Actually, in some ways the states of Athens and Syracuse were far more liberal than those of today's democracies. Taxation was miniscule compared to today, and was mostly indirect. Children were not forced to attend indoctrination camps. Regulations on commerce were on the whole a lot more lax than today (though in certain cases more strict). Slavery was not introduced by these states, it was not indulged in to any great extent by these states, and slaves did not form a large amount of the population of these cities. In terms of freedoms and economic life, slaves in Athens were generally no worse off than the average thetes, and many were better off (masters could give the slave 3 out of the 4 freedoms without officially freeing the slave, which many did). The majority of slaves came to Athens as a result of war. There is no evidence for slave plantations in Athens that are comparable to those of the later Roman Republic or the antebellum South.
The point in bringing up these ancient states is that you have only one short historical period of democracies - in which they are all under American hegemony - from which you are drawing this absurd peace theory. In the only other period where there are democratic states, they made war against each other.
"Liberal democracies do not practice chattle slavery and they have universal sufferage."
All the 'democracies' today hold their 'citizens' as slaves and in fact do not have effective universal suffrage a) because e.g. those under 18 cannot vote, b) because voting does not actually count for anything - my vote has never amounted to anything in any election.
"Prior to Europe becoming democratized it was constantly at war."
List the wars fought in Europe 1815-1914 and compare them to 1914-today and show me just how much more warfare there was in the 19th century compared to the 20th century. Don't forget that Nazi Germany arose through democracy, and that mass conscription arose out of the democratic ideals of the French Revolution!
"Liberal democracy is the only substantive independent variable that has changed from pre-WWII conditions."
What about US hegemony? What about the imperial bases in Germany and elsewhere? What about the anti-militarism that arose in Europe due to WWII? What about the common threat of the USSR which resulted in close military ties? Democracy is a factor, yes - but only because it allows the state to make easy war against its subjects, while fooling them into believing they have power. But this is still war, albeit not between states.
Lastly, the European states have no respect for economic liberties, i.e. private property, so your point is moot.
To paraphrase Curly Howard,
"They were victims of soycomstance!"
See Guns, Germs, and Steel
I'm actually in the middle of reading it, but the abscence of large mammals suitable for domestication, coupled with an East-West major continental axis were the main reasons why Eurasians had the majority of those virulent dieases. Eurasians weren't nearly as sucsessful displacing/exterminating the "primitive" cultures in the tropics. Sub-Saharan Africa (sans South Africa), The Amazon, New Guinea, etc.
Population size was not a causal factor in the least.
See 1491
Tenochitlan was larger than both Paris and London. The Inca Empire was one of the largest in the world. Even in North America, the Mound Builder and Mississippian cultures sustained large, dense populations.
Essentially, Eurasian's sucsess in the Americas was entirely dependent on "some lucky phenonmena".
Also, your position begs the question,
" what qualifies as 'superior'?"
"Endorsed the principle of self-determination of nations."
Yea if you were white, democratic and subservient to American interests.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
The Inca empire was not one of the largest in the world. There are dozens of empires that were more populated along with a greater land mass and this is not even in the modern era.
I think something that helped the Americas have a dense population was maze and beans which provided higher nutriental value then the wheat crops of Europe. Rice is nutriental also so that is why you also tend to see dense populations in Asia.
Europe's success in the Americas is based mostly on the virulent diseases that they brought with them. Things like smallpox, typhus and measals were much more virulent then the syphilis that the Americas had. Though syphilis would rage through Europe after the discovery of the Americas it did not cause as many deaths as the diseases in the Americas.
Democracies more respectful of civil and economic liberties? Don't make me laugh. Under medieval monarchy, government spending as percentage of GDP hovered between 5-8%. Most modern democracies hover between 40 and 50%, the US included. Until King James came along, you didn't have smoking bans. There were no "diversity seminars", multiculturalism, compulsory education, wage controls, "sin taxes", carbon taxes, environmentalism, feminism, health-and-safety nannyism, drug wars (barring the Opium Wars, which were engineered by a constitutional monarchy), racial quotas, wholly-fiat currencies, unions, mandatory wheelchair ramps and universities actually taught people things worth knowing rather than blowing taxpayers money on useless crap like "Queer Theory", "Women's Studies" or "Black History Month". Taxes were utterly laughable in comparison to their modern rates, and most of them were flat to boot.
Civil liberties were, at worst, about equal; torture still exists, and where one could once have been imprisoned for blasphemy or speaking ill about the King, one can now be imprisoned for insulting Muhammad or questioning the Armenian Genocide, and frankly there's some quite compelling evidence they were actually better (freedom of education being a biggie).
We're talking about a society where a 10% flat tax was viewed as unspeakable, and where people understood that the king was a seperate and hostile power to them, rather than the Stockholm Syndrome and mind warping social democracy breeds. Plus, the national debt actually decreased in peacetime. Hoppe has a lot more on this, though you don't need a professor to tell you that individual freedom has dramatically decreased throughout the 20th century.
Imperial hegemony and colonial subjugation existed for thousands of years without examples of vigorous capitalism, freedom or any kind of substantive and long lasting peace among its adherents.
Is there even any point in debating a partisan?? Seriously, Centinel, you have completely failed to even comprehend what I wrote. Your knee-jerk reaction is "he wrote something about 'imperial hegemony and colonial subjugation' so he must be espousing it. What an idiot! Quick, I better debunk imperial hegemony and colonial subjugation before someone else beats me to it..."
Let me walk you through it. Your fallacy is "affirming the consequent." In other words:
A->B B -------- A
This is not a consistent syllogism. Its very close cousin, is consistent:
A->B A ------- B
Now, substitute to see what I mean in this case:
A: Democratic Peace Theory B: Peace between Democracies
But the very point in contention is whether A is true, so the second syllogism gets your argument nowhere.
It is amusingly contradictory that the prevailing (faulty) argument on this anarchist website is that peace can only be explained by absolutist rule with an iron fist.
Actually, any form of tyranny, however honest or dishonest (liberal) is not peace, it is enslavement. When the slaves stop chafing at their master's irons, that is not "peace", it is resignation. The only kind of peace is honest peace and that is only really achieved with the complete absence of any systematic form of aggression.
Equallly inexplicable is that many anarchists, including Hoppe, frequently defend monarchism which is simply statism or absolutism with a hereditary face. And monarchism is neither stable, prosperous or capitalist -- unless anarchist dogma suddenly believes that mercantilism benefits any but the few in power.
Simply false. Hoppe shreds all forms of government tyranny. What the hell were all those Republican and Democratic revolutions in the 19th and 20th centuries about, if not the brutal abuse of power at the hands of monarchs?? Hoppe's only point is "you thought monarchies were bad, wait until you see democracies." He does not endorse a return to monarchy, even as a transitional stage to liberty. Instead, Hoppe endorses strategic and progressive secession and localization of governments, with the ultimate goal of unlimited secession.
Clayton -
You're a good poster Clayton. My opinion: you are wasting value post time if you wish to discuss things with this guy. So unless you like his posts so you can use them as a sounding board for the community to see you present an idea, or for you to clarify thoughts on, or experiment with something new (all fine reasons) - there probably isn't much value in posting to this guy .
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
That isn't my argument; I am referring to government spending as a percentage of GDP, not government spending in absolute terms.
When I refer to "mind warping", I refer to the fact that most citizens of most monarchies considered their king to be a seperate and oftentimes hostile figure to their own interests. There was no delusion under monarchy that "government is us", or that the national debt didn't matter because "we owe it to ourselves". The whole reason the divine right of kings had to be invented is because people could clearly see this; whereas most citizens of democratic regimes believe they have somehow consented to rule by faceless bureaucrats and that government controlled resources and property are "public" or "social" (the latter being an Orwellian word if I've ever seen one).
The bounty of communication is due to technology; being a monarchy evidently didn't stop the Holy Roman Empire from inventing the printing press, nor the other medieval societies from adopting it. And how are freedoms more vigorous today? There is more legislation and more regulation of individual's lives and liberties than in any pre-20th century society in all of human history. Rarely is the possibility or notion that the expansion of the god-state is not the solution to all ills discussed in Western media. Take the "debate" over the financial crisis in the mainstream media. The positions held essentially vary between either "Stimulus and bailouts are good for the economy" and "Banks should have been nationalized and there needs to be more government control of the economy to prevent this ever happening again.". There are some more minor voices that can be better in certain respects, but in others they are even worse, like the protectionist Buchananites or the crypto-Marxists who want to establish a maximum wage.
How precisely do you go about fixing these issues in a "liberal" democracy? The academic, media and political establishment are all socially democratic at their core, with minorities of neoconservatives mixed in. No career politician is going to cut subsidies or entitlements, and globalist entities like the EU make it more and more difficult to stand apart in national policy anyway (look at the attacks on Switzerland for it's banking privacy). "Climate change" is the new cause-du-jour for massive assaults on property rights.
Public anger over the recession is rarely directed in a libertarian way; it is either directed at the "greed" of speculators and other bogeymen or the corruption of the banksters. The latter is good, but is not enough on it's own, and often the anger assumes the banksters are corrupt because of a lack of regulation and oversight, and that new forms of government control, such as higher capital gains taxes and the aforementioned wage caps, must be instituted at an international level to prevent future recessions. Anger, when it is directed at the government at all, is often directed because the public believes the government simply stood by as a "sleeping watchdog" during the recession, rather than being the very cause of it through it's system of perverse incentives and inflationism.
If you can think of ways to solve these issues, more power to you. If being pessimistic about Western democratic (and especially Anglospheric) issues makes me a mad monarchist, well call me George III.
@vive: I like to use the belligerents as a springboard to write the most damning possible refutations of widely-held statist beliefs... it's primarily for the benefit of the lurkers. Plus, I see a bit of my old, pre-2008 neocon self in Centinel.
"@ cain
"Even after the native americans, aztecs, inca and others weathered the effects of disease, they still had a tremendous advantages defending their ancestors lands, a larger population, and vastly more natural resources and range from which to counter attack. However, these backward civilizations did not unite or form any kind of substantive effort to defend their land."
First, the meso-American cultures were not "backward." Second, Tenochtitlan was not conquered by the Spanish until smallpox wiped out most of the city. Third, the Spanish utilized the hatred of the Aztecs by surrounding villages in order to turn them against the strongest power.
"They did not leverage Western technology or practices, they did nothing but engage in brutal tactical warfare against the West and sometimes foolishly against themselves."
They had never met Westerners before and when they did the Westerners were claiming their land for the Spanish king. Thank god Europeans never fought amongst each other or else they might be "backward" like the meso-Americans.
"No, disease was a fleeting impediment, indian society and culture was the main culprit. it was and remained backward and unable to assert or defend itself despite decades of tremendous opportunity to turn the tide against tiny and vulnerable European settlements."
Yes, it was not a smallpox epidemic of 1510 and 1521 or even a measles outbreak of 1531, 1563 and 1595 or a typhus outbreak of 1545 and 1576 or a mumps outbreak 1550. It was not the fact that decade after decade the native populace of meso-America continually expericed germ outbreaks which would destroy their population numbers. Oh yes, it was their "backward" society.
Honestly, I do not go out of my way to call people eurocentrist because I think it is really a overused term in the historical community, kind of like calling someone a racist in the public realm, but honestly, stop the eurocentric claptrap. Do not talk about things you have no understanding of.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
"I guess I must have committed a fallacy for stating the obvious that European culture dominates the Western Hemisphere and Native American culture is marginalized even generations after its initial collapse, it has still not emerged."
It is not a fallacy. It is just ignorance.
":Could it be that it was really backward since it remains marginalized even after the effects of disease have subsided ?"
Yes, centuries of slavery and racial marginzalization haven't occured at all.
"And is a culture really advanced and worthy of duplication if it doesn't have the wherewithal to unite despite an overwhelming advantage in geography and population to defeat a common enemy ?"
Who said anything about duplication? See again you are talking from a point of ignorance. The Aztecs had enemy tribes around them. The Europeans recruited local tribes to attack the Aztecs because they knew they were the dominate power in the region.
"At least liberal democracies have usually come to the assistance of each other when one is threatened. Indeed, virtually all of the military-industrial complex of Western civilization is intertwined among many disparate liberal democracies across North America, Europe and even Japan."
Great job applying a modern style of government to an ancient society. There were just so many liberal democracies floating around Europe. Let us see you have
The Spanish: No wait...they had a king
The English: No
The French: No
The Holy Roman Empire: No
Portugal: No
Russia: No
Italy: No
Are you getting the point yet?
"No single weapon system is made exclusively in a single liberal democracy. Also, virtually all of the most advanced of these weapon systems are denied to non-democratic states. This is another reason why DPT is on solid ground, the military infrastructure of these nations is heavily integrated while it is almost universally off limits to autocratic regimes for good reason."
And this has nothing to do with what we are discussing. Well at least I shut you up on the epidemics portion. Now just need to lock down the extras.
"In addition, I challenged you and any other anarchists and monarchist apologists on this forum to wager $1000 over a ten year period that any higher order democracies on the list would engage in war and no anarchists have agreed to this challenge."
The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate how a decade of no war between democratic states proves that the so-called DPT is correct.
"Your notion that slavery as practiced by Athens is equivalent to the civil and politcal rights enjoyed by Americans is absurd, period."
I never said that - in fact there are different kinds of slavery (even e.g. within the chattel slavery of Ancient Greece).
"I can name several off the top of my head, including the GErman invasion of France in 1871 and the Crimea War a decade earlier"
Several = 2??
"However, since 1945 -- there have been exactly zero wars between democracies"
As I pointed out, the democratic states have turned to internal war since in modern times it is far less costly and more efficient - this is one major factor in the lack of wars between democratic states. But this is not peace at all - rather the 'Democratic Peace Theory' should be called the 'Democratic Internal War External Peace Theory'.
"Wherever America is strong and dominant peace, prosperity, freedom and stability prevail."
Do you really think that you live under the best possible institutional conditions for all of these things?
"However compare this with pax Russia and you will see that communist dominated hegemony leads to numerous wars, genocides and insurrections."
1) The lack of these things under democratic regimes does not mean that democracy was the cause, and 2) Democracy is itself a form of communism, in which there is partial public control of the means of production: abuses existed according to the extent of this.
"WHy did the SOviet see fit to attack virtually all of the vassals under their sway while the US has not attack a single liberal democracy in over 70 years of reign?"
1) because the USSR was much more of a basketcase than the West and the threat of secession by its vassals was more real and 2) because there was less wealth for the states to exploit through internal war in the Eastern Bloc than in the West and the regimes of these vassals had much less control over the exploitation of their subjects than the western regimes did, thus making secession comparatively advantageous.
Also the wager remains open for you to put up $100,000,000 to be paid to me if there is ever a war between democratic states. I will also put up the same amount, and if at the end of time there has not been a war between democratic states, I will pay this amount to you in full.
Centinel:This is called empirical evidence. It is not a fallacious argument to cite fact. You may not like it, but you have to deal with it.
I, for one, deal with it by pointing out the following. Are you ready? Here goes...
LOGIC > EMPIRICISM
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Centinel:@aristippus please allow me to identify the criteria and the states that qualify as liberal democracies and therefore representative of DPT, not you.
please allow me to identify the criteria and the states that qualify as liberal democracies and therefore representative of DPT, not you.
How about you actually, you know, identify the criteria for us?
Centinel:You know, A -> B so B-> A or A/B * C + 1/D with A = wet and B = raining, C = no hat and D= Hoppe.
Either you have no understanding whatsoever of basic logic or you're just trolling. I'm not sure which one is worse.
Centinel:It is not a contract or consent to be ruled, it is a contract to imprison statists in a institutionalized framework from which they can do as little harm to civil, political and economic rights as possible.
And when asked to explain just how that institutionalized framework actually does imprison "statists", you have hemmed, hawed, and repeated the bare assertion. It would seem you have no intellectual leg to stand on. Your position is intellectually bankrupt. As you're fond of saying...
I submit that this whole "Democratic Peace Theory" - why aren't you calling it "Higher-Order Democratic Peace Theory" yet, Centinel? - is itself a giant red herring to distract people from the 800-lb. gorilla in the room: the US government and its hegemony over most of the rest of the world.
Centinel:Besides the strudy validity and reliability of empirical evidence supporting DPT (no liberal democracies have ever fought a war) the following is a short list of the logical evidence supporting the theory:
1. The fact that you even use phrases like "logical evidence" strongly implies to me that you see no difference between logical reasoning and empirical evidence.
2. Your "short list" is just a bunch of claims, claims, claims without any support. It's not up to us to refute them - it's up to you to back them up. The burden of proof strikes again.
Centinel:Amusingly, anarchists claim that citing the absence of war between liberal democracies is somehow a fallacy a gigantic proportion since they claim that the correlation is fleeting (without any evidence of their own) . However, when you point out to these anarchists that absolutely no anarcho-capitalist society has existed for any length of time in all of recorded history, they claim that this is a fallacy as well. So the absence of empirical evidence is no argument against anarchism YET the presence of overwhelming empirical evidence is a fallacy if it supports a theory?!!
Again, logic trumps empiricism. The notion of correlation implies causation, or post hoc ergo propter hoc, is a logical fallacy per se as there is no necessary logical connection between correlation and causation. One must explain the causation itself.
Where is the "overwhelming empirical evidence"? All I see you doing is claiming that no "democracies" have gone to war with each other since the end of World War II. Wait, no, you meant no "higher-order democracies" have done so, right? Or did you mean no "liberal democracies" have done so? I'm confused - especially since you obstinately refuse to provide your definitions for these terms.
At this point, though, I don't think you're trolling - at least not in the traditional sense of trolling as online deception. You seem to honestly believe that you're making rock-solid logical arguments. However, when I and others point out to you that you're doing anything but that, you simply deny it, repeat your bare assertions, try to change the subject, and engage in rhetorical tactics intended to shut us up. You've gone so far as to ignore me outright, but obviously I don't care, since I'm responding to you anyway. Even ignoring me won't shut me up, you see.
There are none so blind...
Centinel,
Bison are held captive today, but are not "domesticated" in the sense that cows are. As I stated native cities were some of the largest in the world at the time, so they certainly had the wherewithal to sustain huge populations.
You gotta read more: Spanish Conquest of Mexico
Yeah, and European cities were squeaky clean, right? Again you gotta read more: Spanish amazed by cleanliness of Tenochitlan
They were not destined to decline, Eurasians got lucky.
I think you are painting with too broad a brush here. Why would the Iriquios and Algonquins, two societies embattled for a bitter struggle for supremacy, ally themselves against some new and seemingly innocuous colonists? That's like questioning why the English and French wouldn't ally during the 100 Years War. Your ignorance is astounding.
Surives for how long? Hunter gatherer cultures had been existant much longer than the oldest "Liberal Democracy". They were much more free as individuals than any Europeans past the Neolithic. Prosperity is a relative measure. What is more peaceful, a tribal raid, or Antietam?
I don't think he understands that democracy = / = science no matter how many names he wants to throw out - or he has yet to show it does. Markets however are science; and the division of labor is the foundation of civilization, this is an uncontroversial fact. Market action is the unavoidable engine for the human civilized condition
Now if he is saying hegmonies in power usually don't fight within each other - or the US has a better hegemony than other hegemonies, than he may be stating something.... still not a science though. There is no reason to approach this man from an anarchist position, as that would do no good and would put you on equal footing with him - but see him as a man who has a difficult time stating and seeing fact.
why aren't you calling it "Higher-Order Democratic Peace Theory" yet, Centinel?
+1
Look at those goalposts roll! I bet they could do 60mph on a paved highway!
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
despite the fact that there have been numerous wars and conflicts since the end of WWII AND liberal democracy has proliferated --- YET no war between any liberal democracies.
It hasn't rained where I live for 10 days. I guess it's never going to rain again.
I'm not saying you are making a value judgement. But your argument seems to be centered on some sort of inherent Eurasian "superiority", which is just not the case.
Where Native Americans stood technologically in 1491, versus where Eurasians stood, is just a coincidence of history, a happy accident for the Eurasians. Nothing more, nothing less. That is my point.
Liberal democracy may be in ascendance, but the causal factor for that ascendancy is certainly still up for debate. This is sort of analagous to the Native American issue, because you seem to look at the result of history as proof of "superiority" without looking at any of the causal factors. I'd say U.S. Military hegemony is a main driver of democracy's rise as a system of government. Since you are so into "challenges", I challenge you to name me 10 liberal democracies that have not had overt or clandestine U.S. backed military forces involved in the transition to that system of government. Then name me 10 more that have not received some sort of U.S. foreign aid.
Also, your challenge doesn't make any sense, since a neutral third party is required to judge what is a "reasonable scenario". I'll give it a shot:
Italy defaults and attempts to re-assert their sovereignty. Germany and France invade them. Before you scoff, they were threatining Greece with as much:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/europe/in-europe-a-crisis-teeters-toward-cataclysm/article2162098/
Liberal democracy has a big fault I can think of. My neighbor, Ray, has an I.Q. of about 80. He loves professional wrestling. He's been an unemployed auto detailer for about three years. He keeps calling the town about my yard, so the town threatened to sue me for $120,000. He is in his 40s, so he gets to vote, and since the town agrees with him, he gets to point their really big gun in my face, to force me to do his bidding. Also, since he's unemployed, my taxes feed him.
That is why democracy is shitty when it's compulsory. The Rays of the world get to tell me what to do, and I'm forced to support their useless existence.
I would also argue that the United States today is a fscist regime, as are most of the western European states. Command economies controlled by a small cadre of oligarchs.
I am waiting.... And please refrain from the ad hominems they reflect more on you, than any shortcoming in me.
Wow
heh, heh, [short]coming in me.
Uh, I gave your challenge a whirl in my last post.
Part of the problem here is the definition of war. I pointed this out earlier. I don't think any two modern states are going to line up tanks point across each other's border. It will probably never happen again in history. This doesn't mean that the world has become peaceful anymore than the end of castle seiges by trebuchet meant that the world had become peaceful. It's simply an artifact of the progress of the technology of war. It doesn't make sense to get in your neighbor's face when you both have nukes and when even your conventional weapons are sufficient to do hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars of economic damage in a matter of days.
The most advanced weapons of modern warfare between states are actually the think-tanks. The Hoover Institution or Brookings Institution or the CFR are far more dangerous to our "allies" than the Pentagon. The purpose of these think-tanks from the perspective of the State is to advance the interests of the State in the most efficient manner possible. The weapons employed under the think-tank system of warfare are political sabotage, social demoralization, propagandization, infiltration, and so on. Of course, it's not just a purely intellectual game... CIA, JSOC, etc. stand ready to back up the State Dept's shenanigans with wet-work - all black ops, of course.
So, we don't line up red-coats versus blue-coats and fire muskets into ranks of infantry while the officers point their sabres skyward on their rearing white horses (in the rear, of course). We don't dig trenches and gas each other anymore. We don't send divisions of troops on amphibious landing crafts onto each other's shores anymore. That just says those are all outmoded military strategies, it doesn't say that democracies are at peace with one another.