Seriously though, don't do violence.
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
1583 points (98.6% liked)
memes
10567 readers
3531 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- [email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- [email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- [email protected] : Linux themed memes
- [email protected] : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Which, ideally, is pretty much how it has to work. The state is, ideally, composed of elected representatives and their appointees. The alternative to violence monopolized by elected representatives is violence distributed to private interests. State monopoly of legitimate violence is not great and I agree with the problems inherent to that, but realistically the alternative seems worse. I'm racking my brain for another system, but I can't think of anything that doesn't devolve to oligarch-led private armies oppressing people.
They're the same picture.
Elections are a venue for competiting oligarchs - US elections are largely just a wealth check - with the bonus that afterwards people feel they've chosen their oligarchs and are less likely to notice that 90%+ of elected representatives only represent the interest of elites.
I do the same thing at work when I need mentally ill people to do what I say. "You can do what I want version A, or do what I want version B, which one?" always works better than "Do what I want!"
I agree that violence management is a very difficult problem with no easy solution. But I don't think giving full control of legitimate violence to the rich is the best solution, which is what a state of elected representatives does.
Still, there's the friction of checks and balances. It's certainly not perfect, far from it, but the alternative is still worse.