. appearance dot

interesting concept S.
All judgements on the value of persons or things comes from the state. Sounds a bit like north Korea.
The only problem is that we need a benevolent dictator for your new world and human nature being what it is, this is pretty unlikely.

Ahhh, you'd spend all your days barricaded deep in the bowels of you palace. Remember, human nature being what it is, and power being the greatest drug of all, there would be constant plots against you. You'd probably be shot at, at least once a day. You'd never have any peace. You'd never be able to sleep. Eventually you'd go insane and wear Kleenex boxes on your feet.

Nice piece, Simon.
It should take exactly one year from sentencing to the Chamber. The murder rate in this country would drop faster than the pants off a drunk college coed.

Now, if I were dictator of America.....hmmmm....let's see....well, the Burger Chef restaurants would still be open (they had a double burger called the "Big Chef" that was just outstanding).
There would be no such such thing as the "WB".
MTV would stick to music videos and keep all their liberal propaganda and undermining of our culture (which is represented badly enough in the videos alone, for that matter) to themselves. Cartoon Network would show a few Amercian cartoons, too. Sci-Fi would immediately be ordered to stop making such ridicuous, cheap-ass, z-grade movies and just show rerun science fiction shows, for cryin' out loud! That's why they started in the first place.
No team franchise would ever be able to leave their home city for another for any reason. Loyalty is everything.
Free agency would be outlawed; see the last sentence above.

Kevin Federline would be castrated. Britney Spears would be forced to have her reproductive tract removed. Bad enough that they produced one (surely) moronic offspring already.
Michael Moore would mysteriously develop a terrible medical condition requiring him to undergo a radical lobotomy, and a mastectomy to get rid of his man-boobs. Also, at least once-weekly removal of his scruffy facial hair and forced combing of the hair on his head would be deemed in order.
Madonna, when appearing on American TV, would be restrained from using that fake British accent she's adopted.

An all-out attempt would be made to discover how to go back in time, and prevent the births of Jimmy Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, Al Franken, Sean Penn, Rosie O'Donnell and Natalie Maines.
If such a means is found, the parents of Cindy Sheehan would then be brought forward in time and shown what a total asshat their daughter has become in the present.

If I were dictator, that is......

It should take exactly one year from sentencing to the Chamber. The murder rate in this country would drop faster than the pants off a drunk college coed.

I doubt it. England used to kill those convicted within a few months, if that long. It didn't lower the murder rate.

As for the article...

I never really liked, as in respected, the concept of a Hobbesian State. It just doesn't ring true. Humans are not naturally anarchic, they're naturally sociable. But human societies are naturally antagonistic to all other human societies, on a very instinctive level. It is this antagonism that drives much of the advances in technology and organisation that we see today.

If you became lord of all humanity, you'd spend a certain amount of your time instigating or quelling factional conflicts in order to maintain efficiency. And yet the requirements for creating these factional divisions would include the creation of different power bases. That very division of power would be a threat to the authority of the State.

How would you overcome that threat to the State's viability? Would the divisions be based on geography? Socioeconomic status? Merit?

I guess what I'm asking is how will you deal with man's natural requirement for an enemy? The State itself won't work too well; it's far too easy to make people believe they love it to bother making them hate it, particularly when as global ruler your capacity for creating pathetic diversions is unparalleled.

To cactoblasta:

Firstly, my being emperor of the world is simply a rhetorical device that allowed me to speak directly to three things that interest me in the society: sex, crime, and drugs. I didn't take it seriously enough to be bothered defending it even as such a device, and so I'll address your comment in terms of the functioning of States per se, rather than some imaginary personal fiefdom.

The reason for the death penalty is not deterrence. It's punishment. The State has an obligation to exact from criminals generally a penalty proportionate to the crime committed. The cardinal term here is proportional. Life imprisonment, in my opinion, is a far crueller punishment than the clinical demise of a prisoner in the death chamber. It is the more humane (as well as the most resource efficient) way to deal with capital offenders. It is proportional because the life of the killer is taken in retaliatory response for the death of the killer's victim - whereas, when prisoners are incarcerated for decades at a time the whole of society is penalised through the necessity of supporting that prisoner in jail.

You argue that human societies are not naturally anarchic but sociable and that Hobbes in essence misunderstood human nature. Hobbes never denied that human beings are sociable. What he said is that those social relations are governed by force and often imposed on individuals by violence. Certainly, America's own history is illustrative of the degree to which violence plays a part in the formation of human society - if you disbelieve me study the history of the relations between settlers and indigenous natives. Or if you prefer an example from further afield, study the history of relations between settlers and the Austalian aboriginies.

Hobbes's argument is that in order to defend the individual and his community from the arbitrary imposition of violence by others there must be created a social Actor endowed with a total monopoly upon the use of violence, authorized and legitimate violence directed toward the preservation of the general peace necessary for commerce and all those other social relations which are generally grouped under the term 'Civil'. This social Actor is the sovereign power, in his time attached to the persons of Kings and other royalty, in our day attached to the State.

You talk about the creation of alternate power bases within a society (my mouse is barely functional and I can't quote you I'm afraid) as if these were a threat to the functional autonomy of the State. Perhaps you haven't realised that the division of the American State into the Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislature is of the very kind that you are talking about? I see no sign that the functioning of the State here is impaired by these divisions, just the opposite in fact. Every apparatus of rule must be capable of creating such divisions precisely in order to carry out the variety of tasks which make up efficient government. So far from being a threat to the working of the State, the creation of an effective bureaucracy, the subdivision of the functions of government into departments, chancellories, ministries and so forth, actually enhances the State's capacity to carry on its business.

What impairs the functioning of the State is not the creation of alternate power bases but the development of threats to its legitimacy. During the time of the American Civil War a threat to the legitimacy of the Union existed in the form of the Confederacy. That threat was overcome not through reason or morality or good intention but through the sustained application of violence which eventually proved to be overwhelming. Force, violence, is the fundamental, foundational, political act out of which all other political acts (such as law) come to birth.

I fail to see the relevance of your comment about the State not 'working too well' as an enemy. The enemy of whom? It's own citizens? Until the legitimacy of a State suffers some catastrophic reverse it cannot, by definition, be the enemy of its citizens. If you refer to some other State you comment becomes not merely nonsense but nonsense on stilts. States have proven to be very effective enemies of each other for centuries. So what is it you are referring to? It's precisely because States have throughout their history been inimical to each others' existence that human societies have never had any problem in finding enemies to hate. It's not so long since the Communist States of the East provided the perfect lightning-rod for the aggression, the paranoia and xenophobia of the Capitalist West. And now that the Communist bloc is one more failed empire those same tendencies are directed toward President Bush's Axis of Evil with just as much fervor and just as little critical thought.

If I were global ruler I would, as you say, have ample opportunity and more than sufficient means to direct the natural animosity that most human beings feel towards whatever is socially defined as 'The Other', 'those not like us' in whatever way I wished, so once again your comment seems peculiarly pointless. How would I deal with the need for an enemy? If I couldn't find one I'd make one, and far from this 'different power base' posing a threat to the stability and viability of my State, it would enhance its capabilities by providing an outlet for that antagonism which you referred to as a threat to my rule.

"If" you were dictator od America would you do away with the likes of col gene? If so I'd vote for you.

Well, I guess He told YOU!

I second that.

"If" you were dictator od America would you do away with the likes of col gene? If so I'd vote for you.

I second that as well.

I didn't take it seriously enough to be bothered defending it even as such a device, and so I'll address your comment in terms of the functioning of States per se, rather than some imaginary personal fiefdom.

In that case I retract my arguments. External foes can serve perfectly well as an appropriate foe for any State - terrorists for example are a wonderful enemy, both easily identified and impossible to eradicate.

But a world-state is a different organism, and that was the basis for my questions. In a world-state where all territory is yours, I feel the questions I raised would be relevant. The constructed foe would need a powerbase of its own to be used efficiently or the overwhelming capacity for focussed force that the planet could provide would crush it utterly. A guerilla movement could perhaps survive briefly, but even then only with the support of the administration.

Failure to crush such a threat would inspire doubt and rebellion in the thoughts of the populace; how can the hated foe continue to survive against the combined forces of the entire planet? Therefore the failure is in the State itself, or at least its administration. As as a result the State will fall or fracture, or your rule would fail.

Well, if you were emperor of the world, because you would have to rule the world else be an easy target for other more "organized" countries. Countries who do dictate some form of morality anyway.

I think if you were emperor there wouldn't be much left to rule over because obedient citizens would be strung out on drugs, alcohol, sex, or whatever their particular vice. Their vices would end up ruling their lives, not you. And I would submit they would not be productive to any real degree to your society, then could be used as slaves. Eventually you'd have a nation of slaves to no masters. Then of course rebellion.

What it really boils down to is this: Morality is one of the very few precarious links we have to "civilization." Without it, there is no society that can sustain itself since human nature is first and foremost selfish. If everyone is looking to their own desires and vices, wa-la, no society.

But you rule like the devil over that frozen milk!

And I doubt He'd have much issue with a nation of slaves, heheheh.

But if I were ANOTHER country and he had one such as he describes....I'd attack it! More land for me! Buwhahaha. Because really who would he have to defend it? Everyone would be too busy looking after their own interests or looking after their addictions. He could perhaps control drug traffic (though I doubt it) because we see how well it works now, even with LEGAL prescription drugs.

Of course I'd be politically correct enough to say I had to attack because try as I might, I just couldn't get him to see drug trafficking, (or whatever you like) was hurting MY country or better yet the world. So then I'd go to war and just swallow his little kingdom, or at the very least make it hard for everyone to fulfill their selfish desires, thus turning their angst on him. Revolution!

the penalty for illegal possession was death, you'd be surprised at how well it could be controlled

IT is death in Saudi Arabia, or was when my husband worked there some years back. He watched several beheadings over things such as drug trafficking. He said drug use is still fairly common tho.

When you are addicted to something, some may prefer death to going without. Or at least be willing to risk it.

Since you and Simon are on opposing time schedules, cacto, I'll be sure to mention that you have responded to His comment when He gets home today. Don't feel ignored, He just doesnt spend much time here.

No worries. I'm always interested in hearing his opinions even with a major time delay. No one else on this site argues from quite the same perspective as he does; it's worth a wait to see what he has to say.

And I would submit they would not be productive to any real degree to your society, then could be used as slaves.

Oh, that's not true. The poor wouldn't be able to afford drugs, so would have to work cos they didn't have a choice. And even the drugged can be useful; for example in kill squads or as menial labour, hell, they could be used as a source for organ donors if the government can find a stable enough drug compound that won't fuck up their bodies - the great soma of the fifth reich or whatever it would be called.

And there will always be some who don't want to use, so you don't need to worry about completely lacking a workforce.

TO cactoblasta:

my mouse is still behaving badly and I cannot quote you so bear with me if I don't use your own words (see? I rule nothing - not even a mechanical rodent). You make mention of the 'overwhelming force' available to a world-dictator. Good government (successful government, able to meet its objectives) is not a matter of force generally available but force targeted toward and able to be levied against its objective. For example, no foreign power of any description has ever successfully imposed its will in Afghanistan. Neither the British Empire, the USSR, nor the USA through its coalition of allies, has ever imposed peace, has ever realised a successful regime change, has ever been able to prevent the growth and export of opium and its derivatives.

A world dictatorship, like a national dictatorship, like the rule of some externally-seated hegemon, must be capable of flexible accommodation with regional commanders and groupings of power (such as the warlords of Ethiopia), so that they may be either a) brought to serve the overall purposes of those possessing the greatest degree of force available within a given situation; or used by the hegemonic power in the sense of 'divide and rule' so that its purposes may proceed in despite of such local power bases and groupings. This was the strategy generally used by the British Empire in India and Afghanistan.

The point you seem to be making throughout is that a global tyrrany would require opposition in order to deal with the antagonism inherent to human societies (since in your first post you denied in general that human beings per se as individuals are naturally antagonistic to each other). Personally, I believe you have this the wrong way round. Societies are antagonistic because they focus and express the antagonism inherent within the individuals who compose them, translating to a supra-individual level the hostilities that if otherwise unaddressed would lead to the factionalism that you initially referred to.

From the vista of practical politics the point is moot, either way. You seem to be saying that hegemonic powers require enemies to survive; and that a world-empire would collapse because it could have no enemies, since all parts of such a society are just that - parts of that society, rather than existing externally to it. In essence you seem to be saying that there is no political space available to the Other, and without the Other as Enemy no political entity can survive.

My point was that should I, as world-emperor, feel the need for such opposition then it could easily be manufactured - simply by designating some social group or category as such an Enemy. My point was that the existence of sub-divisions within the State actually enhances its ability to carry out whatever projects it may have (in the sense of administrative sub-units) and that the existence (or supply) of enemies to absorb violent contradictions within itself is never problematic for individual States since there are always other States with which it may contend (see the history of the English and the French, for example).

You also seem to argue that failure to destroy regional or other-based alternative power bases is always antithetical to the welfare of Empires (be they global or otherwise). But this is only true where such opposing structures of power are equipped with a world-view, a Weltanschauung, which gives it an internal coherence so great that it can gather to itself the means to deploy violence great enough to overturn whatever it is that it opposes (Byzantium opposed by Islam is the classic case in point).Where a world-view more potent than your own springs up and where it goes unsuccessfully opposed then yes, your tenure as world-emperor might be well of short duration. But where your enemy shares your view of the world, but disagrees with your disposition of it, then that Enemy may be accommodated if necessary, turned against others within the same region of the world who are also dissaffected, or co-opted to seve as client-rulers who profit from their association with the world-ruler.

To Tova7:

the same strictures on mice and quoting still apply. You say that if I were Emperor of the World I wouldn't have much to rule over because the population would be addicted to drugs, sex, whatever else their vices might be (and trust me, since I'd want a quiet, tractable, easily controlled population, I'd be doing my best to develop new and innovative vices to which they might become addicted so further ensuring that happy disposition to obey).

On the whole your posting seems to indicate that you give to 'morality' a very wide role. No one who is addicted to their vices can be a productive member of society and by extension therefore they cannot be moral. Since it's only as productive members of society that the individual Americans think of themselves as free, and since (apparently) for you everyone who is not free is a slave, the non-productive must by definition be slaves. The natural part of slaves is to rebel, and since that's so than the outcome of political rule which allows others to be the subject of their vices is the overthrow of that rule itself (since you assume or appear to that all slave revolts must be successful), which seems to you to be counter-productive, irrational, and therefore also immoral.

'What it really boils down to is this: Morality is one of the very few precarious links we have to "civilization." Without it, there is no society that can sustain itself since human nature is first and foremost selfish. If everyone is looking to their own desires and vices, wa-la, no society.'

That comment is the meat of what you had to say in your posting. Firstly, the entire tenor and tone of American society, its liberal individualism, its corporate and individual Capitalism, contradicts outright your assertion that human society can't sustain itself without 'morality'. That is, it so contradicts your assertion if by 'morality' you mean the corporativism and work ethic of the original founders whose abominable religiosity has had so profound a role in defining American civilization.In other words - America has morality, an ethic of selfishness and greed unsurpassed since the time of the Babylonians, who are without doubt the closest parallel to Americans in the ancient world. An ethic where each considers his interest to be paramount, where success is measured in terms of having more than your neighbour, where 'vice' only exists when its outed and made public.

Yet America exists, and thrives.

American society is defined by the impetus toward personal success, both in terms of social respect and financial well-being, achieved at the expense of others. American morality, in terms of the disposition of wealth in society and the privileges the control of wealth brings, is fundamentally geared toward the selfish individual whose activities and desires are regulated not by God but by Adam Smith's amoral 'guiding hand' of free-market entrepreneurialism. Looked at in this way, America is the most selfish society on Earth: yet it is a society, a civilization, and shows no immediate signs of disappearing in a puff of a smoke.

If America is a society defined by selfish pursuits that unintentionally benefit all, it's also a society defined by its appetites and their (almost) immediate gratification. What discourages you from wallowing in those appetites to the exclusion of every other consideration is not morality, but guilt. You (as a society) use sex to sell everything - from SUVs to the treatment of vaginal warts.

The presumption that if you buy a particular product you will somehow become irresistable to the opposite sex who will at once want nothing more than to bed you, underpins fashion, cosmetics, health foods, dietary supplements, and the endless parade of diets and exercise fads meant to remake the body into an object whose sole function is copulation.

Yet the mere sight of a naked female breast at a sporting event sends your entire nation into a hysterical frenzy more typical of sniggering pre-pubescent brats in a schoolyard than of mature adults at ease with their sexual roles in life.

What controls your sexual appetites and the aspiration (better yet) the craving to see these appetites filled is typified by TV productions such as Sex in the City - in which women are no more that ambulatory vaginas constantly repining their lack of sexual satisfaction - what controls such appetites is not morality but guilt and the fear of social stigma.

When it comes to sex Americans are inept frightened children, either bragging about how much pussy they get, denying that they get any at all, or attempting to restrict others from doing what they want to do on the basis of an ethic of fear and punishment, all the while demanding that the wants of individuals be met at the expense of any and all other desires deemed 'unacceptable'.

Yet this melange of repressed lust, vocally expressed terror and reeking hypocrisy, is what passes for the sexual morality of the average American and in no way undermines America's functioning as a State, a viable political entity.

You contend that without morality there is the Hobbesian War of All against All. Yet the conflict you cite to prove that morality is a necessity and that my original point concerning law and morality is in some sense wrong, is the very conflict that exists at the the center of American culture and its ethic of repression.

'If everyone is looking to their own desires and vices, wa-la, no society.' Nonsense. You live in the very world you profess to condemn and do so without realizing that it surrounds you on every side. Which is no more than proof that 'morality' so far from being some universal and undeniable truth, is in fact no more than what you make of it.

Since the (to me) perfectly clear statement that morality has no place in law has revealed (at least in you) such bizarre confusion I shall expand it for your benefit. Law is the codification of social mores and the sanctioning (ie the levying of sanctions against) whatever infringes or contradicts those mores. So that law has at its root a moral impetus. But because there is an aspiration toward Justice as a moral imperative in law does not mean that law is restricted to the interpretation of moral intuitions (which are never more than the aspirations of the woolly-minded idealists among us) - so that, for example, a convicted murderer should not be spared the death penalty because he has, in the intervening decades spent in prison, come to repent his act, because the original infraction is still outstanding, still requires sanction, and cannot merely be wished away.

It was said of Tookie Williams that he had repented, as if this in itself was reason enough for clemency to be granted. It was not. Tookie Williams ought to have repented of every vile act he had committed throughout his useless, degraded and abhorrent life. The fact that he worked for Youth by writing anti-gang books is a good thing and showed that he had to some degree realised the futile and disgusting nature of his former life. Let it be counted in his favor, then.

Does this also mean that after a lifetime of murder, theft, rape, and the induction of thousands of youngsters into a life that means they have no life at all, only waiting till death takes them in some pointless gang-killing, he should be spared? No. He should have been shot like the mad dog he was in the instant after the Judge passed sentence. He was not so shot, however, and lived out still further useless decades during the appeal process - a process which each time rejected him out of hand as something not fit to live.

The appeal to clemency is not an appeal that someone enjoy a right improperly denied him. It is an appeal for mercy, for grace. It was made to the one person authorized to grant it and in my opinion properly and rightfully denied.

If Tookie Williams can be said to have done something during his time in jail he cannot be said to have done enough. A handful of books set against a lifetime of criminal evil is not enough to weigh the balance in favor of life. Arnie was right to send a rabid animal to the death chamber.

Law, and Justice, have to do with acts, not motives. If the act that you undertook was illegal and requires punishment then the law is only concerned or should only be concerned with whether or not you actually carried out that act. If you did, whether you regret it or not, you ought to be punished. Mercy, to which appeal was made in the case of Tookie Williams, is a category separate from and above the law. It is a privilege, not a right, accorded by those who have authority to do so. It is not unjust not to grant clemency, nor is the carrying out of the sanction of the law unjust when that sanction has been determined on as part of due process.

Law as morality would be the prey of any demagogue capable of swaying a sufficient number of the gullible. It would therefore be arbitrary, and in being arbitrary would defeat its purpose as law, which is to provide a coherent, intelligible, widely-known, system of sanctions levyed on those who infinge the mores which are the proper expression of moral intuitions. Law itself, in its proper application, has nothing to do with moral considerations which do not bear on questions such as 'Was this [act] done? And was it done by you?'

Just as it does not matter why you did not commit a crime, so it does not matter why you did commit a crime, supposing the offence to be proved against you. Did you? Or didn't you? Why you did or didn't is irrelevant. Why Arnie didn't grant clemency to a repentant murderer is also irrelevant. His duty was to decide, and decide he did, after a due process of trial and appeal that was 'unjust' if at all only in this: that it prolonged in the cruellest way the period between proper sentence and execution, and added a period of decades in which a man was subjected to the inhuman degradation of incarceration.