Observing what is currently happening in the US has led me down the Network State rabbit hole. The linked video is a great place to start if you’re not already aware of these ideas.
Unfortunately these concepts seem to be cosied up to modern fascism/monarchism, but I do wonder if this is genuinely the likeliest alternative to modern day capitalism. Yanis Varoufakis’ idea of technofeudalism seems like another way of viewing this.
Could greener, more altruistic network states co-exist with money and power hungry billionaire-led communities? Or would their greed and ambition be detrimental to the efforts of those trying to save the natural earth?
I’m fairly certain everything you wrote is perfectly consistent with my original statement.
Is pretty much the opposite of what I wrote 🤷
No… everything you described falls under “behave like that one asshole”
How? The most common strategy is to do nothing at all because the one asshole is too afraid to do anything but minor incursions.
Yeah but why is the asshole afraid? The peaceful groups armed themselves. Once everybody is armed how do you disarm?
No they didn’t. But the asshole doesn’t want to risk that happening.
I think we need to go back to the beginning.
We have 9 peaceful tribes/societies/states/whatever. They’re happy to just live within their means and cooperate with each other when needed. In a vacuum, this will continue indefinitely because why fight when you don’t need much and can share?
Now, the asshole tribe moves into the region. They’re greedy, their population is outgrowing their resources because they’re using all they have, furthermore they have few qualms about taking their neighbors’ stuff.
The existence of this tribe forces all the others to arm themselves and maintain some sort of military. The only possible way a peaceful existence will be restored is if the troublemaker is removed. However even that isn’t guaranteed to work now that all have militaries and nothing to do with them.
I feel like you were describing various scenarios the previous paragraph could play out, but ultimately the existence of the violent tribe forces the cooperative tribes to defend themselves or perish.
The problem with you argument is that the violent tribe is not a pure evil that is just violent for the sake of it. Outside of fantasy stories (and war propaganda) something like that doesn’t exist.
They might be for various reasons prone to violence, but they still need to factor in outside factors and their own resources.
In reality such dynamics rarely play out like you describe them because it is not a very successful strategy for anyone involved and mostly just a waste of resources.
Ffs, it doesn’t matter whether they’re good, evil, or somewhere in between. It doesn’t matter why they’re prone to violence. The fact that they’re willing and capable means all other must be ready to fight.
In reality such dynamics are currently playing out and they have played out from the beginning of time. Our current world is a product of this process. This is like, game theory or something. It’s like you’re trying to tell me 2+2 doesn’t equal 4 because we don’t really know if there are two twos or some nonsense.