I only tried to answer the question “How do governments monopolise violence?”

If you want to keep asking questions in a discussion forum, don’t be surprised when you get answers.

Was the attack on Salman Rushdie consistent with mainstream Muslim theology

If I remember correctly, Rushdie’s crimes were that of blasphemy. Though there is a theological debate whether such a crime should lead to worldly punishment, such as beheading, the very accusation can and has justified religious violence.

Not when those same agencies are engaged in reckless or criminal behavior.

I doubt it was reckless. That the judge who signed off on the warrant defended associates of Epstein is enough for me to know that Trump is scaring all the right people.

It’s often used against political opponents and whistleblowers.

It doesn’t matter his rationale.

So they're different because they're different. Great explanation!

To be fair, it was a shit question based on a false analogy.

Because it is a public and sensitive matter. It should be in an authority control, not in private hands or businesses.

That’s exactly the line of reasoning used to justify the state persecution of Assange and Snowden. The government’s criminality and murderous barbarism are certainly sensitive to some parties.

That they are using the overly-broad world war 1 era law used to justify jailing whistleblowers and critics of the government is enough for me to know that it reeks of politicization of the Department of Justice.

Why is it against the law to posses declassified documents?

None of this has been proven and all of it is without precedent. None of us have seen the affidavit. So your claim he broke the law is without merit, and given a long and poor history of such claims, just another conspiracy in my books.

Probably because a monopoly in trade has nothing to do with a monopoly on violence.

An Atlantic article. Nice. Here’s a NYT article.

Can presidents declassify matters directly?
Yes, because it is ultimately their constitutional authority.
…

Do presidents have to obey the usual procedures?
There is no Supreme Court precedent definitively answering that question.
…

What about nuclear secrets?

They are distinct, although for purposes of criminal law there is little substantive difference.

Congress has passed a law, the Atomic Energy Act, that imposes its own legal restrictions on mishandling information about how to build a nuclear bomb or enrich nuclear material. Such information is called “restricted data.” Legally, it is not the same thing as being “classified” under the executive order, although in everyday parlance people often refer to it as classified.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/14/us/politics/trump-classified-documents.html

Can you arrest a police officer or any government agent and jail him for committing violence? You cannot.

The people or institution that claim the monopoly on violence has what Weber called the “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” The term “legitimate” underlies the principle. The principle does not imply that the state is the only entity committing violence, but it is the only entity authorized to commit violence.

Murder, torture, beatings...the usual. Do you live in Utopia by any chance?

Those are crimes, though. You’d be tried and imprisoned should you commit that violence. You’d be tried and imprisoned by those who have the monopoly on violence.

The president can declassify what he wants. He’s the commander in chief.

Yes, I believe it was politically motivated, because they know people such as yourself will spread it uncritically and use it to guide their activity.

According to his defense he had a standing order to declassify documents so he could take them for work at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI suspiciously waited until before the midterms to retrieve those documents, making a show of it no doubt. This is the same FBI that deceived the country and foreigners like @ssu with Russiagate.

But I can be violent. Am I the exception? Do you find it impossible to be violent? The government do not seem to me to have the monopoly at all.

If I were violent, there would be consequences, it would be difficult...


But if 'difficult' is the criteria for holding a monopoly, then certainly large corporations hold several monopolies.

Which sort of violence can you do?

And then he can brush of this as a politically motivated witch hunt, which not only @NOS4A2 thinks it is.

What else can it be?

Yes, the monopoly on violence is seized and held through violence, essentially. I’m not sure might equals better, in this instance.

No, Amazon does not have the monopoly on internet sales.

If what is my point?

It's not an argument, it's a question. How do governments monopolise violence? I seem quite capable of being violent.

It’s gained the old fashioned way: by brute force and conquest. It’s maintained and made legitimate by law, for instance the “use of force” doctrines in policing. If you or I armed ourselves and forced our way into someone’s home, or pointed our weapons at someone, or cuffed someone and threw them in the back of our car, we’d be criminally charged. The state, however, is well within their legal right to do the exact same thing. This distinction is peculiar to states, but when it isn’t it is only because “the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it” (Max Weber).

Collectivist groups? I’m not so sure about that. Band societies, maybe, most of them kin.

It’s a document dispute about the National Archives. And if there are classified materials involved the president can declassify whatever he wants.

What I see is two-tiered justice. No FBI broke into Clinton’s house with guns drawn when she stored classified info in her house and destroyed evidence with hammers and bleachbit. They didn’t do it when the Clintons stole furniture from the white house. Trump dares to take a letter addressed to him from Obama and they show up with rifles and vests.

The FBI is stealing something or planting something, one or the other.

Imagine if Trump’s DOJ raided Biden’s house in the lead up to the midterms. He was impeached for simply asking Zelensky to look into claims about Biden’s dealings in Ukraine.

Trump was called a fascist at the mere suggestion of investigating Biden or Clinton. They are everything they accused him of.

No such situation was forced upon me. I don’t think remaining in the womb is a preferable existence.

No one forces me to work, though, except the state. Some of my time and effort is stolen from me. I’m not sure that is the case with what you’re talking about.

I like working. Like you said, without it I die. I can use my myself to sustain myself. It’s amazing when I think of it.

All of which I learned from individuals. I have never met the collective, let alone learned anything from it.

I’m reading what you wrote. We’re talking past each other. I’m arguing about moral behavior; you’re arguing about moral outcomes.

Like I said, I think moral outcomes are illusory in the sense that they are never moral enough, an infinite regress, so one needn’t concern himself with such thoughts. Had you known the woman’s kids might go hungry you might buy the more expensive chair. She spends the money on booze instead. She gets drunk and kills a family in an accident. Regardless of the outcome you acted morally.

There is a lot to be said about it, but one thing is for certain in my mind: the existence of a “collective” can be seriously questioned. It’s abstract, amorphous, mind-dependant, something like a “natural kind”—a “political kind”. Utilizing it as a subject of evaluation focuses value inwards rather than in a direction that would benefit actual flesh-and-blood people. When it comes to the question “what is more natural”, valuing others above our own ideas seems to me more natural

I am dense, I guess. I can’t see how voluntary, consensual cooperation, whether in the market or elsewhere, is not moral behavior. Moral people purchase things in such a manner because against all other forms of exchange (robbery, theft, extortion, forced labor, etc.) it is the moral one.

Your moral behavior seems an infinite regression because it doesn’t end, or at least ends where a vast number of improvements could still be made, and thus never be moral enough. Or it must satisfy some “moral outcome”, or be considered “morally optimal”, which it never does.

The consensual and voluntary exchange is a just transfer of holdings from one person to another, and thus moral behavior. So long as the property is transferred in such a manner, no one else has any moral right to it because they would have to engage in an unjust transfer in order to attain it.

Sorry, but it is moral, right, proper, and virtuous conduct to pay someone for services rendered and to abide by voluntary and mutual agreements. It is immoral to do the opposite. You don’t go to the convenience store and walk out without paying, or refuse to pay the builder after he’s done.

The “market” isn’t a human being. It doesn’t make moral considerations, so we agree. I don’t know how we move from that to the argument that the fruits of my labor shouldn’t be mine when it was procured via voluntary exchange between two consenting parties, as renumeration for work I performed for someone who wanted to buy it. Whose money should it be, if not mine?

Has my labor and wealth not paid for such “benefits”? That the slave benefits from the services provided to him by his master does not alter the injustice of such relationship. He is fed, housed, clothed—how dare he opine that the master exploits him.

First it’s the market doesn’t take into account moral considerations, now it’s the market doesn’t result in “overall just outcomes”. What state has achieved “overall just outcomes”?

Good and sober points.

But they are not party to the contract.

I am only saying it is wrong to take the fruits of someone’s labor, not that good statists cannot voluntarily fund the state and its efforts.