Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 18:40:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: tbcox23@yahoo.com | Block Address | Add to Address Book
Subject: Re: Fear and the use of force (was Re: China) (fwd)
To: paulcox@marlboro.edu, jim.cox@mindspring.com, johnfcox@aol.com
CC: rockers@med.stanford.edu

Forgive my late entry into this conversation. I have two brief
comments:

> On Wed, 23 May 2001, David J. Raynor wrote:
> > For every example you can come up with to make them seem worse
> (they
> > gassed the Kurds), I can come up with something just as bad on our
> > side (we nuked the Japanese). For every rationalization you can
> give
> > our actions (we had to win the war), I can come up with one for
> them
> > equally ridiculous (they had to put down the uprising). We can do
> that
> > for a year and a day, and it doesn't change the basic fact: it's a
> > stupid, horrific murderous system.

Why is nuking the Japanese the same as gassing Kurds? It's not.
1. The Japanese declared war on us, not the other way around.
2. They could have surrendered earlier. They didn't.
3. The Japanese military was starving civilians to feed soldiers.
Hundreds of thousands of Okinawan civilians died of hunger
before the Marines took the island. Without nukes to shorten
the war, we would have seen tens of millions of Japanese civilians
dead of starvation before the conventional-war invasion
would have stopped their deaths -- more than the six million
Jews that Hitler killed. That's separate from the over one
million US casualties expected.
4. The PURPOSE of the wars were different -- Iraq to suppress
and oppress a minority, the US to defend itself from aggression
and end a genocidal militaristic dictatorship.

Legitimacy of any government comes from the consent of the governed.
No act of force by a dictator against his own people is moral.
Only certain acts of force by a democracy against its own people
can be moral -- such acts must follow laws that are themselves
moral (i.e. they fit with the natural rights theory, i.e. only
the amount of force necessary to restrain one person from harming
another is okay).

> > It is perpetuated because y'all in
> > the "security" arena, whether here or in Iraq, China, wherever,
> think
> > that you are doing something high-minded, providing security,
> creating
> > peace....when you are really just doing exactly what you loathe in
> > your "enemies;" murdering, maiming, raping so that your country can
> be
> > "better" than the one with the towelheads or the chinks.
> >
> > And whenever someone suggests that that needs to stop and we need
> to
> > start behaving like civilized people, you have a flawed
> pseudo-science
> > called security studies to explain why people can't get along
> unless
> > we all have guns pointed at our heads, because we bond into groups
> out
> > of fear like the klu klux klan (your characterization, not mine).

> We bond into groups because it has been necessary for the propagation
> of
> the species. Why is that necessary? Because there is safety in
> numbers.
> Why do groups cooperate? Because they have a better chance of
> survival
> than by backstabbing each other all the time.
>
> But if you give any creature the chance to get away with something
> because
> you've taken away the fear of retribution, then you lose the
> cooperative
> behavior. Happens every time.
>
> More importantly, FEAR AND THE THREAT OF FORCE -LEAD- TO COOPERATIVE
> BEHAVIOR. I didn't write this stuff. Ask any biologist, zoologist,
> or
> economist who is current in his field.

Dave, you're saying that all the nasty violence will end
just as soon as we realize it can stop.

Paul is saying that it'll start again just as soon as
someone realizes he can start.

You think all we need to do is cooperate.

Paul is pointing out that cooperation requires the ability
to opt out if the other guy is screwing you, and the
ability to resist him if he initiates aggression.

Your beautiful utopian thinking cannot handle free
riders or defectors. Your vision only works when everyone
cooperates all the time. Since people have the ability
to be greedy, stupid, selfish, and hurtful, the only
way we can achieve your utopia is by having powerful
governments that FORCE everybody to cooperate.
At gunpoint.

Ooops! Governments are run by people, and people have
the ability to be greedy, stupid, selfish, and hurtful...
so your utopia becomes a Stalinist nightmare.
Congrats.

Find me a way to guarantee that everyone cooperates,
nobody defects, and nobody aggresses, WITHOUT having
an oppressive governmental force that prevents it
at gunpoint, and you win.

Fail to find that way, and Paul wins.

See also "The Origins of Virtue" by Matt Ridley
and "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior"
by von Neumann, J. and Morgenstern, O. (1953).

Cheers.
-Tom


=====
Thomas B. Cox
tbcox23@yahoo.com http://www.geocities.com/tbcox23/

"When the government fears the People, that is Liberty.
When the People fear the Government, that is tyranny."
-- Thomas Jefferson