For all of the talk of the evils of the justice system, the United States itself has a very good example of a community that is underserved by the justice system: neighborhoods run by gangs.
Just as you predict, such places are absurdly violent because if you do something to one of mine, then I have to do something to one of yours, and then in retaliation for that you have to do something to one of mine again. You end up with a cycle of violence that leads to the highest murder rates in the civilized world. For all the talk of how dangerous cops are, deaths at the hands of cops who are there to enforce the law are statistical impossibility compared to deaths at the hands of gang members who came to kill your family in retribution for some slight.
Moreover, the common-law system is far fairer than anything you would get out of mob Justice. The common law system by definition means that two people in the same circumstance and entitled to the same treatment. Mob Justice is going to end up more or less arbitrary. As well, a codified set of laws means that people know what to do and what not to do, whereas under mob Justice you never know what's going to make someone angry. We've seen this with the mob justice of the last decade where behavior that was considered acceptable at the time is later retroactively deemed unacceptable and the mob comes for them.
Absolutely there needs to be a balance between the individual, the community, and the state, and I think that it is safe to say that the state is that a point where there is way too much power concentrated there, but there are definitely benefits to having a state and once you remove it you absolutely will never remove violence and coercion, you will just change the manifestation of that violence and coercion and in some ways it definitely won't be for the better.
Just as you predict, such places are absurdly violent because if you do something to one of mine, then I have to do something to one of yours, and then in retaliation for that you have to do something to one of mine again. You end up with a cycle of violence that leads to the highest murder rates in the civilized world. For all the talk of how dangerous cops are, deaths at the hands of cops who are there to enforce the law are statistical impossibility compared to deaths at the hands of gang members who came to kill your family in retribution for some slight.
Moreover, the common-law system is far fairer than anything you would get out of mob Justice. The common law system by definition means that two people in the same circumstance and entitled to the same treatment. Mob Justice is going to end up more or less arbitrary. As well, a codified set of laws means that people know what to do and what not to do, whereas under mob Justice you never know what's going to make someone angry. We've seen this with the mob justice of the last decade where behavior that was considered acceptable at the time is later retroactively deemed unacceptable and the mob comes for them.
Absolutely there needs to be a balance between the individual, the community, and the state, and I think that it is safe to say that the state is that a point where there is way too much power concentrated there, but there are definitely benefits to having a state and once you remove it you absolutely will never remove violence and coercion, you will just change the manifestation of that violence and coercion and in some ways it definitely won't be for the better.
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The word "right" is complicated because it means a number of things. You can have a "right" to something by virtue of practicality just as much as you can have a "right" to something by virtue of morality. Sometimes they coexist but not always.
An institution that is based on violence creates its right to exist by fighting for it. An institution that fails to create its right to exist will not exist. Unless you can employ violence to challenge that right, then it exists and remains regardless of what you say.
When an empire falls, the world does not return to utopia. Instead, it returns to its brutal base reality that the strong can exercise power over the weak over the natural right of violence without any of the compromises between the strong and the weak that more established structures entail. For this reason, utopian anarchism cannot work because it does not work. We've had a million years of humanity to try to find evidence otherwise, but violence does not disappear just because some of the violent people disappear.
Consider a pacifist anarchist society and then a bunch of brutes come in and use force where nobody was using force before. The anarchist society will fail because it could not support its right to exist without use of violence, where the brutes came in and supported their right to exist using violence.
That doesn't make the institution moral or the method by which is carves out its right to exist moral, but that's a different question.
The global slave trade itself was ended largely through institutional violence, including the creation of one of the most powerful navies in the world at that time to prevent it. Later on, one of the most brutal wars in history was fought among other things to end slavery in one country, and if that war was lost then slavery likely would have continued at least for a time. The Arab slave trade certainly would exist today but for the west ending it. There's still semi-open slavery in some Muslim nations today. Would you make the argument that because it used violence and coercion that the abolition of slavery has no right to exist?
An institution that is based on violence creates its right to exist by fighting for it. An institution that fails to create its right to exist will not exist. Unless you can employ violence to challenge that right, then it exists and remains regardless of what you say.
When an empire falls, the world does not return to utopia. Instead, it returns to its brutal base reality that the strong can exercise power over the weak over the natural right of violence without any of the compromises between the strong and the weak that more established structures entail. For this reason, utopian anarchism cannot work because it does not work. We've had a million years of humanity to try to find evidence otherwise, but violence does not disappear just because some of the violent people disappear.
Consider a pacifist anarchist society and then a bunch of brutes come in and use force where nobody was using force before. The anarchist society will fail because it could not support its right to exist without use of violence, where the brutes came in and supported their right to exist using violence.
That doesn't make the institution moral or the method by which is carves out its right to exist moral, but that's a different question.
The global slave trade itself was ended largely through institutional violence, including the creation of one of the most powerful navies in the world at that time to prevent it. Later on, one of the most brutal wars in history was fought among other things to end slavery in one country, and if that war was lost then slavery likely would have continued at least for a time. The Arab slave trade certainly would exist today but for the west ending it. There's still semi-open slavery in some Muslim nations today. Would you make the argument that because it used violence and coercion that the abolition of slavery has no right to exist?
You were the one that said that something that uses violence has no right to exist. That only leaves pacifism.
You made this absolute statement, and all that you're proving is that you don't believe it because you're giving all these different examples of where violence used in pursuit of an institution is acceptable.
You made this absolute statement, and all that you're proving is that you don't believe it because you're giving all these different examples of where violence used in pursuit of an institution is acceptable.
This is a bad argument. Reread my post and you will see that I am not saying what ought to be, I'm saying what will be, and I even twice in my post differentiate the difference between the two.
That's not historically accurate, and that's important in this case.
Slavery in England (England being relevant as a main driver in the elimination of the global slave trade) had been largely abolished since the 9th century, so engaging in the slave trade was relatively speaking novel in the 17th century and it was something European morality already largely agreed was wrong and did not employ slavery until colonialism.
Not only had Europe largely left behind slavery, it was well on to developing the second or third alternative by the 17th century.
The most powerful slaver state in Europe was the Western Roman empire which had ceased to exist 900 years before anything like the era of colonization. In that sense, not only did slavery prove to be morally repugnant, but the most powerful slaving civilization eventually destroyed itself. In a hypothetical alternate reality where the Roman empire continued to exist through the 17th century, continued to be a powerful empire, and continued to practice widespread chattel slavery, I suspect that the discussion never would have even happened (though admittedly there's a lot of what ifs to get to that moment in time)
By one view of history, the fall of the Roman empire and the failure of any successful slaver States to rise up afterwards represents the fact that slavery as an institution in fact failed. By the 17th century, the question largely wasn't about whether slavery was good or bad because most of Europe had already agreed that it was bad and banned it within its own borders. The question was about the Atlantic slave trade and the use of slavery in colonial holdings, which was itself a novel question and not subject to the antiquity fallacy.
Slavery in England (England being relevant as a main driver in the elimination of the global slave trade) had been largely abolished since the 9th century, so engaging in the slave trade was relatively speaking novel in the 17th century and it was something European morality already largely agreed was wrong and did not employ slavery until colonialism.
Not only had Europe largely left behind slavery, it was well on to developing the second or third alternative by the 17th century.
The most powerful slaver state in Europe was the Western Roman empire which had ceased to exist 900 years before anything like the era of colonization. In that sense, not only did slavery prove to be morally repugnant, but the most powerful slaving civilization eventually destroyed itself. In a hypothetical alternate reality where the Roman empire continued to exist through the 17th century, continued to be a powerful empire, and continued to practice widespread chattel slavery, I suspect that the discussion never would have even happened (though admittedly there's a lot of what ifs to get to that moment in time)
By one view of history, the fall of the Roman empire and the failure of any successful slaver States to rise up afterwards represents the fact that slavery as an institution in fact failed. By the 17th century, the question largely wasn't about whether slavery was good or bad because most of Europe had already agreed that it was bad and banned it within its own borders. The question was about the Atlantic slave trade and the use of slavery in colonial holdings, which was itself a novel question and not subject to the antiquity fallacy.