I have joked that a government is a social advance on roving bandits. Roving bandit bands show up and take random amounts ofat random times, probably unsustainably so. Governments take predictable, usually sustainable amounts of goods at scheduled times.
It's a joke, but it's kind of true.
It is generally true. The part where it deviates from full truth, is the ever present temptation to take more than is sustainable - just once, and perhaps with the best possible of intentions.
Tolkein pretty much said in later life, that "The Ring" was an allegory for political power ( his stories were far more than political dire warnings, I don't think he'd have insulted his readers with anything short of really good stand alone stories)
All the way through the tales of the ring, one after another "would use the power (of the ring) for good". But found that they became addicted to using it, and couldn't stop.
It's the same with the ability to extract taxes and resources, even for the best of motives. Suddenly too much has been extracted, and things change big time.
Messing about with paper money has been one example of that, since the time that John Law introduced the idea to the king of France, and the Mississippi bubble and subsequent crash were the result.
Race is a sociocultural construct, having no genetic validity. Link Removed
So race exists in the social sciences, but not in the hard ones. Nope. My ex-friend told me about how African-Americans had been deliberately bred for stupidity while under slavery. Uh, there is absolutely no documentation of that. There is lots of DNA evidence that slave "owners" impregnated their captives though...
I could not be his friend after we'd had that email exchange. It's such a grotesque belief in an otherwise seemingly smart and kind guy that...well...I picture trying to squeeze around an elephant in his kitchen. He excludes people from his compassion based on skin color. :( :( :(
. I wish I had the clarity, eloquence, energy and strength of conviction of Frederick Douglass!
The part of England where I grew up has very few coloured faces. In the former coal mining, steel making and ship building towns, you can see all of the dysfunction and anti social behaviour that is attributed to poor urban "blacks" in America - but here it's people with white faces who are doing it. Agreed, The colour of a face, or any other supposedly racial feature, tells us nothing about the qualities of the person (or collection of persons ;):hug:) behind that face.
Anyway...
...How would we go about fostering a culture of mutual, voluntary co-operation, resource-sharing and compassion?
...it would seem we'd all be happier in such.
Take a look at George Ayittey's Ted talk. The full discussion that he touches on is a long one ( his learned book, " indigenous African institutions " is over 500 pages, it's expensive too, so best borrowed from a library), but arguably, several of the indigenous African legal systems and political systems have potential to develop far more free, peaceful and prosperous systems than what we have at present.
Traditional African institutions are typically very big on charity, as indeed was western civil society, until the state taxed away the means that could have gone to charity. You can still see remnants of that, for example the shriners' hospitals for children, or the remaining help for members windows and orphans from some of the fraternities.
A very interesting European system was the pre colonial Irish customary legal system. I don't know how to post links on this interface, but I posted a link on Ice_Fire's trauma diary "listening to silence" a couple of days back. The Irish had developed a sophisticated system of women's rights, way in advance of any of the statist systems in Europe. Showing that any absence of women's rights in the currently described African customary law systems, isn't a systemic failing of customary systems in general.
:hug:@
