Cultural learnings of the Internet.

[johndh]

That is the difference between someone with a normal moral compass (being nice is normal) and one with a fucked-up compass (we have rules to make us act nice to each other).

It doesn't necessarily take a whole lot to get a decent person (or a group of decent people, more often) to do terrible things by giving them an authority figure and/or a common enemy. While experiments in the social sciences are sometimes dubious, they seem to show pretty consistently that we have only a thin veneer of decency covering a boiling cesspool of awfulness. Mob mentality is a hell of a thing.

[psi29a]

You can rationalize anything in dire situations as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Ande ... annibalism

I was making the point that when there when there was no 'push' or 'situations' that people generally behave themselves, otherwise shit would rapidly fall apart even with laws as you can't regulate _everything_.

Rules and laws are usually made to prevent the minority from doing stupid shit that the majority generally agreed on.

Interesting twist on this is for old laws that are no longer relevant to this day and age, but are still enforced or taken advantaged of, for example the US's 2nd amendment. Did those writing it take into account the changes (advances?) in 'arms' that would happen in the following 300 years? The "arms" industry relies on this these laws to stay profitable so it is in their best interest to put their spin on it because if they go under then many employees would then unemployed. What is the greater good here? That people have jobs to feed their families or reduction of "arms" that would otherwise be used by 3 year olds to shoot their parents?

"people-are-getting-shot-by-toddlers-on-a-weekly-basis-this-year"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... this-year/

[johndh]

I was making the point that when there when there was no 'push' or 'situations' that people generally behave themselves, otherwise shit would rapidly fall apart even with laws as you can't regulate _everything_.

I agree. I think we're just starting from a different default state, where in your explanation a society with rules is the default, whereas I view that as a necessary deviation from the default state of anarchy.

Interesting twist on this is for old laws that are no longer relevant to this day and age, but are still enforced or taken advantaged of, for example the US's 2nd amendment. Did those writing it take into account the changes (advances?) in 'arms' that would happen in the following 300 years?

Given that this was written in the wake of an armed rebellion, I think that it was very much meant that the people should be equipped to take up arms against their government should the need arise again, so as the government gets more firepower so should the people. I'll refrain from weighing in on whether this is good or bad, or whether the potential benefits of self-defense (both from common criminals and from tyrants) outweigh the potential downsides of gun-related fatalities.

[Antsan]

I agree. I think we're just starting from a different default state, where in your explanation a society with rules is the default, whereas I view that as a necessary deviation from the default state of anarchy.

As an anarchist (as in "I think institutionalized hierarchies are dangerous"):
The natural state for people isn't anarchy but hierarchy. Look at how tribes work and you'll see there is a definite hierarchy. That's true for all primates, as far as I know. Groups automatically will have a leader above a certain size (I think it was 5 or 6 people). Mobs can only function because someone is taking the lead and others follow.
What you mean is probably "anomy" (the absence of rules), which also is not natural, if humans are at all like other primates.

So, in general I think an, uhm, "unregulated" society is bound to have laws. It's just going to happen. The hard part isn't to get people to follow rules, its getting them to follow the rules which are conductive to a well-functioning society, when that society is larger than just 200 people.

[psi29a]

Looks like Antsan beat me too it...

From what evidence there is, archaeologist and paleontologists have always found that there was at least some form of cooperation that arose naturally first as a familial unit, then later to blood-kin and tribes.

Given that this was written in the wake of an armed rebellion, I think that it was very much meant that the people should be equipped to take up arms against their government should the need arise again, so as the government gets more firepower so should the people.

This particular myth was busted when the tyrannical Lincoln (and his unitary government) invaded, subjugated and later occupied the Confederate States of America. The 2nd amendment works great when you are fighting an enemy who is 7000km away the other side of the ocean, when troop transport takes months and only half the army is committed to the Americas while the other half is on the European continent.

[johndh]

From what evidence there is, archaeologist and paleontologists have always found that there was at least some form of cooperation that arose naturally first as a familial unit, then later to blood-kin and tribes.

Sure. I guess what I'm referring to as a person's natural (a nebulous term, I know) or default state is what a person would do with neither external inhibition nor external encouragement. Taking this as the starting point, what would it take to make a person do or not do a given behavior? I think the best we can really do is conjecture, since it's a sort of primal situation that doesn't normally exist.

This particular myth was busted when the tyrannical Lincoln (and his unitary government) invaded, subjugated and later occupied the Confederate States of America. The 2nd amendment works great when you are fighting an enemy who is 7000km away the other side of the ocean, when troop transport takes months and only half the army is committed to the Americas while the other half is on the European continent.

Sometimes rebellions work, and sometimes they don't. I'm not a Civil War historian, so I can't really comment on whether the CSA had a real fighting chance or not. Either way, there have been plenty of uprisings, rebellions, and coups throughout the history of the world, some for the better and some for the worse, and an armed populace is better equipped to rebel or resist than an unarmed population. With today's military technology, the common populace with guns can't stand up against a million-strong military with satellite communications, drones, tanks, artillery, aircraft, etc., but given the past few decades of asymmetrical warfare, separatists just might be enough of a thorn in a nation's side to exhaust their resources and break them financially. If the people of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona decide that they don't want to cooperate with the federal government, how much debt and how many lives is an occupation worth to the American people? Do they really want to repeat what they've been seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past two presidencies? To be clear, I'm not saying that this is necessarily good or necessarily bad -- the last thing we need is a certain demographic with an oppression complex becoming the American version of ISIS this November -- but that does seem to be what the 2nd Amendment was written to allow. It was written by a group of revolutionaries who knew that their successors may some day be the baddies.

[psi29a]

A successful case for the 2nd amendment that backs up the fight with tyranny is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

However the end result of this rebellion was:

The new government encountered challenges including at least eleven resignations of county administrators. On January 4, 1947, four of the five leaders of the GI Non-Partisan League declared in an open letter: "We abolished one machine only to replace it with another and more powerful one in the making." The League failed to establish itself permanently and traditional political parties soon returned to power.

So again, the 2nd amendment failed to stop tyranny.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the right belongs to individuals, while also ruling that the right is not unlimited and does not prohibit all regulation of either firearms or similar devices.

This seems to indicate that there is still enough wiggle room which is why I brought it up to begin with because it isn't set in stone either. It is still being 'fought' about at the local, state and federal level.

The problem remains that the US has an abnormally high amount of gun related deaths per-capita than any other developed country in the world. The question is, what can be done about that?

Abolishing the 2nd amendment isn't an option, but thankfully the tools are there to amend the US constitution or as the supreme court ruled, that your right to arms isn't unlimited.


Update: I just came across this tidbit I thought was too good to pass up sharing:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/1389 ... ve-slavery

The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that.