Such gangs are the basic form of government. They have command structure, and a population base they exploit. Over time, as gang grows, it comes into conflict with other gangs and one eventually emerges as the dominant. Once in command over a big chunk of population, it either splits into many smaller bands, repeating the cycle, or it evolves to be more structured, and rules appear, which regulate how gang members operate and what they are allowed to do. You may know these rules as 'laws'.
This happens because every gang eventually understands that in the long term, taxing a prosperous population is far more profitable and stable than unlimited plundering.
No crime is better than organized crime is better than widespread disorganized crime.
As such, I highly recommend Weber's "Economy and Society" [2].
Hello? It's not 1990. Look at the crime stats. There's plenty wrong with today, but there isn't much organized or disorganized crime.
In modern times the process is, of course, can go much faster than in 2000BC, because everyone can see a template of a working system before their eyes in the form of existing countries, so they can just copy-paste the basic law / organizational structure instead of slowly inventing them.
FYI, there is at least one book written on the subject based on research of real-world disasters
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/books/21book.html https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6444492-a-paradise-built...
Cory Doctorow writes about it as well:
https://boingboing.net/2013/04/14/elite-panic-why-rich-peopl...
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/cor...
It is hardly Mr Stross's own idea, and I would not dismiss it so glibly after a minute's thought and a very shallow understanding.
Sounds to me that the need to move behind walls is a pretty strong indicator of the elite panic concept you are criticizing.
After all, if they didn't panicked then why did they felt the need to coward behind those walls and man them with armed minions?
And by the way, "fear the walking dead" is packed with seasons where the protagonists find themselves in a gated community where armed guards and passive protection measures are extensively used to keep the menacing zombies at Bay while living a pretty comfy life. Sounds a bit like Venezuela, doesn't it?
Yes. It's a belief based on pseudo-morality, where those who are not privileged are portrayed as being rude uncultured barbarians who, without resorting to extreme violence and oppression, would represent a threat to their pure and pristine existence and social order.
It's the same argument that slave owners used to justify beating slaves to death.
>If people really are trying to kill them, I don't think "panic" is an accurate term and I can't blame them for taking steps to avoid being murdered.
You somehow left out the part where these elites resort to extreme violence and oppression to deprive their neighbors from fulfilling basic needs and instead of helping the community they outright represent a very real and very violent threat to them.
And then, as a feat of cognitive dissonance, these elites cowarding behind their castle walls try to fabricate a moral basis for the violence and oppression they inflict on the very society that permitted their life of privilege.
Looking at say the fall of the USSR it was well connected elites that ended up making vast fortunes.
This is akin to saying "well if some wifes cheat, being a paranoid, jealous husband is perfectly reasonable". It's not that bad things never happen to elites, it's a cognitive disorder because the paranoia is structural, regardless of what actually happens.
It's a disorder because the panic is a function of their social status and their position in society that they know is to a degree unearned (in particular in countries like South Africa or wheverever else the elite is a hereditary class), so in a sense they anticipate the resentment that is rightfully coming their way.
It's like, if you're a habitual liar and thief you also tend to think everyone else is as opportunistic as you are, and sometimes you're right, but that's not why you believe it in the first place.
Almost no one buckles their seatbelt fully expecting to crash in the next 5 minutes. That doesn't invalidate taking the precautions.
If you mean 'anyone who has exploited the community around them to the point that they themselves come off as a predator and danger to the community', this would very likely explain why they could 'afford' to build a castle, but might also shed some light on WHY they might practically require a castle, or soldiers.
This is the basic trope. Many of the Kulaks were simply peasants who knew how to farm better than their neighbors.
Funny, but the same justification is used against (often non-white) store owners in disadvantaged neighborhoods, where their only "crime" was simply running a store in that neighborhood. Some genuinely good people who create value are genuinely creating value. That also doesn't mean they're exempt from receiving delusional accusations of exploitation. By the same token, there are some exploiters as well. However such judgments can only be just on the basis of individual actions.
As always, we should be on the look out for those who use overly simplistic and reductionist prejudicial assumptions to make accusations. Over time, they often turn out to be history's villains.
Sounds to me you're exhibiting "elite panick" while being completely oblivious to it.
Not all the time, though. For example, Bloomberg reported a few days ago that Nigeria's elite, which normally flies out of the country for healthcare, can't do it now due to the travel restrictions across countries [0].
> The panic strikes the middle class more than any other group, because their status is the most easily lost. Unlike the rich, their power goes away with their jobs. Their lifestyle, however much you’d like to mock trips to Starbucks, weekend shopping at Pottery Barn, and all that - it all goes away. The tenuous advantage they’ve built up vanishes.
Makes sense.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/trapped-b...
And to drive the point home even more: many high-status politicians in Western countries have contracted COVID-19 and it's uncertain how many more will, and how many will die. Also: uncertainty creates a panic of its own.
Most won't die unless they're in a vulnerable age group. But they will spread the infection to friends, family, and colleagues, some of whom will die.
The median age in the House of Lords is 70.
As for elite panic - armed gangs are already a thing in the UK and US. The suggestion they wouldn't move into a power vacuum left by the police/military when they're already battling for turf with violence, extortion, and intimidation is hard to take seriously.
Yes, there are plenty of people who will help others, especially in nice middle class enclaves. But you only need a small minority of dark triad types willing to use violence to create an immediate problem for everyone.
My father was a high-ranking US diplomat stationed in Taiwan during the early White Terror years. You have no idea how hard the people on the ground were working to stop Taiwan from tipping over in to a full dictatorship. It may seem hard to believe nowadays, but this was the era of the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Japan- US foreign policy was strongly focused on building allies' infrastructure, both civil and legal.
It traces its roots to the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, and Maoist Revolution, where the rich/elite were slaughtered and imprisoned by mobs of peasants.
By comparison, the middle class didn't exist when these revolutions took place. The "middle class" is a very new construct that is only a few decades old, dating back to the post WWII economic boom.
The US has a peculiar definition which includes workers who would normally be considered working class. The true middle classes are usually professionals with advanced specialisms that require above-average intellect and education, and typically include some element of management and administration. They have some political leverage, but typically less than they think.
This version of the middle classes emerged as the administrative, technical, scientific, medical, and legal support for company owners and speculators during the Industrial Revolution. This is still recognisable today. (It was a huge problem during the Maoist revolution, and Mao went out of his way to destroy and "reeducate" this class - because they were capable of resisting him.)
The upper classes rely on inherited wealth and power, make their money from property, land, share ownership and other forms of rent seeking, have direct personal connections to networks that shape policy and power, and don't need to work unless they choose to.
And it's particularly amusing because he just mentioned Haiti. What happened in Haiti is precisely why the American plantation class was so terrified: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre
There's one unsettling fact I keep thinking about in regards to this topic - before everything went to hell, Rwanda and Afghanistan both had higher literacy rates than was typical for their respective regions. I think Stross's very middle class values are out of touch with the reality of the human condition in a way that both the very rich and the poor aren't.
I say this as a fan of the Laundry files, I think he might be having trouble imagining realistic near-future settings because realistic depictions of the near future don't have a middle class, and that is not something Stross can quite envision.
If you consider a zombie story in the vein of The Walking Dead, we're confronted with a world where something like 90-99% of humanity is dead or zombified. Governments are gone, militaries are gone, industry is gone. I expect we'd see a pretty violent world where people try to protect their immediate family and are naturally distrustful of all but small groups of people. I don't think this has anything to do with so-called "elite panic"; if you reduce people to constantly struggling to fulfill basic survival needs, and remove any kind of laws or consequences, people will do whatever they need to do, and resorting to violence will end up quite common.
Zombie television presents violence as the only option and the enemy as an incurable and unsavable evil. If the only option shown is to kill and build walls, then that's what they are programmed to do.
In the real world people can always come together and compromise, share ressources and help each other. The foundation for this has to be built in peacetime.
That's starkly contradicted by the absence of toilet paper and other staples on store shelves at the individual level and the ongoing profiteering on and commandeering of medical protective gear and other medical supplies at the international level.
Also note, that many (though not all) of the "aristos" executed in the French Revolution were people lower down on the hierarchy. These were the people more easily visible and accessible to the mob.
The panic strikes the middle group the most, because the danger is the most real for them!
Georgia Rep. Paul Broun released an ad warning that "in uncertain times like these," it’s important to protect yourself against "looting hordes from Atlanta" along with video of him carrying a rifle.
>The elite are fine in a disaster and they know it.
Only if the disaster is relatively manageable. History has many examples of elites being killed during political upheaval.
Not all. Read some anthropology and you'll find interesting examples of large non-hierarchical societies.
Sorry, but "pre-Pomo Marxist literary criticism" counts as name-calling on an internet forum, unless you do something to make it clear you don't intend it that way—and you did just the opposite. Also, while I don't know anything about cstross really, I strongly doubt that he's a Marxist. The odds of an internet commenter spuriously spouting "Marxist!" are much higher. At a minimum, you'd have to make a serious case, which you didn't, hence the epithet "unsubstantive".
Look at it this way: if you reduce someone's post to a theory you regard as stupid, as a reductio ad absurdum, you're narrowing the discussion rather than expanding it. We want curious conversation here. That's a different mentality. We all have it in us to do both—close down or open further—but unfortunately the default is closing down. On this forum, the idea is to go against the default for great good.
Asia after WW2 was different because the West essentially sponsored state corporate Facism in Japan and Korea until they had 30-50 years to evolve into something resembling a true democracy.
Even the term “elite panic” is lie. The elite are fine in a disaster and they know it. Look at Venezuela, the rich and elite simply moved behind walls and continue on. They have ways of isolating themselves and maintaining separation from the rabble.
The panic strikes the middle class more than any other group, because their status is the most easily lost. Unlike the rich, their power goes away with their jobs. Their lifestyle, however much you’d like to mock trips to Starbucks, weekend shopping at Pottery Barn, and all that - it all goes away. The tenuous advantage they’ve built up vanishes.
The truly elite use that fear. They aren’t afraid themselves.