Comment by exratione | Hacker News Reader

Comment by exratione | Hacker News Reader

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If I'm reading the thesis correctly the modern state top to bottom monopoly on mechanisms of enforcement of common law is a consequence of population growth as it applies to two things, (1) crowd control and (2) attitudes towards methods of crowd control.

But there seem to be holes. Unruly armies of tens of thousands have existed since antiquity as insurrections, unrest due to demands for change, and borderline rebellions. The ruling classes of the Roman empire had to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis. The size of the mob is not a new thing.

I think the change between old and new enforcement of common law has a lot more to do with technology, specifically the development of firearms and their ability to enable a small armed group to defeat a large unarmed group. That changed the whole nature of insurrection and civil disorder. You'll see that the advent of the police came right around the time at which firearms moved beyond the crude, slow weapons of the Napoleonic era. I don't think that is a coincidence.

You raise a good point about Rome. The patron/client model seemed to keep the social peace for quite a while. Not unlike the social welfare system that is described in the article. Additionally, I think the development of firearms and cheap/easy to use weapons actually had the opposite effect that you propose.

Specifically, the development of firearms led to a profound expansion of the democratization of violence. This is the meaning of the quote, "God made Man but Sam Colt made them equal."

Indeed, it wasn't the high technology that was important but how that technology reduced the need to invest our only truly scarce resource, time, in order to kill.

Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a sword (or more commonly a spear).

Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a sword (or more commonly a spear).

I guess I understand this sentiment, but as someone who has shot many rounds, many arrows, and also played kendo for years, it just seems wrong. Guns are more powerful than the other weapons, but that extra power doesn't mean one can't shoot and miss. (It also doesn't mean one can't intend not to harm oneself or others, and then fail in that intention, but if you don't own or use firearms you don't need to worry about that.)

If you have a gun, you can kill on a whim. If you're skilled with a gun, you can kill on a whim, reliably. It is just like a bow and arrows, in that respect.

If you have a melee weapon, you can kill if you really mean to do so. If you're skilled with a melee weapon, you can kill if you really mean to do so, reliably.

The real power is in how easy it is to 'activate' the weapon.

A gun requires, what, a few dozen PSI on a trigger that most anyone can activate and the power you get out of it is the same regardless of who (or what) activated the trigger.

A bow and arrow requires some knowledge about how to use it and enough strength and coordination to fire it. Same with a sword, except you also have to be within feet of the target.

One other thing to factor in is the development of low maintenance firearms. That required the development of smokeless powder in the end of the 19th Century and "non-corrosive" primers in the 20th Century, although per Wikipedia it appears that mercury fulminate is non-corrosive but not as shelf/environmentally stable as the corrosive compounds.

Non-corrosive primers were state of the art in 1911 when the Swiss adopted them in their service ammo, but widespread adoption in the US was probably post-WWII. (The Soviets addressed this by among other measures chroming the important surfaces of the AK-47.)

So nowadays, unless you're using old surplus ammo, likely for a rifle, a gun is going to stay functional for many shots with little or no maintenance (like 100s). Thereby providing a lower threshold for the discipline required to employ one.

In the middle ages, peasant rebellions were dealt with by massacring the insurgents. The problem was that assembling a force to deal with a group could take a while, during which the poor had the run of the town. Smaller armed groups could also roam the countryside, and getting a force to hunt them down took long enough that they would be gone by the time it was assembled.

With an organized, professional force, you almost always have enough men on hand to deal with disturbances small and large. Part of the promise of a modern police force is that however well-armed you are, you can't win in the end: they'll always be able to call more reinforcement.

One funny thing is that you now have a bunch of idle police officers, who don't really have anything useful to do from day to day. So you use them to harass poor people, because, hey, why not?

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