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Continued from here.
Again, in the below post from January 2013, I focus on the state - but I think the message carries import for my present topic: politics. The latter is the art of honing efficient forms of coercion, as I call it below.
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p008 What Noble Savage? from 01/28/2013
As to what human beings will or will not do in that regard, I suspect two decisive criteria will always be part of the reckoning: (i) the ratio of costs to benefits, and (ii) technical (non-)feasibility, especially the (non-)existence of a material basis for a particular type of action. Moral assessments will tend to develop in the wake of acts decided upon according to (i) and (ii). [...]I have always believed that subject to (i) and (ii) above, the natural trend for mankind is to evolve Structures of Maximal Power (SMP), as I term them, i.e. efficient forms of coercion, which is why the state has come about and will not go away. Inevitable gravitation toward SMP is also the reason why violence and viciousness have a prehistory dating back long before the emergence of the state:
Recent studies have confirmed that mortality from violence is very common in small-scale societies today and in the past. Almost one-third of such people die in raids and fights, and the death rate is twice as high among men as among women. This is a far higher death rate than experienced even in countries worst hit by World War II. Thomas Hobbes's "war of each against all" looks more accurate for humanity in a state of nature than Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "noble savage," ...
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Continued here.
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