a bloody few decades, but not the end of humanity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link

A PAL system can be just a combination lock. The people who gain access to the weapons themselves might also gain access to the codes and components necessary to arm them.

Who's to say there is a pot of gold at the end of those bloody few decades, with the climate crisis ramping up and natural resources dwindling. We certainly willed the prosperity after the Second World War into existence, by getting better at cannibalizing our natural resources, unsustainably. I would expect the cannibalization of what's left to continue, with pockets of the world doing better for a while, the rest doing worst. I would also expect these pockets to increasingly not be able to share the benefits of innovation with the rest of the world.

Given that Chernobyl is located inside the Ukrainian border, “its nuclear waste” doesn’t seem like that good of an argument as to why they should have gotten rid of them, given recent events.

I would imagine that this would first manifest itself in smaller countries. For example Mali employs the Wagner group out of Russia as a supplement for its Army. And I believe they are used by other countries as well.

I don't see nuclear-armed nations using private companies, but possibly being the source of troops and technology. Really I don't see U.S. citizens joining mercenary groups, quality of life is too good. I would imagine 2nd world nations like Russia, Iraq being the main source of these troops, backed by cheap advanced armaments from China.

US mercenaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company)

One issue with mercenaries is that they're not subject to military laws and will be hang if captured. Like it happens with few american citizens captured in Ukraine by DNR.

> Like it happens with few american citizens captured in Ukraine by DNR.

The American and UK citizens captured by Russia and it's proxies have been regular Ukrainian soldiers subject to military law and protected by the Geneva Convention, but that doesn't matter because Russia and their proxies are ignoring international law (and not just where it comes to treatment of prisoners.)

Better known as "private security firms". High risk. Great pay. Two-fingers up to the volunteers \ vets.

I always assumed the mercenaries were mixed with volunteers into Ukraine's foreign legion.

> I don't see nuclear-armed nations using private companies

Russia is using Wagner Group in Ukraine. Does that count as a private company?

USA are pretty good at using private firms for the contract work outside of their borders.

Sure it does. The Russian government is paying Wagner members and leadership on a contract basis.

Is your argument is the fact that Wagner operations seem to be closely tied to the whims and wishes of the Russian government? Thats true for all Russian companies. Gazprom is exactly the same.

Yep, Wagner is basically the Blackwater of Russia. We taught them well.

The USA has nukes and employs military contractors.

It's not just the multipolarity you have to consider. I actually think that's fairly resolvable for something like loose nukes as basically every stable power has an interest in catch-alls for such things.

But the U.S. the EU and China are all facing internal shifts in thinking about how they relate to the rest of the world. And that's a true wildcard.

Those swings, coupled with multipolarity create a very dynamic system that I think is impossible to predict. When a country may stick its thumb in the eye of international treaty simply because it satisfies a belligerent domestic constituency and that alienates a relatively equal strength power, that's a very volatile situation.

there's no reason that things need to unfold such that a nuclear armed state exists one day and then doesn't the next.

It could easily evolve from regulatory capture, increased influence of large corporations in governance, capture of public discourse by corporate sponsored narratives, and eventual de-facto private control of government. You'd end up with a nation with a nuclear force exists on paper but in fact the corporate interests were in control of that entity.

In fact, of the preceding 5 conditions I would say 4 are already either done or in progress.

Which condition do you figure is the weakest link?

May i recommend Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong?

I'm sorry, but Uncle Enzo and I go way back, and I couldn't do that to him -- not after I already promised him I'd go to the job fair coming up.

If you disappoint him, could you deliver at least this one pizza under 30 minutes to this enclave down the road?

no, but i have a young friend who could probably help you out.

Just nother goon with a harpoon.. yours truly

Ack, I saw this comment thread after I posted about Snow Crash!

yeah but you get a huff of freon with every order

Almost worth it to be able to see a Rat Thing in action. Very briefly.

People always complain about how inhumane it is to create those things.

Nobody ever asks the Rat Things how they feel about it.

Apparently the rat things are down with it. It's all puppy dog heaven until they have to go into action, and they like that as well.

One of my favorite scenes in the story.

IRL I've heard people criticize using dogs as weapons of war with the specific criticism "Do you think the dog actually likes jumping out of a plane?"

And my immediate answer is "There's plenty of valid criticism you can levy at that use case, but this ain't it. Because the answer is 'yes.' Lots of dogs do. The ones that don't, wash out of military dog training. By-and-large, a dog's default is to go with the pack, so if its handler is chill with the jump so's the dog."

Dogs aren't human beings and don't experience the world like human beings. The empathy circuitry they engage so effectively in us can make us forget that sometimes.

The modern Westphalian nation-state may just be an accident of history, eventually replaced by other mechanisms.

Arguably it already has begun; tech monopolies are starting to provide "government-like" rules and enforcement.

It is a stretch to call enforcing terms of service “government-like” rules and enforcement. This is like calling a restaurant hanging up a “no shirt, no shoes, no service” sign the same. And thus far I haven’t seen them issue fines or imprisonment over breaking their rules.

What happens when the terms of service change in real time? When you try to contact someone and you're met with a void? When your livelihood is tied to a platform that decides to shut down? When an algorithm determines you're a threat or you're not allowed to cross a boarder?

Tech is integrating itself into daily life every day, for better and for worse. Leaders in the space need to slow down and realize the havoc they wreck when they "move fast and break things."

As someone on HN you're likely privy to how to navigate these waters. Everyday people are buying into whatever they're being sold (because why wouldn't they when they've basically got no viable alternatives) from tech and then being left empty handed when the VCs and leaders get their payouts and move on to what ever shiny object they spot on the horizon.

If you or your family and friends haven't been on the receiving end of fines or imprisonment due to technology consider yourself lucky and diversify your community.

I’m interested in examples of where breaking a company’s rules has led to fines or imprisonment—particularly ones _enforced_ by the tech monopoly—that didn’t also involve breaking laws. Not talking about the flaws in technology (your example of misidentification for instance). You may just be making a separate point, but my response was in regards to the sentiment of its parent.

Your other comments I agree with, but the root cause isn’t government-like rules and enforcement; but rather government-like services being owned by broadly unregulated private entities.

The closest at this time would be PayPal freezing/seizing accounts that are "in violation of the terms and conditions" - there are various stories around it.

A government is more than just the entity that can fine/imprison you.

Right, they can. Undoubtedly kicking someone off a private platform can cause them harm, sometimes significant harm. We agree there.

Where I disagree is the term goverment-like enforcement implies more than de-platforming. Seizing assets is closer, but banks and apartments and landlords have seized assets for hundreds (thousands?) of years. It would also be a stretch to call rules and enforcements of those rules by banks, apartments, and landlords government-like. These tech monopoly rules and enforcement don’t seem outside the norm for a private entity.

I don’t disagree that the scale of the companies present problems that need to be addressed. But businesses having rules and enforcing them are not problems alone.

It’s a continuum though. The restaurant example is limited scope and limited enforcement. Compare it instead to a school/university which does enforce code of conducts etc and suspends students. Similar with housing organisations.

And you already have it happening to businesses; companies such as payment processors effectively wield life/death decisions over many types of businesses, for better or for worse.

Can Google or PayPal legally kill you? No, but there are many other types of punishment in the world than imprisonment or death.

Feudalism, here we go

It's worth noting that feudalism was stable for much longer than western style democracy has been so far.

Any of this could easily be wrong and I'm by no means an historian or political theorist but I'm in the middle of a book called Absolutism and its Discontents and it's made me a little hesitant to draw too many parallels between medieval feudalism and modern/future corporate serfdom

Feudal Europe, as I understand, was stabilized by the material independence of agrarian enclaves from one another, as well as an absence (in the wretched majority at least) of any conception of politics or a state or secular power over and above the will of the king or the local nobility, with the latter much more relevant to most people

Although there seems to be much controversy among historians I have the impression many agree that the simultaneous (and often antipathetic) rise of absolutism and markets created the series of crises which brought the end of feudalism, and although absolutism is mostly gone, markets are now ubiquitous

Even if supply chains and communications networks fragment I'm not sure the feudalism of old bears much on the modern day unless we lose nearly all the technology developed in the last 500 years

I don't think that's worth noting at all. After all, we could also say the same about hunter gatherer communities, the Assyrian empire, the Egyptian empire, the Roman empire, etc...

But anyway, way things are going libertarians and conservatives will get their dreamt feudalism.

"which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?"

Governments have the monopoly on sanctioned use of violence. They could choose to outsource that to a 3rd party, such as privateers.

The discussion is about governments losing that monopoly.

It is true that one plausible mechanism of that transition is outsourcing. Let a mercenary outfit become too competent and your vendor can become your rival.

Don't forget aspiring politicians.[0] They also hire hit squads with the intent on sanctioning its use once they're in charge (presumably).

[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57762246

This is basically the premise of Metal Gear Solid 4.

RoboCop, too.

As well as Borderlands!

Interesting idea, but where might the physical boundaries of such a entity be? Since we are physical beings… would the corporations buy land to live on? Would we be all just living this in a virtual world? Would we be on a gigantic spaceship?

Gated communities, like Brazil

Sounds like the analog version of what you're describing would be (IMO) the East Indian Trading Company.

That's all government has ever been and will always be: a protection racket.

> That's all government has ever been and will always be: a protection racket.

Eh, no.

I think it's usually an indication of sloppy thinking when someone makes sweepingly absolute statements about vague, abstract concepts with numerous and important differences in implementation.

Let's hope it's not an indication of sloppy thinking in this case!

In the European tradition, the number 1 thing government protects is private property. There's a reason that deeds are recorded with the county amd that you must pay tax on real estate and that these are fundamental things local government does in even in the most backwater province where they may not even have a library system.

>> That's all government has ever been and will always be: a protection racket.

> In the European tradition, the number 1 thing government protects is private property. There's a reason that deeds are recorded with the county amd that you must pay tax on real estate and that these are fundamental things local government does in even in the most backwater province where they may not even have a library system.

Most (but not all) people who make sweeping statements like the GP's are ideological capitalists, but capitalism fails without the government record-keeping and enforcement systems you bring up:

https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Triumphs-E...

I will definitely give this a read. This is an idea I happened upon and have developed informally so it will be very interesting to read someone who has codified it a bit.

It's interesting to me that casual civics and history instruction spends so much time on the bill of rights, democracy, etc and yet the system of "private property" which to my eye appears even more fundamental than our constitution to how things work in our society is taken for granted.

> a protection racket.

A racket implies they're 'protecting' you from themselves. I don't think that's true.

If protection isn't important to you, you can give Somalia a try.

Have you tried not paying taxes?

Somalia has a government.

In the same way that North Korea is the "Democratic People's" Republic of Korea.

Or Democratic Republic of the Congo. Only “Congo” is accurate.

On paper, not in practice

The "Stateless" period of Somalia ended over 15 years ago - even there were various authorities that acted as a de-facto government of certain parts of it.

Unlike most of HN I'm not an expert on modern Somalian politics - could you describe more about how Somalias current central government only exists on paper?

But in a "no-government world" protection racket will still exist, just without any restrictions at all.

Protection against rampaging business people, warlords, and run of the mill monsters.

It's not a racket when it's consistently better than the alternative.

you're saying the quiet part out loud... it's supposed to be the arbiter of civil rights, fairness, and enablement, with the convenient side effect of enriching a very small group of people who actually pull the strings

>it's supposed to be the arbiter of civil rights, fairness, and enablement, with the convenient side effect of enriching a very small group of people who actually pull the strings

so the ends justify the means? Even the premise is wrong

Name a system that doesn't enrich a small group of people when actually implemented in real life. So yeah you pick the least bad of the options you have.

edit: That also includes being stable against competing systems. A utopia that is conquered in 5 minutes and replaced with a dystopia is not a utopia.

Imo let's be real, drop the pretension. I'd rather we get off the notion that these things are possible. I.e. we are ruled by smart people (aristocracy), that enrich themselves, but that are smart and have skin in the game. Rather than dumb (and impressionable) collective deciding in a popularity contest, probably _extremely_ influenced by a 3rd party (media), pretending it's fulfilling its duty, while it's actually falling in some 'cool' 'wolf's' song, that only accomplishes short term gains, while mortgaging our future.

Just drop the pretension.

Edit: maybe I'm schizo-ranting, but in my opinion, this is a very sober/hyperconscious perspective, that should be had by everyone. Not this Plato's Cave bs, that we live in a 'free democracy' where nobody questions status quo, except a minority of right-left non-npc people.

That's like Brazil but for the whole world?

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