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> the electorate controls the people with guns, so we can kinda make whatever we want happen if we vote for it

"Do it the way we want or die" is a pretty bold take.

Are you going to enforce this or demand to have law enforcement or even military units do it?




Ultimately this is the basis for governance, including zoning and code enforcement. However, I agree with your sentiment.

You'll notice the loaded language used in the title of the article: "California's future depends on how leaders rebuild". Ideally I would think that the landowners should have priority in deciding what is built on their land. After all it is still at least nominally their private property.

Expect further arguments towards a subjectively perceived "greater collective good" to follow from that point. After this is established, the ends justify the means. In this case, the above poster explicitly describes the means as "men with guns".


> Ultimately this is the basis for governance

That's a myth / fantasy of gun and violence zealots and anti-liberals.

Obviously, to scholars and to anyone looking at the world, the basis for governance is consent. There are not enough guns in the world to do it otherwise. And I've never and I don't know anyone who has ever done something because the government pointed a gun at them. They did it because they are law-abiding people, social beings, and want a fair, ordered society.


> the basis for governance is consent

For governance, perhaps, but not for government.

A trivial example: I do not consent to the authority of my city, county, state, or country. I have withheld that consent my entire life, and yet all those levels of government continue to not only exist, but to grow.


You're weird. Humans normally, almost all consent.


… and those humans who do not consent are coerced by any means necessary, up to and including force.


I don't suspect that OP fails to understand the importance of consent, but I do suspect that you fail to understand the importance of lawful carefully-target violence.


I understand the fantasy of a world where sociality doesn't exist. Maybe nerds find it easier to calculate, not understanding the social part well at all.


If our police departments and jails were disbanded and torn down, would that constitute an improvement or a worsening of our society in your opinion?


always a sign of a winning argument when you call your interlocutors nerds


It's not an insult to me; is it to you?


? that is how all laws ultimately work


It's not, except around the fringes. Consent is how governance works.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42729029


In practice, yes. In principle, it is a matter for debate.




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