Macabre question I’m pondering right now: is there more killing on rough, lawless frontiers or corrupt and collapsing civilization cores. My intuition is that the latter is far worse but I have no data.
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Absence of rule of law creates a less hostile environment than failure of rule of law. Though of course there’s more ways to die on the frontier besides being killed by competing explorers/prospectors. Star caring, thirst, falling off a cliff, sneks.
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Note: thinking of actual sparsely inhabited frontiers, not colonizers clearing out a weaker civilization. That’s not really exploration per se.
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The “exploration” of the American west was largely competitive state formation not pristine. Just very one-sides, and after the clear cutting the settling looked vaguely like exploration.
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Autocorrect typo: star caring = starving
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Same; both would be necessity-focused, but the latter would have a lot of psychological luxury and denial on top of it, whereas the former would be more stoic.
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There are probably way more people available to be killed in collapsing civilization cores than in rough, lawless frontiers.
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Per-capita? I'd bet more overall on the frontier, but more dramatic spikes during collapse. Brief, concentrated periods of killing.
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if you take into consideration the other types of brutality that can be inflicted by one agent upon another, there seems to be no contest






