What's All This Government Shit, Anyway? Part 1

In order to get an idea about what this government thing is, I'd like to talk about why we need a state by taking a guess at why it happened, using the context of horse trading, prison life, and farming. Hopefully, this will be enough to explain why it never went away. This will probably not do what I intended it to do, and it may take several parts, but it is mainly to get this typed out so that I can adapt it for the physics and politics class.

( Rant, Part 1 )

¹ The story of the Neapolitan coachman and his "dead" horse is quoted in Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia (1993) from a 19th century Italian source. His name was not given.

^? It should be possible to incorporate: George A. Akerlof, "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism." The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 84, No. 3. (Aug., 1970), pp. 488-500.

What's All This Government Shit, Anyway? Part 2

Last time, I tried to get Orlando to trade some wine casks for Roland's horse, assuming both were honest. And I found out that this was easy if they knew each other or knew of each other, but if they didn't know each other, it was hard. They were both too worried about the disastrous consequences if the trade went wrong. This was essentially a problem of asymmetric information, Roland's knowledge of the horse and Orlando's knowledge of his wine mean that each party could cheat the other. And so, without guarantees, a trade would not happen.

We usually look to government to make those guarantees for us. Licencing laws, small claims courts, etc., give Orlandos and Rolands some confidence that transactions are safe, or that they have reasonable redress if bilked. But, this is probably not how government grew.¹

( Rant, Part 2 )

¹ Let alone the true reason for licencing laws, which are probably anti-consumer more often than a guarantee of quality.

Based on my memory of The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System by David Skarbek (2014). Which I can't find right now.

This should also be compared to chapter 3 of Extreme Economies by Richard Davies, which provides a look at the Louisiana State Prison (Angola) for comparisons, as well as chapter 2 on the operation of refugee camps.

While looking for Social Order, I noticed that at some point I bought a book by Francis Fukuyama on this very topic. That'll be an interesting comparison.

Later on, I'll try to incorporate some insights from Against the Grain by James C. Scott, into this, too.