Yes, I think he is the primary proponent of the violence-is-declining argument and his book served as the focus for these discussions.
So we can expect the amount of violence enacted over time to go down, even as the power asymmetry and implicit threat of violence goes up.
That’s a valid point, but it applies only to the violence between the state and its subjects. There is also inter-state violence which tends to account for most of the corpses plus raiding/predation by the state outside of its own borders (see the recent American adventures in the Middle East after the Iraq war).
Plus there is also the commonly-ignored distinction between showing that a historical trend existed and making a forecast: saying that this trend will continue in the future. Given that we live in interesting times, I would be wary of assuming that historical trends will just extrapolate.
I suggest reading the book or watching his master course lecture. He deals with exactly these objections in more detail than I’m willing to regurgitate.
Yes, I think he is the primary proponent of the violence-is-declining argument and his book served as the focus for these discussions.
That’s a valid point, but it applies only to the violence between the state and its subjects. There is also inter-state violence which tends to account for most of the corpses plus raiding/predation by the state outside of its own borders (see the recent American adventures in the Middle East after the Iraq war).
Plus there is also the commonly-ignored distinction between showing that a historical trend existed and making a forecast: saying that this trend will continue in the future. Given that we live in interesting times, I would be wary of assuming that historical trends will just extrapolate.
I suggest reading the book or watching his master course lecture. He deals with exactly these objections in more detail than I’m willing to regurgitate.