Re:Hundreds arrested as crime chat network cracked
by skylanh on Thursday July 02, 2020 @09:17AM
(#23712780)
> state-owned monopoly on violence
There's an interesting 2012 Ted Talks presentation by Peter van Uhm the then chief of defense for the Netherlands. He discusses the state monopoly on violence as a central point of how and why the military exists.
"Peter van Uhm: Why I chose a gun"
Ted: https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_van_uhm_why_i_chose_a_gun?la...
Imperialistic nation states of the 1700s and 1800s followed this playbook, in a time where the biggest enterprises were state-owned (in Empire of Cotton, Beckert refers to it as "War Capitalism").
But those systems fell apart because they were too volatile. Eventually, an inability to control that volatility compelled the same imperialistic nation states to divorce themselves from private enterprise, and took the monopoly on violence in the settlement; so far, it's been a more stable equilibrium.
Both systems are "capitalist", in that they permit the private accumulation and investment of wealth. I would argue that the main difference is the state-owned monopoly on violence, eminent domain, and regulation of financial sector.
Regions with strong criminal underworlds tend not to to be governed by institutions with such monopolies.