00:17:33.180Well, and that's such an important point because, of course, that also means that that's the only way that the state can maintain its unprincipled exception for its own pets.
00:17:42.800Right. Like Daniel Penny got in trouble not because he stopped some homeless man from harming people.
00:17:48.580He got in trouble because he stopped a black homeless man from getting in trouble because black people get a special pass when it comes to violence or bad behavior in the United States.
00:17:58.200And if individual people can enforce a consistent form of morality on all people in the state, well, then the state doesn't get to make those unprincipled exceptions for the people who support it.
00:18:11.880And so, you know, this is why we have to call what Daniel Penney did a lynching, as opposed to recognizing it for being the kind of thing that any honorable man in the other age would have been allowed to do.
00:18:24.960And not only would have been allowed to do, would have been expected to do and would have been celebrated for doing.
00:18:30.180And so we have this very important thing where the state not only maintains its force, but also maintains its monopoly on carving out exceptions.
00:18:39.280like that's remember our carl schmidt here yes i invoke the i invoke the uh the name uh but you
00:18:46.360know remember that you know the sovereign is he who decides on the exception so if the state gets
00:18:51.380to decide there's an exception for this particular demographic that is an expression of its sovereignty
00:18:56.820and if it loses the ability to enforce that exception it is no longer sovereign someone else
00:19:02.280has power in its domain also important here as you kind of mentioned uh is the organization and
00:19:08.620scale as he's pointing out the fact that you have these professional centralized armies sets you
00:19:13.880apart previously before something like the levee en masse kings were creating levies they they had
00:19:21.080some some troops some mercenaries but mainly their forces came from ultimately kind of bringing these
00:19:28.320militias together under their banners that meant that by necessity their armies were going to be
00:19:33.880less professional less efficient once you get these permanent large massified armies they are
00:19:40.660always more professional they are always more numerous they are always better outfitted they
00:19:45.240are just so far ahead of everyone else's form of military that it is impossible to keep up so by
00:19:52.820engaging in this centralization and this permanent control of the monopoly on violence the state is
00:19:58.300allowed to create a by a force at scale that is impossible for anyone else to keep up with this
00:20:05.060is hold on for a second or and that sounds very much like a form of collectivism
00:20:09.840i've been reliably ensured by uh certain centrists that collectivism is very very bad and that the
00:20:18.000appropriate move is for us to all remain completely atomized individuals because if we you know get
00:20:24.760together uh in any sort of like collective organization um that's i i'm shocked the state
00:20:32.340uses collectivism you say well that's that's news to me it is uh it is a bit of a heresy here you
00:20:40.040you might be a pagan woke right person of some of some kind for noticing uh this basic fact about
00:20:47.720politics i'll grab my voodoo doll and uh go off and read evola immediately yes sorry uh it's always
00:20:56.180so funny because i don't really like evola so whenever they get all like weirded out about
00:20:59.700evola it's like i read one book i found him unimpressive i moved on it's kind of hilarious
00:21:03.660i don't see the i don't see the i don't see it either personally right i i know i know there
00:21:10.120are a bunch of people who are really into evola right yeah yeah you know i'm like yeah i don't
00:21:15.340don't get it yeah do you want to uh finish the rest of this uh part of the passage okay right
00:21:20.220sorry where where are we up to the elimination of local rivals the elimination of local rivals
00:21:26.240however posed a serious problem beyond the scale of a small city state no monarch could govern a
00:21:32.240population with his armed force alone nor can any monarch afford to create a professional staff
00:21:38.240large and strong enough to reach from him to the ordinary citizen and they really want to reach the
00:21:44.660ordinary citizen, not only for taxation but for social engineering. Before quite recently, no
00:21:50.120European government approached the completeness of articulation from top to bottom achieved by
00:21:55.420imperial China. Even the Roman Empire did not come close. In one way or another, every European
00:22:01.620government before the French Revolution relied on indirect rule via local magnates. The magnates
00:22:07.760collaborated with the government without becoming officials in any strong sense of the term,
00:22:11.900had some access to government-backed force and exercised wide discretion within their own
00:22:17.380territories. Yonkers, justices of the peace, lords, yet the same magnates were potential rivals,
00:22:24.820possible allies of a rebellious people. This is why social constructivism, this is why the
00:22:31.860spread of a unifying narrative became such a sort of crucial device. The French Revolution is an
00:22:38.760excellent example of this you've got people you know they're like two or three days right away
00:22:44.540right like a local lord you know maybe the people run out of wheat they start like writing oh no no
00:22:51.100no you know maybe they speak a slightly different tongue no no no no we can't have that everyone
00:22:56.320must have the same pronunciation um the sort of beginnings of the total state if you were
00:23:02.440eventually european governments reduce their reliance on indirect rule by means of two
00:23:08.160expensive but effective strategies a extending their official to the local community and b
00:23:15.140encouraging the creation of police forces that were subordinate to the government rather than
00:23:20.120to individual patrons distinct from war making forces and therefore less useful as the tools
00:23:26.320of dissident magnates in between however the builders of national power all played a mixed
00:23:32.520strategy, eliminating, subjugating, dividing, conquering, cajoling, buying as the occasions
00:23:38.620presented themselves. The buying manifested itself in exemptions from taxation, creations of
00:23:44.380honorific offices, the establishment of claims on the national treasury, and a variety of other
00:23:50.480devices that made a magnate's welfare dependent on the maintenance of the existing structure of
00:23:55.800power. I am surprised that Tilly did not mention tax farming, because tax farming is a crucial
00:24:02.260part of this in case you're not aware listener the way taxation used to work in the before four times
00:24:08.260is that you could go to the king and pay him money and he would give you a license to tax a
00:24:16.020certain area and the king would say out of this area i need this many florins this many guilders
00:24:23.300anything you make above that you can keep as you might imagine this uh kind of situation was ripe
00:24:30.700rife with massive abuse in the long run sorry go on i was gonna say this is why tax collectors
00:24:37.840were so hated in the new testament because the the jewish tax collectors would buy the contract
00:24:43.460to collect the taxes from you know from the people on behalf of the romans they needed to extract
00:24:49.060more than the cost of the contract in order to make their money back so they were constantly
00:24:53.920cheating jewish people out of additional taxes that they would keep before kicking the rest of
00:24:59.240the money back up to the romans and of course this made them to be seen as traitors and and you know
00:25:05.140basically uh some kind of uh parasite or some kind of scavenger on the larger body politic because
00:25:11.300they were running around shaving this extra money off of their people on behalf of a foreign power
00:25:17.060to which they had bought these tax farming contracts also the normans who brought the
00:25:22.620choose over from ruin uh specifically to run the taxation and tax farming system um yes in the long
00:25:30.380run it all came down to massive pacification and monopolization of that means of coercion i mean
00:25:37.420he's like he's not he's not wrong right like um oh no this is all correct like this yeah obviously
00:25:44.420he has he has motivations and underlying ideological uh kind of assumptions that we
00:25:50.600wouldn't agree with but the factual process here is entirely accurate he's not saying anything here
00:25:56.620that again is not described by libertarians and reactionaries and many other people who are
00:26:01.400outside of his ideological sphere but have noticed exactly this development over time i do not
00:26:07.620understand the libertarians i'm sorry i don't understand the anarchists i don't understand
00:26:12.160anyone who believes that you can survive without a state of some kind they get very very angry when
00:26:17.540to point this out they're like man you just you got to open your mind man and just you know imagine
00:26:24.320like a modern country without a state man yeah it sounds like hell like quite frankly right like
00:26:31.080i like who's yeah anyway well the trick is the trick is they always do this thing where they're
00:26:36.380like well we understand that violence will be necessary so what we're gonna do is like everybody
00:26:40.440buys protection uh from like mercenaries and that way we eliminate the need for central state
00:26:45.640because like there's all these competing security forces it's like oh so uh if one competing
00:26:50.700security force has more people and revenue and everything else than the other competing
00:26:56.440security forces do you think that they'll have a competitive advantage in the marketplace well
00:27:00.900yeah of course that makes sense right oh okay well if they start to centralize control of
00:27:06.440providing security force to the point where other competitors are vastly inferior do you feel like
00:27:12.720it will be hard for any other security force to exist well yeah i guess so so could you say at
00:27:18.400that point that the security force has i don't know a monopoly on on violence providing security
00:27:24.820oh you you you create the state again congratulations like you just create the state
00:27:30.100this is this is what the anarchists do not realize which is that the most powerful military group in
00:27:38.920any given area just becomes the government by default and if you're down on this then imagine
00:27:45.200a situation right where you're in libertarian paradise okay right and you know you have
00:27:50.180competing security services and two people have a dispute who decides upon the dispute it is the
00:27:58.940king or the jarl or the right like because they have the force to enforce these decisions otherwise
00:28:06.400the two parties i guess hire their own private mercenary companies and go to war over like you
00:28:13.880know defense line or who gets to draw water from the well or who stole sheep or who married
00:28:20.120whose daughter or you know who's like the problems are literally endless well said protection as
00:28:29.840business in retrospect the pacification co-optation or elimination of fractious rivals
00:28:37.100to the sovereign seems an awesome noble prescient enterprise designed to bring peace to a people yet
00:28:43.540it followed yet it followed almost in an electably uh from the logic of expanding power if a power
00:28:51.340holder has to gain from the provision of protection his competitors uh had to yield as economic uh
00:28:59.340historian frederick lane uh put in 25 put it 25 years ago governments are in the business of
00:29:06.500selling protection whether people want it or not lane argued that the very activity of protecting
00:29:12.380and controlling violence favored monopoly because competition within the realm generally raise
00:29:17.400cost instead of lowering them as we were just pointing out the production of violence he
00:29:22.620suggested enjoyed large economies of scale working from there lane distinguished between
00:29:28.780a the monopoly uh profit or tribute coming to owners of means of producing violence as a result
00:29:36.080of the difference between production costs and the price exacted from customers and b the protection
00:29:42.880rent accruing to those customer to those customers for example merchants who drew effective protection
00:29:49.440against outside competitors lane as a superbly attentive historian of venice allowed specifically
00:29:55.900for the case of government that generates protection rents from its merchants by deliberately
00:30:01.420attacking their competitors. In this adaptation of Lane's scheme, furthermore, Edward Ames and
00:30:07.260Richard Rapp substitute the apt word extortion for Lane's tribute. In this model, predation,
00:30:15.320coercion, piracy, bandwagon, and racketeering share a home with upright cousins in responsible
00:30:21.860government this is how lane's model worked if a prince could create a sufficient armed force to
00:30:27.480hold off uh his and his subjects and external enemies and keep the subject in line for 50
00:30:33.460megapounds what was able to extract 75 megapounds in taxes from the subject for that purpose he
00:30:38.920gains the tribute of 25 megapounds if citizens in general exercise effective ownership of the
00:30:44.700government, oh, distant ideal, we might expect the managers to minimize the protection costs
00:30:51.900and tributes, thus maximizing protection rent. A single self-interested monarch, in contrast,
00:30:58.040would maximize tribute, set costs so as to accomplish the maximization of tribute and be
00:31:04.640indifferent to the level of protection rent. If the managers owned the government, they would
00:31:12.640tend to keep costs high by maximizing their own wages to maximize tribute over and above their
00:31:17.940costs by exacting a high price from their subjects and likewise be indifferent to the level of
00:31:23.780protection rent the first model approximates a jeffersonian democracy the second a petty
00:31:29.460despotism and the third a military junta so we see here the obvious connection the one that i named
00:31:36.180this stream after which is the idea that the government is basically involved in a protection
00:31:41.280racket yes in theory the government does provide a level of physical safety that's its job and for
00:31:48.860that protection it extracts a price you're going to pay taxes if you don't pay taxes men with guns
00:31:55.300will show up and put you in a cage until you do and if you resist that they will kill you so
00:32:00.840ultimately behind every bit of the protection that the government provides is an implicit threat that
00:32:06.840ultimately, if you do not pay for that protection, you will meet your end. This is how it works. If
00:32:12.400there's one thing you're not allowed to do, it's stop paying taxes. Just look at any type of tax
00:32:19.040revolt or anything like that, right? Ultimately, the government can allow you to do all kinds of
00:32:24.420things. It can allow you to challenge its sovereignty in different ways. It's not wise to do
00:32:28.620so, but there's some play in the joints in pretty much every other area. The two areas it cannot
00:32:33.400let you do this is violence and taxation, because those are the two pillars of the actual state.
00:32:39.880If the government cannot extract money from you and it cannot force you to comply through violence,
00:32:45.900then the state is failed. That is what we see as a failed state. There might be different models
00:32:51.220for that tax extraction. Some of them might be ones that we are more amenable to, that we find
00:32:57.160ourselves to ultimately agree with. Others might abhor us. But the point is, no matter what form it
00:33:02.620takes, this is the reality of how the state is structured. And these are the two pillars which
00:33:07.600it cannot allow anyone to ultimately challenge. Yeah, but it's important to note here that
00:33:14.240this does work both ways. It is not entirely sort of exploitative that the state provides
00:33:22.360security, because security is necessary really for any kind of stable, long-term economic activity.
00:33:29.820It's like the tale of Thracimachus in the Republic,
00:33:35.480in Plato's Republic, if I remember this correctly.
00:33:38.680Socrates is arguing with Thracimachus about saying that the shepherd
00:34:29.820But if you keep degrading the security environment, then economic activity starts to fall, taxation starts to fall, everything starts to come apart.
00:34:39.700So the government is as much bound by this sort of arrangement as the people under it.
00:34:46.300Although it's much easier, it seems, for the government to forget that essential fact because they're sort of on top of things, as it were.
00:34:52.560well and it's very interesting because of course this is the argument by which papa ultimately
00:34:59.660argues that monarchy is superior to democracy because he says if the monarch has an investment
00:35:06.920over time in the people that means that he is more likely to care about the people because he
00:35:11.740must hand them off to his descendants that generational ownership of the thing just like
00:35:17.360if you own a car you care more about it than if you rented the car you're going to take better
00:35:21.020care of it you're going to get the oil changes you're going to treat it well the same is true
00:35:24.740of the people yeah you might not care about the people because you're like the best guy
00:35:28.680but you own the people you're going to have to you know benefit from their growth your children's
00:35:34.500children will benefit from their condition and so you have to care about them now interestingly
00:35:39.340this is why you need to read Bertrand de Juvenal and not just Hop if you're a libertarian
00:35:43.580go read On Power understand why Bertrand de Juvenal is superior when making his own arguments
00:35:48.780than Hop is when borrowing them, because what DeJuvenal does is he takes this one step further.
00:35:53.300He makes all the arguments that Hop's make because Hop took them from DeJuvenal. But the
00:35:57.500extra thing that he says is that, by the way, this is how the king is born. Because yes,
00:36:04.960the state starts as a bandit. It starts as organized crime. All of that is true. But over
00:36:10.520time, because the king must care, because the incentives exist for the king to care about the
00:36:16.700people eventually over time he has this great line where he says and the spirit of the rex
00:36:21.600is born like this is where the the the king as father starts to play itself out because it turns
00:36:28.940out you can't care about a thing for generations without eventually developing affection for it
00:36:35.640that's just how human nature works we're not just solely interested in money we're not just
00:36:41.180motivated my materialism yes you can reduce some of the motives to that yes at times that is helpful
00:36:47.180for analysis but ultimately there is something more there is a metaphysical dynamic there is an
00:36:52.700emotional reality that exists alongside those economic incentives and so we can go ahead and
00:36:59.740break it all down and materialize as much as we want but the truth is that the government is not
00:37:06.080just a robber it begins as a robber it begins as organized crime but over time it becomes something
00:37:13.720else and that matters that means that we can analyze it in one way and that's useful but we
00:37:19.720can't only keep it in that box we have to be able to see the totality of the process and
00:37:24.980dejuval adds that next part because the coming of the rex the coming of the king as one who cares
00:37:31.380for his people is directly descended from the incentive structures you're talking about here
00:37:36.480you know it's interesting to consider that uh this process could work in reverse that uh the rex
00:37:44.340descends back into into robber to being a robber and begins to despoil a mature civilization so
00:37:52.720you know in the start the you know the robber becomes a rex and then once civilization has
00:37:57.840matured you have a large field full of you know fruitful sheep you've grown close to you know
00:38:03.900right like yes you take their wool but you know you care for them and you've you've grown to become
00:38:07.960like very very fond of them then somebody else takes over and they're like ah you know screw
00:38:12.500these these sheep you know we don't need we can let wolves in the pen right we can we can starve
00:38:17.820them you know who cares and then lo and behold the sheep become skinny they don't produce good
00:38:25.560wool and you know and the robber's like oh i guess we need to like beat the sheep some more
00:38:29.380this is this is the point the the natural harmony converges into protector and protectee being in
00:38:38.940symbiosis right if if either of these are too out of joint you are not going to get a thriving
00:38:44.960society you are not going to get development you are not even going to get proper tax revenue you
00:38:51.440know let alone anything approaching a harmonious society uh right do you want me to go on from
00:38:57.100yeah if you want to pick up the rest of this section okay um lane did not discuss the obvious
00:39:06.380fourth category of owner a dominant class see this is the marxism coming in if he had his scheme
00:39:14.140would have yielded interesting empirical criteria for evaluating claims that a given government was
00:39:19.900relatively autonomous or strictly subordinate to the interests of a dominant class. Presumably,
00:39:26.600a subordinate government would tend to maximize monopoly profits, returns to the dominant class
00:39:32.560resulting from the difference between the cost of protection and the price received for it,
00:39:37.020as well as turning protection rents nicely to the economic interests of the dominant class.
00:39:42.880An autonomous government, in contrast, would tend to maximize managers' wages and its own size as
00:39:48.780well, and would be indifferent to protection rents. Lane's analysis immediately suggests
00:39:53.860fresh propositions and ways of testing them. Lane also speculated that the logic of the situation
00:40:00.080produced four successive stages in the general history of capitalism.
00:40:06.820Ah, capitalism! Ah! One, a period of anarchy and plunder. Two, a stage in which tribute takers
00:40:14.960attracted customers and established their monopolies by struggling to create exclusive
00:40:19.460substantial states. Three, a stage in which merchants and landlords began to gain more
00:40:25.220from protection rents than governors did from tribute, and four, a period relatively recent
00:40:30.660in which the technological changes surpassed protection rents as a source of profit for
00:40:36.160entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, Lane did not take full advantage of his own insight, probably wasn't
00:40:42.700the communist wanting to maintain his analysis neatly within the neoclassical theory of industrial
00:40:47.920organization lane cramped his treatment of protection treating all taxpayers as customers
00:40:53.560for the service provided by protection manufacturing governments brushing aside the objections to the
00:41:00.000idea of a forced sale by insisting that the customer always had the choice of not paying
00:41:05.240and taking the consequences for non-payment so right so what he's basically saying here is that
00:41:10.840protection is a forced sale in the sense that you can't actually refuse right it's like a
00:41:18.160mafia thing we're going to make an offer that you can't refuse right you said to the government
00:41:21.740actually thanks i'm not going to pay my taxes right i'm i'm i'm good right i'll you know i'll
00:41:26.580protect myself well the government they're not they're not going to let you do that okay right
00:41:31.620it is a a force like obamacare buying you know health care you will be buying the health care
00:41:37.480you have no other option you may not opt out yes uh minimizing the problems of divisibility created
00:41:43.700by the public goods character of protection and deliberately neglecting the distinction between
00:41:49.040the costs of producing the means of violence in general and the costs of giving customers
00:41:53.820protection by means of that violence now this is a very very interesting thing because as a state
00:42:00.700becomes more homogenous becomes more economically successful as you have like a criminal system
00:42:06.640that like works and gradually like weeds out the highly violent,
00:42:10.920you basically get to a point where actually the cost
00:42:14.000of protection violence lowers, gets lower and lower
00:42:34.660If you compare it to something like, you know, the warring feudal lords sort of period where, you know, everyone had to have their own army and there were like constant civil wars, this gets very, very expensive.
00:42:48.380And you've got to remember that every worker turned to make, you know, guns for the lord or to grow, you know, wheat for the war horses is assets and materiel that cannot be given to the general population.
00:43:04.660So as this sort of plays out, the cost of protection violence trends lower and lower and lower.
00:43:13.220And, you know, governments being what they are, obviously, they are not likely to really reduce taxes.
00:43:19.620Instead, they're much more likely to sort of pivot into things like social engineering and propaganda
00:43:25.060and further reduce the cost of protection-related violence while maximizing tax return.
00:43:59.620they properly draw the economic analysis of government
00:44:03.000back to the chief activities and the real government governments have carried on historically
00:44:09.060war repression protection and adjudication more recently richard bean has applied a similar logic
00:44:16.600to the rise of european national states between the 14 and 1600s he appears to he appeals to
00:44:24.700economies of scale and the production of effective force counteracted by uh this economic this
00:44:31.720economies dis economies i guess uh of scale in command and control he then claims that the
00:44:38.740improvement of artillery in the fifth century cannon cannon made small medieval forts much
00:44:44.680more vulnerable to an armed force shifted the curve of economies and diseconomies to make
00:44:50.520larger armies standing armies centralized government advantageous to their masters hence
00:44:56.280according to Bean, military innovation promoted the creation of large, expensive, well-armed
00:45:02.140nation states. So one way to look at this, if you're trying to like put this in context,
00:45:07.480is of course what the United States has done, right? The United States decided that the best
00:45:13.140way to streamline their centralization of force, their monopoly on violence, was to have no near
00:45:21.300peer competitors so it said don't worry europe hand over all of your uh needs for protection to
00:45:29.220us and therefore you can spend all that money on welfare programs or you know shipping in a million
00:45:35.720migrants whatever it is you want to do with that money uh and and we'll take over from here and
00:45:40.480the uk and other countries said yeah sounds like a great deal uh the downside for that is is several
00:45:47.200One, you know, that means, of course, that those countries do not have real sovereignty, because as we are quickly learning, the ability to have that monopoly on violence is sovereignty.
00:45:57.420And so if you're a country that is required to expect another country to step in on your behalf, you are simply not a sovereign country.
00:46:05.660This is also a problem because, of course, this means that the United States is able, if you're one of these countries, if you're United States, it's great.
00:46:12.660But the United States is able to use this as any other force that has monopoly on violence does to extract tribute from you, to ultimately say, hey, you need to change this regulation, change this policy, change the way that you treat immigrants, change the way that you do economic business with us.
00:46:31.880because well if you don't we're the only ones providing uh you know all that uh all of that
00:46:37.280military might and what are you going to do you're going to build your own uh aircraft carriers you're
00:46:41.300going to put you know 10 aircraft carrier strike groups in the water like we are no you already
00:46:46.340know you've lost the economy of scale battle right and we we entered into this moment where
00:46:50.580kind of the death star military systems that the united states is particularly good at building
00:46:54.500were the dominant force like there just was no way to ultimately overcome uh you know the aircraft
00:47:00.340carrier strike group like it just was not going to happen uh and so no no uh nation that had
00:47:07.240already given up its own protection had any hope of reclaiming it and kind of winning back to this
00:47:13.220arms race uh for the united states it's a great benefit because again we don't have to worry about
00:47:19.100training different parts of our military to fight a bunch of different enemies uh we don't have to
00:47:23.580worry about regional uh you know issues that kind of thing because we control all of the military
00:47:28.800in most of our near sphere you know in anything in america or anything in europe uh we basically
00:47:34.600are the only military actor there is no competing military actor so we don't have to spend any time
00:47:39.520learning how to like fight the different militaries that are wielded by the uk or germany or france or
00:47:45.900italy because we run all of those militaries they're all under the nato umbrella they couldn't
00:47:51.000even operate their supply chains without the united states and so therefore they're impotent
00:47:55.600without this overarching control now the downside that the united states is currently experiencing
00:48:00.900is that for basically ever scale was the victor when it came to military might right like its
00:48:08.100scale was always to your advantage the problem is that drone warfare has changed this in a
00:48:15.240significant way and of course we're seeing this both in ukraine and in iran the fact that these
00:48:21.440states that you know ukraine and iran otherwise would have no hope against russia and the united
00:48:27.080states respectively but because they have these very disruptive pieces of technology uh that are
00:48:32.900not benefited by this death star not benefited by these economies of scale instead they disrupt
00:48:39.020the advantages of economy of scale quite severely to the point where now the united states's
00:48:44.100technology that otherwise was built for these specific type of wars has become a liability this
00:48:49.420is why the iranians were able to run through the entire united states interceptor uh library so
00:48:54.880quickly this is why uh the the the aircraft carriers have not been effective any of these
00:49:00.060conflicts because the nature of war has changed to where that advantage is largely gone now don't
00:49:06.040get me wrong the united states is still much stronger than iran it still benefits from that
00:49:10.380economy of scale but the level of that benefit is no longer what it used to be it can't do to iran
00:49:15.360what it did to Saddam Hussein. It simply does not have that ability. And that's largely due
00:49:19.960to that radical change in logistics and military technology. So we can see that while it's true
00:49:27.140that this has been a trend that's been continuing for a long time, we have to be careful about
00:49:30.760recency bias. We have to be careful about this idea that just because the thing has succeeded
00:49:35.220recently, it will continue to succeed forever. And that is just not the case here.
00:49:40.400I'm not so sure it's purely a matter of scale in the way that you describe it. I think it's
00:49:45.300more the evolution of technology. I mean, if the US, for example, did an economy of scale
00:49:51.040with drones, like, say, for example, they just made, like, I think the way that China's doing
00:49:56.180it, you make 10,000, 20,000, like, just drone carrier boats, right, and sail them out, and you
00:50:02.220just blacken the sky with drones, it could be done. But I think what has happened is that,
00:50:08.960you know what was originally an economy of scale that allowed sort of practically speaking the
00:50:15.920the price for sort of security provision really to fall quite a bit i mean everyone's always
00:50:21.520talking about the eye-watering sum spent on the u.s military but if you think about sort of like
00:50:26.520how much it costs to police the entire world it's not really that much right the idea that the u.s
00:50:32.120would have for example been bankrupted by you know the iraq war or something like that is is
00:50:37.640ludicrous i think we are now entering into what would be called a diseconomy of scale where
00:50:42.280suddenly as things get larger they get more and more expensive and the us is now in a position
00:50:47.020where it has to retool its industrial and technology base to make you know more interceptors
00:50:53.920more drones all this kind of other things the the shortage of the the patriot uh intercept missile
00:50:59.760for example is is very very well known at this point but because of the previous paradigm and
00:51:06.600any sort of like relatively, I mean, I don't know, I mean, the US does have like a very
00:51:11.380large military industrial complex, but surely one would expect that to.
00:52:18.980When the technology had not disrupted this paradigm of aircraft carriers and highly expensive
00:52:24.780missile systems and these kind of things, the U.S. could not be beat.
00:52:28.380No one else could outdo the U.S. military in that way.
00:52:31.000But now that the technology has radically disrupted the nature of the battlefield, it no longer benefits from this increasing complexity. It no longer yields the marginal utility that you're looking for from additional spending, initial complexity, that kind of thing.
00:52:47.780And instead, what we're seeing is a benefit for that, you know, this more radical and
00:54:16.920And now you have a situation where effectively you've got to fire
00:54:22.360two or three, maybe even four, to bring down one drone
00:54:27.620that was, I mean, not exactly slapped together in a garage,
00:54:30.320but could be produced by a reasonably tooled-up industrial park
00:54:35.600somewhere in the middle of nowhere, if you get what I'm saying.
00:54:39.660Yeah, I think I'm trying to remember who is doing this analysis,
00:54:42.140But their point was basically, you know, traditionally, it would be very easy to wipe out Iran's capacity for conventional warfare because all of the infrastructure is so large and, you know, it's it's easy to disrupt with a few, you know, surgical strikes now because drone factories are relatively inexpensive and, you know, much more easy to produce.
00:55:05.080You have the scenario where as long as Iran, you know, you can hit whatever you want, but as long as Iran can keep enough factories running to produce, you know, just a drizzle of drones, just a constant string, you know, 50 or 100 drones on a regular basis on a week or a month, then there's just always a certain level of disruptive capability it maintains.
00:55:25.400so this idea that you could just bomb them out of being able to have a military industrial complex
00:55:30.780is no longer true because the cost of that the startup cost and disruptive ability per drone
00:55:36.660is just so much lower and so that is really what is changing the dynamic uh that you're laying out
00:55:42.260there that said i think we oh well if i may just make one last point yes plus the uh iranians uh
00:55:48.960pivoted to a thing that they call mosaic command where they deliberately broke their entire military
00:55:53.440command structure into just like all of these little because they've been preparing for this
00:55:56.760for like what at least 20 years it's crazy uh sorry please go on no it it's really interesting
00:56:03.460if uh you know this is going to be a deep reference for some people out there but again
00:56:07.540if you've read Deleuze and Guattari uh if you've read Anti-Oedipus uh you know that this is actually
00:56:13.680something they discuss in detail uh the idea of uh you know this uh force that is going to instead
00:56:21.060of being hierarchical is going to spread out into networks and never have a centralized node always
00:56:26.580moving in different directions it is the nomad warrior it is this this unbound thing uh that is
00:56:33.200able to disrupt these centralized hierarchical structures uh again uh that's obviously something
00:56:39.320that i think influenced at some level this essay and you can see parts of it echoing over and
00:56:44.340throughout and of course delus and qatari while being you know crazy marxists at some level who
00:56:48.980are of course wrong about those things they do draw some really powerful insights and i think
00:56:53.740this is one of them that we're seeing playing out on the military battlefield right now so
00:56:57.900once again we don't want to take everything we don't want to agree with everything of what we
00:57:01.380read but when we find those valuable insights we don't want to ignore them because when we see
00:57:05.800something that maps onto reality explains what's happening around us that's always valuable at some
00:57:10.560level and then we integrate it into the things that we know are true rather than perhaps the
00:57:15.000false things they're attached to but either way we don't want to throw that in the trash because
00:57:18.500of where it came from that said uh i think we made it two whole pages today so good for us
00:57:23.660you know we're it was pretty dense it was fair that was that was quite a dense chunk yeah no
00:57:31.360we we certainly pulled that apart and and uh made the most out of it uh because it was worthwhile
00:57:36.880so uh yeah not not uh you know saying that was a bad thing but it is just funny so we're definitely
00:57:43.080looking at least two more episodes of the series guys so hope you enjoy it uh that said obviously
00:57:47.760we have uh some questions from the people before we pivot to those mr fist where can people find
00:57:52.580your fantastic work um i'm sort of currently on on break but you can find my back catalog if you
00:58:00.120search for news fist two words on youtube uh or you can find some other links at newsfist.net uh
00:58:07.300you can check out the the back catalog of clown based life forms which is my sort of political
00:58:10.720comedy show and fistory which is my history podcast which should be returning shortly i've
00:58:17.640just i've you know it's been a long time since i had any time off and quite frankly i'm sort of
00:58:21.920enjoying it so just gonna just gonna slowly relax back into the whole content creation thing you're
00:58:28.920a man who's been spinning a few plates here and there so totally understand easing back into the
00:58:34.400process uh let's see here red dragon says uh blend date uh california is a great example of
00:58:41.020how gangs are rival government it's an american controlled city and was one of the safest parts
00:58:46.800of la in 2020 armenian yeah that's a very different it's a very different word yes yes um
00:58:54.000so yeah this is one of those scenarios where again uh in the absence of law and order someone
00:59:01.880will fill that void someone will always fill that void and so if the government is not protecting
00:59:07.500an area if the government is completely failing on that and you have another armed force willing to
00:59:13.560exert violence in its name then ultimately the people will probably fall behind that as opposed
00:59:20.500to the government that is simply not doing its job and so gangs regularly do this in different
00:59:25.580parts of chicago or you know all these major areas uh it is you know you go and the gang is
00:59:30.760the actual arbiter of violence in that area they decide who is safe and who is not they decide who
00:59:36.380is allowed to operate as a merchant and who is not they are the true authority and the you know
00:59:42.020the state allows them to continue to operate in that manner they are just proving that they do
00:59:46.340not have sovereignty they're they're showing that there are legitimate uh uh people who are able to
00:59:51.900guarantee safety in a way that they are not and so you should do business with them instead of
00:59:56.360heeding the dictates of the state and that's again how you eventually get failed states obviously
01:00:00.940california is not quite there yet uh but we all know it's really just not that far away