People tired of having to pay handouts, now trying to do something about it.

[Watchman]

Society gives wealth? And how is that? People earn wealth from individual people due to work - society as you define it is a fiction.

Let's see them do that without the framework of society around them.

Doesn't work all that well in the sample cases I know of, unless drug kings and petty warlords count.

Centralization is certainly not the answer, it always leads to inefficiency and bloated bureacracy.

Like when it sidelined feudalism and laid the foundations of modern nation-states perhaps ? Or when it is used to eliminate redunant, parallel and overlapping structures in favour of more rationalized ones ? How would you like two-three different police organizations in your neck of the woods, sir ?

[Adrian II]

Let's see them do that without the framework of society around them.

Doesn't work all that well in the sample cases I know of, unless drug kings and petty warlords count.

How right you are. And even drug kings and warlords eat sandwiches, drive on highways and go to the movies. Drug kings in particular need the framework of the law and all sorts of other public institutions in order to find enough paying clients to thrive on.

[Watchman]

I'm pretty sure the poppy-shipping Afghani warlords for example would disagree. The lucrativeness of drug trade rests chiefly on the insane mark-up that stacks along the way due to all the middlemen and proscriptive legislation in the countries where the end-users are.

The druglords themselves seem to rather prefer dysfunctional societies.

[Del Arroyo]

In the case of drug lords, if we didn't have a justice system and rule of law based on liberal ideals, government death squads would just kill them all.

[Watchman]

That seems to be rather manifestly failing to happen.

You seem to be missing the point. In the absence of proper society and governement, the warlords - gang bosses, drug kings, robber barons, whatever - and similar nigh invariably unpleasant strongmen become it by default. Which doesn't really do much good for anyone, themselves included when you really think about it.

This is pretty much the gist of the barb I originally tossed at Rabbit, who once again seemed to forget how exactly societies and their inhabitants relate to each other.

[Adrian II]

In the case of drug lords, if we didn't have a justice system and rule of law based on liberal ideals, government death squads would just kill them all.

Without a justice system and rule of law, government death squads would become drug kings and warlords in no time. Of course some of them already are, but at least they don't rule the country.

Funny how some people pretend to forget what society is, what it means to them and what it does for them as soon as they have to fulfill their obligations to it. But as soon as they need the fire brigade because their home is on fire, you don't hear them complain at all. They expect a fireman to risk his life for theirs because that's what firemen are paid for. Yeah right.

It is as if they lived in a vacuum. Well, I suppose they do live in a vacuum of sorts: a moral vacuum.

[Watchman]

Everyone would like a handout, no ?

[Adrian II]

Everyone would like a handout, no ?

You mean a copout.

[Del Arroyo]

Without a justice system and rule of law, government death squads would become drug kings and warlords in no time.

Not necessarily. If you had a strong central government which was opposed to drugs, like Afganistan under the Taliban to name one, drug gangs would be severely hampered.

And if you suspend normal due process, like Honduras did recently with MS-13 gang members, it is fairly easy to identify and eliminate organized gang structures, as long as you have popular support.

And as a note to Watchman-- drug lords in Afganistan DO depend on wealthy societies in the West for their livelihood, because without those paying customers, there would still be no market and no mark-up for their drugs.

[Samurai Waki]

If I remember correctly, when Mao took over in China, he took all of the drug addicts and dealers, lined them up on shot them. This of course happened systematically throughout the country by his decree. Since that time, Drug trade has been a very non-issue in China.

Now, of course I'm not advocating that we do the same. Not at all as a matter of fact. But I'm just saying, it does have its deleterious effects.

[Watchman]

Not necessarily. If you had a strong central government which was opposed to drugs, like Afganistan under the Taliban to name one, drug gangs would be severely hampered.

Did you miss the point about warlords in general ? The Taliban just happened to be of the religious wonk variety with issues about narcotics, who for a while were able to gain hegemony over much of the place. They certainly weren't even close to a "strong central governement"; they ascendancy was ultimately largely the result of the assorted local bosses' opportunism and their ability to in general terms bribe the bastards, and when the wind changed the minor warlords quite cheerfully jumped ship again and are now happily back to poppy farming.

And if you suspend normal due process, like Honduras did recently with MS-13 gang members, it is fairly easy to identify and eliminate organized gang structures, as long as you have popular support.

...until they adapt. Outright police states (meaning well-run ones here à la DDR) are about the only societies largely unviable for crime, but then that tends to be mainly because the authorities essentially have a monopoly and the means to enforce it.

And as a note to Watchman-- drug lords in Afganistan DO depend on wealthy societies in the West for their livelihood, because without those paying customers, there would still be no market and no mark-up for their drugs.

I said that already, didn't I ? But worry you not, if it comes down to the classic postapocalyptic Mad Max scenario you'll have a vast supply of petty strognmen and warlords extracting food and such from the peasant farmers. That, after all, is the rock bottom from which modern states so very slowly climbed out of over millenia. Unsympathetic historians often point out Medieval feudal barons and their warrior retinues weren't really much more than heavily armed local mafias.

I don't think you're quite catching onto the point here, DA. Whether the warlords base their poor substitute for an economy on exporting drugs, diamonds and/or other such valuables or have to content themselves with taxing enough food and valuables off the local farmers and merchants to feed themselves and their bully-boys is very much a cosmetic detail. The point is that such a "warlord economy" is the situation societies default to when their structures fall apart - what fills the void left in the absence of a real society.

Police states suck about as bad, just in a different way. You could say such systems are societies gone wrong - the social equivalent of cellular reproduction going haywire and resulting in a cancer, to give a crude medical analogy.