Pirates and Emperors

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MattShizzle posted this video on here recently, and it got me thinking.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQBWGo7pef8[/youtube]
Any thoughts? What precisely fundamentally divides a government from a gang of thugs? After all, Alexander the Great (referenced at the start of the video) went about the world with armed men taking what he pleased. Is he indeed different from the "pirate" he is compared to? Is the difference between thugs and governments merely the size of the operation?

Last edited by Orwell on 21 May 2009, 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm the one who posted it, and I forget where. I would say it depends on how that government behaves.

Thanks, I corrected the OP.


In that case, there isn't something fundamentally different, but rather the distinction between thugs and legitimate governments would be based on actions. By this logic, what would you make of Mao in his early days, when he worked to protect the people and strictly prohibited his soldiers from practicing the usual routine of rape, pillage, and plunder?

LOL - maybe that is why Schoolhouse Rock got pulled - corrupting the youth. Is that really from the same people that gave us Molly and her adverbs??

No, someone made it to look like them.

The similarity is striking, isn't it?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-3RTWh3D_w[/youtube]

Are there objective standards, or are these standards derived from subjectivity?

If there are objective standards, from what do these arise as objective standards? Why are these objective standards important in changing the nature of these thugs from simple thugs to lawful rulers?

If there are subjective standards, then isn't the point "government vs robber" really one of rhetoric, rather than one of definition? As after all, the question will be different depending upon who you ask, and if that is the case, then can special features of government such as laws and things like that *truly* exist?

Do you have a translation of the lyrics? I don't know German.

It's a German dubbing of this song, with a well-known 'emperor' as an added twist.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLsJyfN0ICU[/youtube]

It seemed funny in this context... never mind.

Henriksson, that is deeply disturbing. And I think Google's servers are crashing again, because Youtube content is loading even slower than WP.

I think Ayn Rand talked about it in Atlas Shrugged. But, in my opinion, the fundamental difference between a good government and a gang of thugs is intent and results.

Well, now you're talking about "good" government. Must government be good to be government? And doesn't your answer imply that a number of governments are in fact gangs of thugs? What of gangs of thugs who act out of good motives and get good results, do they then become governments?

Well, a major issue I see is one of "good motives" and "good results", as who then defines good? Let's say that I am a radical libertarian, and I see the world and empirical facts through a radical libertarian perspective, does this mean that all governments are just bands of thugs? Does this then mean that government vs thug is just subjective? If that is so, then does that mean that laws are subjective? And the line of reasoning goes from there, probably to argue that this goes against our standard reasoning on ultimate authority to make it entirely subjective.

When you tell people who chose you to be in power what to do, you're a leader. When you try to tell anyone else what to do (which usually requires some form of bullying to be effective), you're a thug. So I guess all "pirates" and "emperors" are both legitimate leaders (to their followers) and thugs (to everyone else).

So you assume an element of democracy for a government to be legitimate. What if you choose someone to be in power and they then use bullying tactics to tell you what to do? And can you be a legitimate leader to some people and a thug to others? A thug is a thug, I would think, unless you are saying that you don't mind thuggery so long as you are not the target.

As far as your assumptions of democracy, I actually distrust democracy and would rather have a more autocratic system (perhaps a sort of monarchy or oligarchy) and would recognize such a government as more legitimate than a democracy.

I don't assume any specific form of government. There are no circumstances where an individual just proclaims himself leader out of nowhere. Perhaps "chose" wasn't the right word, more like support (during the period of time necessary to take control). I should also expand this to include supporting a system that chooses a leader, so that for example democratically elected leaders are legitimate to all who support the democracy, whether they voted for the winning candidate or not, and a king would be legitimate to all who support the monarchy, regardless of whether they support him personally. Which leads me to your second issue, if that leader then loses support. I'd say that depends on a lot of factors. For one, the method used to choose the leader. In an extreme case, one could argue that a monarch who lawfully inherited his crown would be legitimized for life to anyone who believed in divine right, regardless of his actions. Historically though, the aristocracy, the ones who upheld divine right, obviously didn't believe in it that much or else there wouldn't have been so many murdered "divine" kings. So it's tough to find a case where a leader can be permanently legitimized. In a democratic system where leaders are chosen based on the policies they promise to pursue, it's more of a judgement call. It would be ridiculous for a leader to lose legitimacy as soon as he made a decision you didn't agree with, but also ridiculous for him to retain legitimacy if he consistently went against the will of those who elected him, and especially if he went against his own promises. As for being a legitimate leader to some and thug to others, perhaps it's not completely necessary but it certainly must be possible. What about warrior cultures, or any group of people who, as a whole, decide to raid, plunder or bully others? If a leader can't be legitimate and also a thug, then these groups couldn't have legitimate leaders at all.