Rationals (NTs)

When someone misunderstands this thread and is mean will they-

  • A, claim all NTs are evil because of a single bad experience or

    Votes: 7 19.4%

  • B, argue that NTs are the master race

    Votes: 5 13.9%

  • C, inevitable joke answer: Xylophone

    Votes: 16 44.4%

  • D, use their unlimited power to edit this poll. Xx, Lady Palpatine

    Votes: 8 22.2%
  • Total voters
    36
Pin said:
Members of The Pin Administration!

@Ren Position: Secretary of State
@hush Position: Secretary of Grammar
@Reason Position: Secretary of the Interior
@Wyote Position: Secretary of Secretarying (To be later revised)
@Ginny Position: Attorney Ginnyral
@JennyDaniella Position: Secretary of Health and Human Services



Your collective job is to compile every poem I've ever written on this website for the sake of posterity. Whoever achieves this will be chosen for Vice President.
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Wyote said:
INFJs: we ain't doin shit unless nobody else will lollll
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noisebloom said:
INTPs: we ain't doin shit, especially if nobody else will, because we want the system to collapse
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Lady Jolanda said:
Whatever my type is: FFS why is nobody doin' shit. I'm bored.
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See ya'll I'd hire another ENTJ but...

440px-Cesareborgia.jpg


Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, was an Italian condottiero, nobleman, politician, and cardinal with Aragonese origin, whose fight for power was a major inspiration for The Prince by Machiavelli.
 
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This thread needs more xylophone
 
OK I read the first page. My thoughts:
Pin said:
How large can a state (polity) become before it collapses like the Roman Empire? Provide examples of successful or unsuccessful states, forms-of government, or economic systems to support your points.
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If we're talking about power, I think you ought to focus on the idea of optimal states rather than 'large states'. What I mean by this can be broadly understood in terms of evolutionary mechanics, since it seems to me that the underlying logical principles are the same.

Here's the (my) theory, then: states speciate based upon pressures in the contemporary technological environment.

For example, in the High Middle Ages, where the technology of castles determined warfare, we find that smaller states and autonomous lordships prevail - a large army simply couldn't conquer territories which were effectively controlled by castles, even small ones. Within this context, you can imagine what the 'optimal' strategy for statecraft might be... a focus on economics, perhaps, or marriage alliances, &c.

Now, consider the invention of brass cannons. Now we have a situation whereby a king could go around all of his recalcitrant lords and knock down their castles with a large standing army, leading to the dominance of the unitary centralised state in the Early Modern Period. Of course I'm not just talking about the technology of warfare which determines why a certain kind of state was 'optimal', but it illustrates the general point. Consider also the most powerful states in the Early Modern Period - not vast contiguous empires like Russia, but highly centralised kingdoms of a particular size, national consciousness, and bureaucratic organisation like England and France.

Consider now the modern era, where transportation and communications technology has allowed large continental powers to dominate. In terms of strategy, then, the question to ask is: how can I order a state which is optimal for the current technological environment? Or, if you want to try to predict the future: how can I order a state which is optimal for future technological environments?

At the present time, the decisive factor in determining the ranking of the powers seems to be that the state has enough economic resources to deploy a blue-water navy or comparable long-range air power.

For you, @Pin, I highly recommend reading The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, since it seems to be the kind of thing you're looking for. Warning, though, it's fucking long, and only goes back to 1500, but to his credit he did predict with good accuracy what has actually come to pass with China/USSR, &c. (it was published 1987).

Pin said:
I want to explore two sub-ideas here under the umbrella of World Domination.

How powerful can a person become? Provide examples of the most and least powerful people who've ever lived to support your points.
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Oh gawd… this is much harder.​
 
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Pin said:
Feel free to mention Shaka Zulu & Charlemagne in no particular order.
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LOL, Shaka Zulu...

OK, well, for simplicity's sake I'm going to apply Michael Mann's two-axis conception of state power, which he laid out in his seminal 1984 essay The Autonomous Power of the State. Essentially this conceives of 'power' as the state's ability to enforce it's will in two different ways:

1) Despotic Power: This is the ability of the state to do what it pleases. Its a kind of measure of impunity. Having a lot of despotic power would mean that you are able to act arbitrarily without reference to laws or customs, &c. Having little would mean that you would be forced to act within tightly defined parameters, e.g. a functioning independent judiciary to curtail the power of the executive (:wink:)

2) Infrastructural Power: This describes essentially the reach, breadth and depth of state power. Is the state able to get to you? It's no good having de jure power of life and death over your subjects if you can't actually de facto enforce it; this is infrastructural power.

So we see the pattern in preindustrial states of having more despotic power and less infrastructural power, and modern states having absolutely vast amounts of infrastructural power and comparatively little despotic power (at least in the West for the most part). This theory tracks well to things like the development of crime and punishment, where deterrent (think of the death penalty) is used more in states with with lower infrastructural power, and gradually it becomes less and less necessary as the certainty of arrest (infrastructural power) increases. You don't need a severe deterrent like the death penalty if you definitely will get caught and prosecuted. This is why the US is weird in holding on to the death penalty in so many places... in structural terms, it shouldn't need it because it has vast amounts of infrastructural power. It's very inefficient in that regard and a bit anomalous.

Now of course the implication for our purposes is that we need to find an individual who had access to lots of infrastructural power, but who could also use it arbitrarily (despotic power). Implicit in the calculus of infrastructural power is that the more people it reaches, the more of it there is, while despotic power is best thought of as a kind of multiplier for infrastructural power. So... we can look at this in two ways: I) in absolute terms, or ii) in historical relative terms.

Let's take the first of these:

Absolute Power
There can be no doubt that the infrastructural power of the modern bureaucratic state is absolutely mind-boggling and historically unprecedented. This means that the only candidates for the top spot in terms of absolute values must come from the last couple of centuries. When compared with the axis of despotic power, we can be pretty certain that what we're looking for is a dictator in control of a large, centralised bureaucratic state. Here are some candidates:

I) King George V/Bonar Law: British Empire at its peak in 1922; 458 million people* (I'll come back to this)
ii) Stalin: USSR during WWII; c.170 million people
iii) Adolf Hitler: Third Reich (inc. conquered territories); no idea, c.100 million people
iv) The leader of the PRC at any point in it's history; c.600 million to 1.379 billion people

I think it's pretty clear... by these metrics it's either Mao or Xi Jingping, depending on how much weight you give to despotic power, but theoretically Xi could probably exercise the same kind of despotism as Mao, at least for a while, so let's say him.

*The British are here as an example of the limitations of having low despotic power, though of course during wartime, the despotic power of democratic states increases exponentially, meaning that there's a case for the WWI British to have been the most powerful ever, if we consider the coercive power of the Royal Navy, which leads me to my next point...

Theoretically (this is a bit Clausewitzian I admit), if the United States were able to enforce it's will upon China using, say, it's blue-water Navy, then a case could be made for Donald Trump being the most powerful man who ever lived in absolute terms. However, we must consider the power that China holds over the US in terms of both debt and manufacturing, so the reality of this scenario is that the US is in, or is rapidly moving towards, a balance of power situation with China...

Now, roll back the clock to when the US wasn't so dependent upon Chinese manufacturing, and you have a case for arguing that the President of the United States was the most powerful office that ever was between 1945 and something like 1980, because they could exercise despotic power abroad. Immediately after WWII, the United States could do anything it wanted, anywhere in the world, and it did. It remade the world in its image, completely and absolutely. This is doubly the case when considering the period of US nuclear monopoly (1945-9), meaning that, in my view...

In absolute terms, the most powerful man who ever lived was President Harry S. Truman
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So, what about in historical relative terms? Same guy; Harry Truman. No one else even comes close, unless you put a huge amount of weight into despotic power, in which case it's Xi.

Charlemagne... The Frankish Empire was pretty orderly, actually, and it's collapse ushered in feudalism when their system of public office went to shit and degenerated into aristocracy, but Charlemagne himself wasn't particularly powerful in either the infrastructural or despotic axes.

'Shaka who?' said the Eurocentrist :wink:

Other than that, we're looking at despots of either the Roman or various Chinese Empires for this magic mix of despotic & infrastructural power. So... perhaps Nero or one of these guys.
 
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