There is physical violence, and then there is coercion - getting your way through an implicit or explicit threat of violence. Once you've whipped your slave enough, and he knows he can't get away, there is decreasing need to actually whip him. Progress, of a sort.
I'm not really on board with his whole anarchist shtick, but I do like Stefan Molyneux's "The Story of Your Enslavement". Society as the Human Farm, with human farmers extracting value out of human livestock. The evolution of Human Farming over time is particularly interesting. We're now largely a free range herd, relative to historical slaves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A
He probably should update this for all the government enabled rent seeking, instead of just taxes. I think we're way beyond the Mafia model, to a Mafia coop with an increasing number of stakeholders fighting for their cut, where the mechanisms for butchering and dividing the meat consume and destroy increasing amounts of the meat.
When my frustration with the control and rent seeking gets to me, I let out a little "Moo". Frustration is only the result of denying the facts of reality. I am livestock, hear me Moo.
Say it with me now:
Moo.
Now didn't that feel better?
Greetings all! There's a puzzle that I'm working on and I'm interested to see what the members of this community have to say about it.
I am an electrical engineer that is currently working on a master's in counseling. One of the big questions I keep asking myself in this program is "how effective is this field in making the world a better place"?
To help focus the discussion I want to focus on violence. This video from Steven Pinker is a great overview of the data http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence. But for those who don't want to spend the time to watch it, the short version is that violence per capita is at an all time low for human history, and other people will state it as "there has never been a safer time in history".
The question then, why is this so?
My personal belief on this is that our technology advancement has reduced the effort it takes for people to survive so there is less drive to become hostile towards people who have what we need. This belief applied to effective altruism would suggest that the most effective method of improving all of human life would be to continue to increase our technology level so that there is an abundance of basic needs and no one has a need to become hostile. I do believe that as a planet, we do not yet have that abundance so I don't believe this is merely a matter of redistribution. The GWP (gross world product) per capita, as of 2014, was $12,400 USD, which is just barely above the poverty line for an individual. This is why I say, we're not yet producing enough to truly eliminate need.
From this belief, I wonder if social movements and psychological training are really doing anything in comparison to the need that exists.
Going back to the violence issue, I am thinking if we can understand why violence has been declining we can also understand what is truly effective in bettering the human condition. I believe the reason is technological advancement. Does anyone have any good evidence to suggest other reasons?
Are we possibly at a tipping point? Has our past been dominated by technological advancement but now we're reaching a level where more socially oriented advancements will be more effective?
Thoughts?