[acvar]

There are also countless examples of genocied in the archaeological record of pre-state groups. The fact that the groups are smaller size does not change the way they interact once you get north of 150 people. Community breaks down, people becom more aggressive, and they either fight within or go to war. If we look at modern hunter gathers we see that most wars are smaller scale. They involve border disputes and deep raids designed to intimidate and act as population control. There are plenty of stateless groups in the modern world we can study and they war just like the rest of us. Yes it is on a smaller scale, but when you only have about 150 people in your group and only about 30 of those are able bodied males of course you conflicts are going to be smaller then nations number in the millions, but again war has no mention of scale in its definition.

[Rothbardian]

Don't let your justified disgust with government blur your view.

Pre-state societies don't have world-wars. They don't even have regional wars. But they have amazingly-high murder rates.

Can you source this? From everything I've read, this behavior stopped when agriculture developed to the point that every other person wasn't starving to death. At that point you started having cities and polycentric law pop up.

Eventually things like ergot and frankincense lead to hallucinations, which lead to religions, and through religions states sometimes arose, and would generally then take over neighboring societies.

Assuming you feel governments came into being because people wanted to stop living with murderers, bear in mind the original governments did not justify their rule on any utilitarian arguments. It was always justified by claiming the ruler is an arbiter of their regional god. If there was some utilitarian demand for a government, it wouldn't make sense for them to claim rule through a god figure.

There are also countless examples of genocied in the archaeological record of pre-state groups. The fact that the groups are smaller size does not change the way they interact once you get north of 150 people. Community breaks down, people becom more aggressive, and they either fight within or go to war. If we look at modern hunter gathers we see that most wars are smaller scale. They involve border disputes and deep raids designed to intimidate and act as population control. There are plenty of stateless groups in the modern world we can study and they war just like the rest of us. Yes it is on a smaller scale, but when you only have about 150 people in your group and only about 30 of those are able bodied males of course you conflicts are going to be smaller then nations number in the millions, but again war has no mention of scale in its definition.

I'm definitely not aware of any recent anarchies 'behaving just as we do'. Ireland was anarchic for nearly a thousand years and never had any war.

[Eran]

Can you source this?

Pinker's new book. I don't have it online. He refers to studies of murder rates amongst hunter-gatherer communities. It is shocking.

Assuming you feel governments came into being because people wanted to stop living with murderers...

No, that's not how I feel. I feel governments came into being because roving bandits realised it is more profitable to "husband" your victims, specifically by prohibiting their murder by others.

[ralfy]

According to data submitted to the UN HDR for 2005:

http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/20 ... st-of-all/

conflict-related deaths worldwide in relative and absolute terms were higher during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than previous ones.

[Rothbardian]

Pinker's new book. I don't have it online. He refers to studies of murder rates amongst hunter-gatherer communities. It is shocking.

No, that's not how I feel. I feel governments came into being because roving bandits realised it is more profitable to "husband" your victims, specifically by prohibiting their murder by others.

Humanity had already moved past hunter gatherer societies by the time governments started emerging. We already had cities, industries, laws, etc. It was after that, when you started seeing governments pop up.

[Eran]

Pinker would disagree (based on deaths databases) and I tend to agree with him.

There is a major bias for over-counting recent deaths relative to ancient ones. The obvious reason is that we know more about modern wars than we do about ancient ones. The secondary reason is that much of the world has become more consolidated in the 20th century relative to ancient times. There have been fewer (but larger) military conflicts in the 20th century than in previous ones. Historians tend to be ignorant of, or merely ignore relatively "minor" armed conflicts (e.g. those between barons in Feudal societies) because they aren't "historically significant", even while the total deaths rate they are responsible for may well exceed that of larger but rarer modern wars.

Humanity had already moved past hunter gatherer societies by the time governments started emerging. We already had cities, industries, laws, etc. It was after that, when you started seeing governments pop up.

The argument is that murder rates have declined once a stable central government emerges. I think that's both plausible and neutral with respect to the anti-government argument.

[Rothbardian]

Pinker would disagree (based on deaths databases) and I tend to agree with him.

There is a major bias for over-counting recent deaths relative to ancient ones. The obvious reason is that we know more about modern wars than we do about ancient ones. The secondary reason is that much of the world has become more consolidated in the 20th century relative to ancient times. There have been fewer (but larger) military conflicts in the 20th century than in previous ones. Historians tend to be ignorant of, or merely ignore relatively "minor" armed conflicts (e.g. those between barons in Feudal societies) because they aren't "historically significant", even while the total deaths rate they are responsible for may well exceed that of larger but rarer modern wars.

I'm not discounting the murder rate amongst hunter gatherer communities, I'm just saying you're comparing apples to oranges.

My definition of a government would be an institution that imposes law. Meaning you have a ruler or group of rulers who create laws by decree.

People had already left hunter gatherer communities behind and formed systems of law, including judges, etc, BEFORE the first governments started popping up. It's when laws began to emerge that murder rates began to drop.

That was post hunter-gatherer and pre-government. Most people have the perception that if there were laws, there must have been governments, and that is where the confusion comes into play, because if you look at it that way then, yes, it would seem that humanity started behaving itself at the same time the first governments sprang up.

The argument is that murder rates have declined once a stable central government emerges. I think that's both plausible and neutral with respect to the anti-government argument.

That is only if you exclude democide, which wouldn't make any sense. If we were to quantify the death and destruction seen in just Europe in the last 100 years, it exceeds every murder in the last thousand years, and that is without counting people killed in combat.