A monopoly on violence is not the only way to coordinate such things—even among humans, at small-to-medium scale we often rely on norms and reputation rather than an explicit enforcer with a monopoly on violence. The reason those mechanisms don’t scale well for humans seems to be (at least in part) that human cognition is tuned for Dunbar’s number.
And even if a monopoly on violence does turn out to be (part of) the convergent way to coordinate, that’s not-at-all synonymous with a dominance hierarchy. For instance, one could imagine the prototypical libertarian paradise in which a government with monopoly on violence enforces property rights and contracts but otherwise leaves people to interact as they please. In that world, there’s one layer of dominance, but no further hierarchy beneath. That one layer is a useful foundational tool for coordination, but most of the day-to-day work of coordinating can then happen via other mechanisms (like e.g. markets).
(I suspect that a government which was just greedy for resources would converge to an arrangement roughly like that, with moderate taxes on property and/or contracts. The reason we don’t see that happen in our world is mostly, I claim, that the humans who run governments usually aren’t just greedy for resources, and instead have a strong craving for dominance as an approximately-terminal goal.)
Given a world of humans, I don’t think that libertarian society would be good enough at preventing competing powers from overthrowing it. Because there’d be an unexploitable-equillibrium condition where a government that isn’t focused on dominance is weaker than a government more focused on government, it would generally be held by those who have the strongest focus on dominance. Those who desire resources would be better off putting themselves in situations where the dominant powers can become more dominant by giving them/putting them in charge of resources.
Given a world of AIs, I don’t think the dominant AI would need a market; it could just handle everything itself.
As I understand it, libertarian paradises are basically fantasies by people who don’t like the government, not realistically-achievable outcomes given the political realities.
Because there’d be an unexploitable-equillibrium condition where a government that isn’t focused on dominance is weaker than a government more focused on government, it would generally be held by those who have the strongest focus on dominance.
This argument only works insofar as governments less focused on dominance are, in fact, weaker militarily, which seems basically-false in practice in the long run. For instance, autocratic regimes just can’t compete industrially with a market economy like e.g. most Western states today, and that industrial difference turns into a comprehensive military advantage with relatively moderate time and investment. And when countries switch to full autocracy, there’s sometimes a short-term military buildup but they tend to end up waaaay behind militarily a few years down the road IIUC.
Maybe one could say the essence of our difference is this:
You see the dominance ranking as defined by the backing-off tendency and assume it to be mainly an evolutionary psychological artifact.
Meanwhile, I see the backing-off tendency as being the primary indicator of dominance, but the core interesting aspect of dominance to be the tendency to leverage credible threats, which of course causes but is not equivalent to the psychological tendency to back off.
Under my model, dominance would then be able to cause bargaining power (e.g. robbing someone by threatening to shoot them), but one could also use bargaining power to purchase dominance (e.g. spending money to purchase a gun).
This leaves dominance and bargaining power independent because on the one hand you have the weak-strong axis where both increase but on the other hand you have the merchant-king axis where they directly trade off.
I guess to expand, the US military doctrine since the world war has been that there’s a need to maintain dominance over countries focused on military strength to the disadvantage of their citizens. Hence while your statement is somewhat-true, it’s directly and intentionally the result of a dominance hierarchy maintained by the US.
Western states today use state violence to enforce high taxes and lots of government regulations. In my view they’re probably more dominance-oriented than states which just leave rural farmers alone. At least some of this is part of a Keynesian policy to boost economic output, and economic output is closely related to military formidability (due to ability to afford raw resources and advanced technology for the military).
Hm, I guess you would see this as more closely related to bargaining power than to dominance, because in your model dominance is a human-psychology-thing and bargaining power isn’t restricted to voluntary transactions?
A monopoly on violence is not the only way to coordinate such things—even among humans, at small-to-medium scale we often rely on norms and reputation rather than an explicit enforcer with a monopoly on violence. The reason those mechanisms don’t scale well for humans seems to be (at least in part) that human cognition is tuned for Dunbar’s number.
And even if a monopoly on violence does turn out to be (part of) the convergent way to coordinate, that’s not-at-all synonymous with a dominance hierarchy. For instance, one could imagine the prototypical libertarian paradise in which a government with monopoly on violence enforces property rights and contracts but otherwise leaves people to interact as they please. In that world, there’s one layer of dominance, but no further hierarchy beneath. That one layer is a useful foundational tool for coordination, but most of the day-to-day work of coordinating can then happen via other mechanisms (like e.g. markets).
(I suspect that a government which was just greedy for resources would converge to an arrangement roughly like that, with moderate taxes on property and/or contracts. The reason we don’t see that happen in our world is mostly, I claim, that the humans who run governments usually aren’t just greedy for resources, and instead have a strong craving for dominance as an approximately-terminal goal.)
Given a world of humans, I don’t think that libertarian society would be good enough at preventing competing powers from overthrowing it. Because there’d be an unexploitable-equillibrium condition where a government that isn’t focused on dominance is weaker than a government more focused on government, it would generally be held by those who have the strongest focus on dominance. Those who desire resources would be better off putting themselves in situations where the dominant powers can become more dominant by giving them/putting them in charge of resources.
Given a world of AIs, I don’t think the dominant AI would need a market; it could just handle everything itself.
As I understand it, libertarian paradises are basically fantasies by people who don’t like the government, not realistically-achievable outcomes given the political realities.
This argument only works insofar as governments less focused on dominance are, in fact, weaker militarily, which seems basically-false in practice in the long run. For instance, autocratic regimes just can’t compete industrially with a market economy like e.g. most Western states today, and that industrial difference turns into a comprehensive military advantage with relatively moderate time and investment. And when countries switch to full autocracy, there’s sometimes a short-term military buildup but they tend to end up waaaay behind militarily a few years down the road IIUC.
Maybe one could say the essence of our difference is this:
You see the dominance ranking as defined by the backing-off tendency and assume it to be mainly an evolutionary psychological artifact.
Meanwhile, I see the backing-off tendency as being the primary indicator of dominance, but the core interesting aspect of dominance to be the tendency to leverage credible threats, which of course causes but is not equivalent to the psychological tendency to back off.
Under my model, dominance would then be able to cause bargaining power (e.g. robbing someone by threatening to shoot them), but one could also use bargaining power to purchase dominance (e.g. spending money to purchase a gun).
This leaves dominance and bargaining power independent because on the one hand you have the weak-strong axis where both increase but on the other hand you have the merchant-king axis where they directly trade off.
I guess to expand, the US military doctrine since the world war has been that there’s a need to maintain dominance over countries focused on military strength to the disadvantage of their citizens. Hence while your statement is somewhat-true, it’s directly and intentionally the result of a dominance hierarchy maintained by the US.
Western states today use state violence to enforce high taxes and lots of government regulations. In my view they’re probably more dominance-oriented than states which just leave rural farmers alone. At least some of this is part of a Keynesian policy to boost economic output, and economic output is closely related to military formidability (due to ability to afford raw resources and advanced technology for the military).
Hm, I guess you would see this as more closely related to bargaining power than to dominance, because in your model dominance is a human-psychology-thing and bargaining power isn’t restricted to voluntary transactions?