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Suicidesoldier#1
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Suicidesoldier#1
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Suicidesoldier#1
Which is... which is bad.
xp
Nah...
Well, I guess cartels or corporations could be next in power, if there was no government, seems like fun.
Or a new government could replace it without calling itself one and boss everyone around, eat their babies...
Wouldn't be any different...unless they really did eat babies. No one is doing that now, right?
Except for like cartels and corporations who don't mind killing them and such.
Things would probably a lot different in a fractionalized dystopia in which corporations were the legitimate leaders and didn't have to work around elected officials and all that. If people did institute a new government, it would lead to the exact same problems so, nothing changed.
Doesn't matter who's in charge; they have to maintain the illusion that they care about the people, or they'll be overthrown. At the least they have to keep a large number of soldiers happy to control dissidents. So sure it can get a bit worse, but it gets worse every few years anyway. And don't forget I didn't just say disarm the government, I also said arm the people. The idea here is to make it difficult for any one entity to control a large population.
Becuase your average person can afford a billion dollar aircraft carrier over some large entity like a corporation or bill gates.
Evne if we arm "the people", it's made up of individual citizens; who's to say that whoever is in charge of the submarine or the tank or the aircraft carrier won't just use it for their own ends instead of to benefit "the people".
The problem with this mentality is that everyone is an individual; the same potential for corruption and ineptness will exist regardless who has the guns.
Giving a bunch of people rifles and expecting them to be able to fight off the bad guys who have tanks that are impervious to rifle fire is a little silly. If you give the people tanks, then you run the same risk you do now.
Hypothetically, we're in a democracy now, so we own the tanks.
The problem with any situation is that a bureaucracy will inevitably be created. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"- the reality is that ultimately there is only one higher power. At some point, we have to put our faith into some seemingly altruistic organization or deal with the lesser of two evils. Right now things are pretty good even if our government is evil. We aren't in the illusion of goodness, we actually have good things, like running water and electricity. A lot of dictatorships don't.
Furthermore, even if everyone was armed, that doesn't mean they can fight.
Training, organization, and the lack of a need to support oneself go a long way in combat, well over just being an individual with a rifle. A nation of riflemen is not the same as a nation of soldiers. Thermal vision for instance is 15,000 dollars; owning the factory to produce this is not something 1 single individual can do. Stacking 1000 people together is not the same as 1000 people who work in unison. Thermal vision can make it so your enemy sees nothing while you can see everything you need; through smoke screens, at night, anything living shines really brightly. Your enemy is just fighting blind against you; no single individual could have come up with the technology, built the factory, if by no other virtue that the skill set and hands required are unavailable. Most people can't afford a 15,000 dollar+ thermal vision scope, and is does nothing to help get them more money to pay for it. However, a thermal scope does enhance the one trying to steal the money or oppress the population, I.E. as tools of the trade, and thus spending 100k isn't a problem. The Egyptians built the pyramids, but they couldn't build a single cellphone. Certain fundamental capabilities are unavailable without large groups. It's how a small group of soldiers or people can defeat a larger one, history is full of this, both on the good and bad side. Aluminum used to be more expensive than gold, so much so that Napoleon served his guests with aluminum silverware. Today, aluminum is cheaper than lead ton for ton. Smelting and large complex processes and factory have made this the case. Simply put, fundamental capabilities rest outside the capabilities of smaller organizations, regardless of how much work they put into it.