(December 15, 2024 at 6:10 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:(December 15, 2024 at 9:14 am)Paleophyte Wrote: (1) It assumes that violence and power, consent and coercion are mutually exclusive. Sadly, our history demonstrates that it's possible to have both. In-group power and consent producing out-group coercion and violence is a pretty common theme in our tribalistic little species.
It's not so much that they are mutually exclusive, but rather that they are inversely proportional. And so, from a wholistic standpoint, a system with societies that favor in-group consent, but with out-group coercion, could be said to function at something like 50% efficiency. But if they improve their outgroup relations with more trade, etc., the numbers might improve to 70% let's say.
History and evolution beg to differ. We have these nasty tribalistic tendencies precisely because evolution hard-wired us for those ugly little instincts. Violence benefits the in-group. The whole suffers, so it is a common bad, but that's taken us a fair bit of skull sweat to figure out and is taking us even more work to tamp down on.
