Conversation

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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The movies would have us believe that frontier justice often ends at the butt of a gun while civ collapse can be genocidal at one extreme or slow undying purgatory in jail, hiding or zombification at the other