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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Let’s try bringing the pills to this world of wallets and guns.

Would I rather live in a place where everyone is armed and can protect their own wallet, and because everyone knows armed robbery has a high likelihood of bloody death, nobody commits armed robbery?

Or would I rather live in a place where I have to rely on the police to a) keep everyone but the police from having guns, including organized people good at hiding secrets and doing crime, b) be close and aware enough to prevent all robberies (armed with a gun, armed with another weapon, or unarmed except for literal arms and hands), c) not accidentally shoot me or mine, d) not ever be corrupt robbers or tyrannical imprisoners themselves despite being the only armed people in the place.

Occam’s Razor suggests the simplest answer is the best. In the first place, I only have to rely on other people’s sense of self preservation. In the second, I have to rely on the competence, capability, capacity, and honor of people whose job is partly to prevent me from gaining the means to defend myself.

Consider the actual situation you are describing in case one: Baltimore in the 90's. Somalia. Zanzibar. Early Colonial America.

Basically, you are describing the situation up to the creation of the modern state, where (once you normalize for famine and infectious disease) the most common cause of death for men was being murdered.