[Fricken]

>A government is just a corporation with a bit more power than the others, not some sacred entity that sits above us.

Well yes, a government doesn't need to be sacred to sit above you, it need only have more power. It's legitimacy is conditional on maintaining a monopoly on violence.

[glerk]

If we’re going to descend into pedantry, my statement was normative, not descriptive, as in “I agree this is what a government does, I disagree this is what it _should_ do”.

“Beneath me” is _my_ value judgement that I pass on this government and its appendages as in “it has been weighed in the balance and has been found unworthy”. That this government has more power than me doesn’t make it sit above me as a moral absolute, and it doesn’t magically give it legitimacy.

[Fricken]

The government sits above you because it makes you do things under the threat of violence. Why do you stop at the stop sign? because the government reserves the right to hurt you if you don't.

The government's legitimacy comes from it's stick being bigger than yours. It's not sacred, it's not magic. It's a bigger stick. Your value judgement would have weight if your stick was bigger. The guy with the bigger stick decides what you (or Jack Ma) is worthy of.

[glerk]

> The government's legitimacy comes from it's stick being bigger than yours

By the same argument, are Somalian warlords and Mexican drug cartel also legitimate in the territories they control? I don't think "legitimate" is the word you are looking for to describe pure power dynamics, since "legitimate" is imbued with a moralistic judgement (look up is vs ought etc.). But yes, in practice, if I have a gun pointed at my head, I could be forced to do things that go against my judgement (within limits!).

[Fricken]

The history of civilization is warlords showing up and saying "Give me 2 bags of wheat from each crop and I won't kill you. Not only that, once I own you, I will fight to make sure the other ensure the other guy can't steal you from me, and that you remain productive."

So long as the warlord can make good on that agreement, you have political order. Over time many abstractions emerge, but backing it all up is the big stick. Now, I'm with you, from a moral standpoint it's all abhorrent. As an anarchist I view civilization to be a hack on the human condition, and I see all states as fundamentally authoritarian.

So it's all just game theory to me. China blocked the Manus acquisition as a matter of national interest. The US also ignores international law on matters on national interest at its own convenience.

If a law is unenforceable is it really a law? Anybody can declare a law. It is only meaningful if it can be enforced.

There are regions of Mexico where cartels hold the monopoly on violence, and the longer they maintain that control the more legitimate they become.

[glerk]

> As an anarchist I view civilization to be a hack on the human condition, and I see all states as fundamentally authoritarian.

I think we are not really in disagreement, it's mainly an argument over the semantics of "legitimate" at this point :) Rousseau and Hobbes were both right.

[mothballed]

Luckily china has a litany of 3rd world countries land borders surrounding it with porous borders, and in a great deal of them no one who gives too many shits about some poor chinese villager crossing. Americans on the other hand have Canada which for LEO purposes is basically an extension of the US, and Mexico which due to the drug trade and other unique factors mean anyone getting caught jumping the border in either direction is likely to owe the cartel a massive amount of money or some extremely undesirable favors.

I would definitely rather be a trapped Chinese trying to escape than a trapped American.

[komali2]

Surveillance in the PRC is massive and centralized. There's a reason NK fleeing into the PRC plummeted when the PRC decided to stop turning a blind eye.

[mothballed]

A valid point. Although PRC citizens have a little easier time explaining why they are in the PRC than North Koreans, and there are hundreds of miles of sparse Chinese border area where no one even knows where China starts/ends and where Pakistan or India begins. Out of places where there is a known border, Myanmar for instance is infamous for porosity.

The reason why NK have stopped is largely either NK enforcement or being caught while in the PRC without permission to reside in the PRC. Both of which are highly mitigated for PRC citizen (PRC citizens can have issues spending time in cities they're not authorized to live in, but less so with merely "visiting" countryside).