[HN Gopher] How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part II
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How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part II
Author : Luc
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-06-15 13:38 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Did I miss anything besides the pedantic discussion around the
| term "state", was the answer to the question of how to raise
| armies simply "excess youths"?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Yes, a hell of a lot.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| No: the answer was by pulling on horizontal and vertical
| relations among non-army warriors and their bands.
| navane wrote:
| Stay tuned for part three
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| There's still some remnant of this aristocratic private army in
| Britain today, called the Atholl Highlanders. I think it's crazy
| that this still exists in a Western country to this day.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atholl_Highlanders
| WJW wrote:
| Anyone can hire security guards, and if they have the
| appropriate licenses for those bolt action rifles I don't see
| anything wrong with that. Calling it a "private army" is way
| overblown, this is more a rich person cosplaying as a Scottish
| Lord from the olden days.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| in the USA there were intentional efforts to break tribal and
| social class, yet evolve somehow with financial power as the
| scoreboard. The Pinkerton security company played a role. note:
| a Scotsman founded it, apparently..
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
| motohagiography wrote:
| a similar cavalry regiment in Canada but with some affiliation
| with a regular reserve regiment:
| http://www.gghgsociety.org/cavalry/
|
| they provide prarade and honour guard services and are a fine
| volunteer organization
| bell-cot wrote:
| Very interesting to read about their recurring problems caused by
| too-powerful aristocrats or ill-behaved _iuvenes_...and to
| consider the parallels to current-day social problems.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| That's not obvious to me. Can you elaborate?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| It's not obvious to me either, but the _patrocinium_ really
| reminded me of Don Corleone in _The Godfather_. Consider how
| the opening scene between Bonasera and Corleone is basically
| an infodump on the difference between state (the police) and
| non-state (the godfather) provision of violence.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZHsmb4ezEk
|
| (in particular, note how it calls attention to the importance
| of --asymmetric!-- ritual gift exchange for vertical ties)
|
| (and Barzini's presence --depicted due to the photographer, a
| little later-- demonstrates horizontal ties among the Big
| Men)
| philwelch wrote:
| Yeah, this is how institutions like the Sicilian mafia
| work. It's framed as "organized crime" because we live in a
| state-oriented society where the state is actively trying
| to supplant the non-state system and assert its monopoly on
| the legitimate use of force.
|
| Of course, these institutions also change and adapt to
| competition with the state--for instance, when the state
| tries to break up the mafia using the literal prisoners
| dilemma, the mafia needs to invent and enforce the
| institution of "snitches get stitches". More troubling is
| when pre-state mechanisms of dispute resolution can be end-
| run by disputants trying to enlist the state on their side.
| For instance, the notorious Hatfield/McCoy feud was
| exacerbated by various prominent members of one clan or the
| other getting themselves elected sheriff and abusing their
| power against the rival clan.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _using the literal prisoners dilemma_
|
| they're using game theoretic payouts, but it's not the
| literal "prisoner's dilemma" which has it in each
| prisoner's interest to rat _no matter what the other
| prisoner does_ , and yet it's _still net advantageous for
| neither to rat_.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _More troubling is when pre-state mechanisms of dispute
| resolution can be end-run by disputants trying to enlist
| the state on their side._
|
| compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival
| #Descriptio...
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