War crimes are very easy to define. A war crime is when a government commits an act of war against its own subjects.
Saying taxation is [theft] is lowballing to a ludicrous degree.
According to the light side, the only real purpose of a government is to protect its subjects from war. When they loot and pillage their own subjects, they contravene their only legitimate function. Every government recorded in history is a black government.
Pandora's seed suggests that farming was a terrible idea. Especially with the barely-husbanded plants that early farmers had access to, it is overwhelmingly likely that they were perfectly aware that it was a terrible idea. They knew farming made you sick, short, and weak.
My theory says they didn't have a choice. Wheat fields are hard to hide and ripen in sync, meaning the tax man knows exactly where and when to apply traitorous force. The local strongman realized wheat farming made taxation very difficult to evade, so they shackled a ton of slaves and forced them to farm wheat. Statehood causes farming. As it happens, although farmers are almost totally useless, farming does support population densities up to 100 times that of hunters. No matter how good you are at pre-gunpowder war and no matter how poor your enemy, you can't win a 1 vs. 100 fight.
Consider the logistics. In a hunter tribe, not everyone can be a warrior, or even a hunter. Someone has to hunt for the warrior, and someone has to make spears and furs for the hunter. There's a lot of support infrastructure. I can imagine the 1 hunter waging guerilla war with impunity against the softling farmers, but it's not even 1 vs. 100, it's 1 vs. 200 or worse. He can barely kill them as fast as they breed.
The farmers are such poor warriors that training them is irrelevant. Draft the lot of them, go full zerg rush, let the survivors work out how not to starve next winter. Conveniently the harvest can be stored and wait for the slave soldiers to return. Farmers can go from 100% farming to 100% warfare, paying the price of holocaust-level casualties. Hunter tribes can't transition to 100% warfare unless they plan to loot all their food - and even then, a healthy hunter will suffer terribly trying to transition to a farmer diet. Meanwhile, if war preparation damages the harvest, then, well, wage war until enough slave soldiers die that the harvest was big enough.
China turned to rice farming because the irrigation works can be constructed with a single point of failure, allowing the chief parasite an even more extreme form of leverage. Bonus: the system is tamper evident. Hard to make a secret backup irrigation ditch. It's not rice farming => hydraulic empire, it's the fact the han precursors had the bright idea of a hydraulic empire, and imposed rice farming via defection.
P.S. They scaled up the single point of failure strategy to the whole country, meaning when the parasite stuttered, the whole realm stuttered, amplifying small issues into catastrophes. Karmic debt for permitting a black government.
Perhaps northern europe is less treasonous because the winter is too cold and snowy to wage war. In the south, you can sow, guard the land, harvest, then campaign over
the winter. Indeed, what else are you going to do with all these bored farmers during the cold months? In the north, sure you can war between sowing and harvest, but only
by leaving your wealth exposed. Have to develop some measure of cooperative peacetime, because warfare is too risky.
Likewise, it would seem pastoralists are less dysgenic because there's no time the herd becomes concentrated into a tiny, easily-guarded form. Can't go full zerg and follow up with full rabbit. The compromise between hunter health and cultivated population density is unfavourable to the agriculturalist.
Early wheat taxers likely knew pasturing was better, but it makes taxation harder, so they eschewed it. When the tax man comes for your cow, you can harass him over the open meadows while driving your herd to flee. Farming security is only cheap too late, when the harvest is already in and stored in the silos.
In response to farming empires, pastoralism arose and grew due to competitive advantages.
If you burn a wheat field, it's a one-step conversion to pasture. Doesn't matter how many farmers there are, partly because they suck so hard due to overcrowding et al, and partly because you and your herd can flee until they're too tired to chase, and then the farmers quietly starve at no further risk to you. What are they gonna do, trample the meadows? Which the herds already do?
That is: farming is profane. Herding is sacred, at least to a degree.
The slave farmers should have retained their honour rather than their lives. If they had demanded health and holy glory, the strongman would have lost. Cowardice snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
They didn't because Caino masochiens hates itself. The suffering was the point. Mere subtraction biology: maximize lives not worth living.
Herding would be even more obviously superior if the pastoralists didn't keep boinking the local holes and picking up imbecilic farming genes.
One must wonder if there's an even more sacred form of cultivation, one that mogs herding as badly as herding mogs farming.
I think it's [I have no mouth but I must scream]. Satoru believes he's in charge of momonga, but he isn't. Momonga does the thinking and makes the decisions, but he has a confabulating narrator hanging around in his head, who makes up reasons why the things he thinks he's doing are his own idea. Momonga genuinely is the high-tier strategist demiurge thinks he is, but satoru isn't privy to the real cognition, so it all comes out of the blue for him.
I would say satoru briefly had influence. Momonga wouldn't bother groping albedo. "But since I didn't act on it, my lust went away." I think satoru's influence all but vanished at this point. Perhaps momonga sleeps occasionally and lets satoru run amok, primarily for comedic episodes contained entirely in the tomb.
Realistically, could satoru fool demiurge? Not a chance. Hence, demiurge is not being fooled. It's only the readers, or perhaps the author himself who doesn't understand what comes out of his pen.
What I like about overlord is almost entirely confined to the first volume/season. First, non-superstitious military preparedness, such as maintaining proper stealth in an unknown environment. Second, reacting to normal heroic triggers with open villainy. Hero: "I will visit justice upon the perpetrators." Ainz: "I will visit agony and despair upon the perpetrators." If you antagonize his stuff, he will show you he is the greater antagonist.
P.S. Satoru is a loser. His only goal is to find other players, ideally other members of nazarick. There are no other players. Contrast: although luffy will never find the one piece, it either exists or he can get rich off some equivalent treasure; he's only being cockblocked by author fiat, diablos ex machina. Satoru was doomed to failure since chapter 1.
Momonga knows this which is why nothing he does makes sense in terms of finding players, with the exception that he would rather not be taken by surprise by one.
Revenge is sour in both directions & "righists" are traitors.
Yes, they want you dead.
The widow could only shoot at mussolini after he died. Likewise, you're still alive. If they could kill you, you would already be dead. You can safely conclude they're too weak.
The condition under which they can kill you is that you have already died.
I, certainly, should already be dead. No Regime in history would tolerate my continued living if they did not have to. I'm exactly the kind of intolerable insolent loudmouth, secured seemingly only by arrogance, that gets merked immediately.
They have to.
They're not even allowed to know, in any meaningful sense, that I exist. Not only can they not target me, they can't know there is anything here to target.
You, likewise.
Ricky Vaughn? Rather, Douglass Mackey? "It could be you next!" No! No it couldn't! Not unless you do something incredibly stupid. "J6!" "Charlottesville!" Like I said: incredibly stupid. Unless you hold up a giant neon sign and blare megaphones in the Nameless Sovereign's face, they won't notice you. You have to pray absurdly hard, ludicrously fervently, to suffer anything worse than shadowbanning.
And shadowbanning is plain correct. The people don't want unauthorized propaganda. They demand heresy suppression. The real entryist is everyone pretending to be a rightist. The leftist religion, what leftists believe, is none of your business. How leftist government conducts itself is none of your business...unless you yourself are a leftist, who is traitorously pretending to be a rightist.
Even in Democracy, traitors get the rope. Even Satan was allowed to punish those who used his false names in vain. Blasphemy against the Nameless One is still blasphemous.
Don't pretend to be a heretic and nothing will happen to you. True apostates are untouchable. True heathens are untouchable. If you're not untouchable, then your apostasy is false. Fix it or get wrecked. Working as intended.
Most of the things I say are wholly unsuitable for the peasantry.
"Never send your daughter to prostitute school. She'll learn to be a prostitute." Peasants are incapable of seeing it as prostitute school. Adding the reasoning only confuses them.
"Meeting other kids? There's so many ways it's not even funny. Meeting kids at school is [[free]]...meaning you're the product. Pay the modest cost to meet outside pedophile school." Peasants can't handle freedom. They cannot possibly understand that handouts from their trusted lord aren't necessary for their productivity. They can't possibly understand that [free] is worth less than what you pay for it. To peasants, security is invisible. Not their job. They cannot think at all about anything which involves security. Distrusting their lord is just as stupid as a toddler distrusting his mom. Even if she's not trustworthy, what the fuck is he going to do about it? Debate her? Is he going to run off and ask for help by some boobless, milkless stranger, who would as soon bash his skull against the nearest tree? Indeed, who could the toddler possibly talk to who doesn't already know?
Logic is unsuitable for peasants. Which they generally know. They are suited only to mindless obedience. All peasant cogitation is about understanding commands, so the lord doesn't have to speak in computer code. Which peasants generally know.
It's only me that forgets.
When you give a peasant options, they don't understand it as freedom. They see it as an order, just like all the other orders, but in puzzle code. It's not time to relax, it's test time. The harder the puzzle - the less easy it is to figure out the order - the more important it is to pass. [Analysis paralysis] lol. [Choice anxiety], lmao.
If it's not actually a test, you're just trolling them. Meany. Which is how peasants will generally regard you for offering them options. "Just pick a social club for your daughter?" "You bastard! How could you do this to me [sad][sad][sad] ...."
I know peasants gonna peas, but I rely on automatic detection. I default to talking as if the other person is alive and capable of reason, only stopping when I get the intrusive thought, [oh wait, this is a peasant], which is a very stupid thing to do. I need to start actively pre-evaluating. Pre-judging, you might say.
Narcissists don't have boundaries.
Mothers of small children don't have boundaries.
Democratic Man doesn't respect boundaries, because he's not aware that they exist.
There's definitely something there.
As a child I was constantly gobsmacked when nobody understood the idea of ownership. If something is mine, then what you want for it is irrelevant. If something is yours, what I want for it is irrelevant. Democratic Man has no knowledge of these things, and I couldn't get it through my head that nobody knew this. He considers only what he wants.
Teachers in particular have zero respect for boundaries. It's all about bullying. If you try to assert your self-ownership, the teacher will gang up on you with the police, like the cowards they are. "I want a quiet classroom." "Yeah well I don't want to be here at all." The cops have guns and you don't, therefore the teacher gets what they want.
Or rather, the teacher is so pathetic that even backed by the cops and the army, they regularly can't get what they want. They can only prevent you from getting what you want. Defect-defect equilibrium, in violation of Machiavelli's dictum. "Teachers deserve more pay." Every single one of them is a massive loser, why would they deserve anything?
If Envy respects boundaries, it's entirely about tearing them down or inverting them. The Envious will often Envy the fences themselves, seeking to destroy them, even if they can't seize the wealth the fences secure.
There's definitely a pattern here.
The inventor of the bikini had to hire prostitutes to model the thing for advertisements.
It is still true that only a whore will willingly wear a bikini. Even leotards are over the line, though at least the line remains within the margin of error.
All hail the 13-year-old gaze, I suppose. Must have the Freedom to look at everything they want to look at.
Star trek is the idea that a Communist money-free society will work perfectly provided everyone acts like specifically englishmen in the presence of money.
The idea of a [[high-trust]] society is that some societies will act like punishments exist (https://twitter.com/MsMelChen/status/1569823342852542468) even if they don't.
The worst part is that these things are provisionally true. Habits take a while to change. There's inertia. If you remove the responsibility, most will act like the responsibility is still there, because they're too stupid and cowardly to notice it's gone.
The source of a [[high-trust]] society is one where stealing a loaf of bread carried the death sentence. Everyone who wasn't trustworthy was killed. (Especially, for example, luddites.) Given the results, we can safely conclude the punishment in fact does fit the crime. Rather than a mere six weeks in jail, can dude should have had his neck broken.
The source of a [[high-trust]] society is one where 1% of the population is executed per year. That's 1000 per 100,000. Annually. Let's imagine high schools existed back then (another reason they could afford trust and we can't). You turn 40, and go to your high school reunion. Consider that 1% of the broad population is more like 2% of the high-crime 18-35 age band, and 0% outside it. What is 20 years of 2% executions per year? Your random math class of 30 students would have had 10 fatalities. Only 20 left.
That's what it means to be [[[[high-trust]]]]].
Not stealing a loaf of bread isn't especially hard. They had
soup kitchens back then too. If you need food, sure the food sucks, but it exists, it's free. A fortiori, pity is a thing. Ask around enough
and some bleeding heart will hire you out of pity. Etc. Someone stealing has
passed up all these opportunities. Crime always comes from envy, not
need. If you live in a society with the death penalty for stealing and
you do it anyway, it demonstrates an exceptional love of crime. Even
under [[compassionate]] modes of thinking, there is no excuse for
letting a bread (or soda) thief live.
Letting them live is only done because even thieves pay taxes. Public costs, private profits. Secondarily black government is inherently criminal, and they feel spiritual fellowship with the lawbreaker. Hanging bread thieves and not hanging mayors or mandarins is plainly incoherent. (Nearly everyone untrustworthy was killed.) Running for public office is a capital crime. Absolute treason. If you tolerate treason regularly, what foot do you have to stand on to condemn rape or murder? None, and the result you see before you.
Hundreds of years of insufficient execution and insufficient child mortality has increased the criminal rate, so in modern times you would be lucky if 15 survived.
Or rather, you're incredibly unlucky, because it's likely all 30 survived. Which is why you can't have nice things. Can't afford it, due to carrying the excess, despicable 15. Bonus: they will breed more than you, meaning next generation it should be 18 executions per 30. Then there's immigration from countries with low-execution histories...
"But alrenous, the black government was the one doing the executions." Indeed. It was buffered by the fact it was mainly local lords rather than the central pillar, but nevertheless. You can tell they were executing the wrong edge cases, because they stopped. Good law deals well with hard cases, and it turns out the law was not good. Allegedly some 12-year-old was executed, which caused successful calls for the end of the death penalty. If they were doing it right, this would never have happened. If they were almost doing it right, they would have executed everyone who called for its end, to thunderous cheers.
Some women called for the end of the death penalty. It's easy to see why: they thought their own sons would be caught stealing and get executed.
Step 1: respect women. Believe them. Affirm their lived experience.
Step 2: snap their fucking necks. Like breaking a toothpick. Be rational and serious about it. Feeble hearts birthing feeble sons can go and stay go.
The dead don't pay taxes. Europe disregarded this fact to a degree because the communities who suffered the depredations of criminals were also responsible for executions. The fruits of buying and selling political rights, such as the right to hang thieves. Which is how they ended up with a population capable of conquering china. Did not, however, disregard it enough, and the result you see before you.
