| sc94597 said: Under liberal democracy you still have the following protections supported by violence though: the protection of property rights in things which one does not use or labor -- the state will enforce evictions by absentee landlords, the violence of eminent domain -- the state will kick people (even poor people) off their land if they deem a "public service" which usually implies rewarding access to a private party (such as a railroad or today -- Walmart), the subsidization of property protection via taxes -- which are based on the threat of violence, the reduction of competition through state mandates and regulations -- particularly in the lending, creation, and circulation of money, the regulation of international and infra-national trade and movement of labor, historically the prohibition of workers rights to collectively bargain, the direct subsidization of large banks and employers (what we call bailouts), the directed development of urban rather than rural areas through tax-funds which centralize wealth into urban areas through artificial economies of scales, so on and so forth. The effect of this all of these and many other policies is to privilege the owners of capital and reduce the bargaining power of laborers, both individually and collectively. These policies, in effect, restrict natural property and financial resources to a select few, dis-empowering the rest of the population. And because they are policies enacted by the state -- an institution which declares a monopoly on the legitimation of all violence, they are fundamentally based on violence. |
This last statement I find particularly questionable, because it blames the enforcement mechanism rather than the rule itself. If you wish to blame the system of government and its methods of land distribution (and I'll fully support you when it comes to eminent domain), then that's all well and good, but blaming violence for that seems misguided. State violence is, at some level, the enforcement mechanism for every law in every country that I can ever think of. Murder someone? Arrested and put in jail. Rob a store? Arrested and put in jail. And even for smaller offenses that don't warrant an arrest at first, if you continue to resist and trying to avoid the state implemented penalties, you will, eventually, be arrested and forced into prison against your will. Saying that violence is the reason why there hasn't been a more fair system of land ownership is like saying that violence is ultimately the reason why healthcare is a massive problem in the US. Sure, maybe if the state didn't have a monopoly on violence, the current form of government could have been overthrown and a more equitable system of healthcare put in place, but that's less an explanation of why this problem exists in the first place and more why the problem hasn't been solved yet.
On top of that, in regards to high rent prices, the explanation of violence seems a little disingenuous, or at the very least, incomplete, given the myriad of other factors that are involved in rent prices, which can all be boiled down to supply and demand. Obviously what is "expensive" and what is "cheap" is highly subjective, but what isn't is the discrepancy of rent prices between different areas or even states. For instance, South Africa has the cheapest rent in the world; the average apartment is 87.5% cheaper than the average apartment in New York City. Does that mean that South Africa somehow has less of a monopoly on violence, or that perhaps there are fewer instances of state violence? Certainly not. Rather, rental prices are heavily based in supply and demand; i.e. how popular the place is to live and how much space there is to live. The first factor certainly isn't controlled by the state or what we'll call the "elites," and while the second could be in theory, in practice it rarely plays out that way.
