1/ while I agree w the ethos expressed here, the actual facts are entirely wrong. For the vast majority of human history there has NOT been a frontier that normal people could get to, physically, economically, or legally ...and if they could, it would be even worse than staying https://t.co/fsEy9ntOEL
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3/ states, for all their predation (I am an ancap) also filled a power vacuum that - beyond their borders - were filled by other powers: barbarian tribes, bandits, other kingdoms (also with taxes, social norms, mandatory religions, etc.).
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4/ saying "for all of human history, there was a frontier that free men could escape to" is just as ahistorical and wrong as the Nrx kids who look at 1950s advertising and think "for all of human history a guy could work 40 hrs per week and afford a convertible ford and a waifu"
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5/ it's not worth discussing "if the guys who set out for the free frontier were weirdos and antisocial" when the point is THERE WAS NO FREE FRONTIER. I mean, except for, like, maybe 150 years or so.https://twitter.com/tigerboy74u/status/1220727352294023171 …
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6/ I recommend the books "Against the Grain" and "The Art of Not Being Governed" by James C Scott. He argues kind of against my position, saying that there WAS escape from centralism ... but it wasn't a free frontier!
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7/ yes, I agree more generally, most peoples' broad sweeping statements about human nature and "for all of the history of mankind" are based off of bad movies and half remembered AD&D campaigns.https://twitter.com/tigerboy74u/status/1220728250244063232 …
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8/ I think American Exceptionalism is about our character BECAUSE of the land mass we lucked into (and also bc England was on the periphery of continental Europe and an island - our ancestors got stomped on less frequently than some. C.f. Russians.)https://twitter.com/DogmanRespecter/status/1220728352266506243 …
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9/ need to clarify: even for "150 years or so" (i.e. the American expansion) the western frontier was freaking DANGEROUS. The most common novel of that era had the plot "red savages kill and torture entire family, take young women as sex slaves". >>>https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1220727747682734081 …
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10/ ...and this was not sensationalistic nonsense! It was based on newspaper articles, etc. "the American west" and "the era of homesteading" was like 20-30 years after the Indian Wars ended, and their power collapsed. It was ALMOST A PERFECT ANALOGY to the 1950s.
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11/ Humans basically can't survive on their own, in the wilderness, without a tribe. There is a reason that the worst punishment in hunter gatherer bands is exile, and second worst is ostracism.https://twitter.com/SchraderValves/status/1220732520662274048 …
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12/ This is an interesting assertion, but I don't buy it. A single man, wandering in the wilderness, is defenseless against other hunter gatherer tribes. We know that the homicide rate among hunter gatherers is very high. Single men don't wander >>>https://twitter.com/LucioMM1/status/1220734569990774785 …
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13/ ...any more than single chimpanzees do. Exile is a death sentence. Our brains excel in communication and social skills SO THAT we can band together in tribes in an intensely dangerous environment.
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15/ OK, but now we're no longer talking about "a man lighting out for the frontier", but are talking about "a tribe fractures in two". which, ok, sure, that happened ...but has nothing to do with the thesis of this thread.https://twitter.com/LucioMM1/status/1220735224495190016 …
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