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by tsujamin
3905 days ago
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This explanation seems to rely fairly heavily on the current, potentially unknown state of the system, and the ability for the military to respond without delay to stockpiling of weaponry by producers. > Because it's good money and government has already plenty of bombs to force people to make more bombs for them.
If the military could express force against a producer the moment they refuse to supply weaponry, and before they stockpile it for themselves, then this is true. However if the period of delay between producer non-compliance and military intervention is too great, the producer may have an opportunity to stockpile enough force to mount a realistic defence. The government, nor the military, controls the means of production that their Monopoly on Violence depends upon, let alone the responsiveness and potentially not even the stockpile (I'm not sure of the figures) to mount a sustained defence against cooperating producers. EDIT: The idea of producers acquiring legitimacy greater than that of public institutions is also an interesting idea with respect to Monopoly on Violence. Immediate self interest of citizens (taxation minimisation) could potentially lead to a "tragedy of the commons" type outcome for public services; leaving the private sector as the only viable and legitimate provider. This could also undermine the legitimacy of public institutions perhaps? |
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I think you are heavily underestimating capacity of armies. Hardware that modern armies operate is absolutely horrific and knowing how to use it most effectively is the only thing they do.
Capitalists know how to make money not use military hardware and I don't think anyone could stockpile enough weaponry without any government organization noticing to carve out any sort of tax independence.
Closest to what you are imagining is mafia carving out tax independence from government in Mexico or wherever. But then you have another problem if government is too weak to prevent you from stockpiling weapons, it's also too weak to prevent your competition from stockpiling weapons and that's way worse for the business than being taxed (even heavily).
> ... to mount a sustained defence against cooperating producers.
Why do you things producers would cooperate? They can cooperate to some degree but they want to get ahead of each other. Having armed competition would be horrible.
You might potentially imagine scenario, where produces stockpile weapons, unite to abolish government (and army) that due to weakness haven't noticed the stockpiling and haven't defused situation and haven't stockpiled accordingly. Then they either fight among themselves or not and become new government and army (because it's easier to tax than to manufacture and sell, when you have an army). So even in catastrophic scenario everything is back to status quo.
If you like SF I recommend "Beggars in Spain". Nice vision about what might happen if 1% gets immensely more productive then the rest of humanity.
> leaving the private sector as the only viable and legitimate provider. This could also undermine the legitimacy of public institutions perhaps?
I know it's popular fantasy to think that governments are legitimized by services they provide to (poor) people. While in truth they are legitimized by armies that hide behind, them that give illusion by being civilly controlled in exchange for inordinate amount of resources.