Thread 17979873

People hate hearing this because it collapses a lot of comforting language, but if you take the mask off the words you keep seeing the same skeleton underneath: enforcement capacity. “Rules,” “rights,” and “justice” don’t float in the air like gravity; they’re coordination fictions—useful shared stories that channel behavior as long as enough power sits behind them to reward compliance and punish defection.
That’s not cynicism; it’s description.
What a “rule” is when nobody’s watching, a speed limit is a sentence until a patrol car appears. A curfew is ink until patrols, fines, reputational risk, or social shaming turn it into a constraint. Wherever the expected cost of breaking the rule drops below the expected gain, the rule evaporates. The effect isn’t moral, it’s game-theoretic: change the payoff matrix, change the behavior.
“Rights” are IOUs with muscle (or they’re nothing), call them “natural,” “human,” or “God-given”—they still behave like claims other people are compelled to honor. Compelled by what? Courts, cops, unions, mobs, markets, media, reputations, guns, votes—i.e., mechanisms of power. Watch how “rights” expand or contract exactly where those mechanisms shift: wartime vs peacetime, emergency declarations, regime changes, corporate policy flips, platform bans, financial deplatforming. If a “right” survives only while certain levers remain in friendly hands, what you’re looking at is contingent power, not a metaphysical constant.
“Justice” is branding for a chosen allocation, every legal system defines “just” outcomes differently—retributive vs restorative, common law vs civil law, constitutional vs revolutionary tribunals. Same act, different forum, different sentence. If “justice” were an external cosmic metric, forum shopping wouldn’t change outcomes. It does, because institutions (bundles of people + rules + resources) decide what counts. Institutions persist when they control budget, legitimacy, and force.

>>17979873 (OP)

If this sounds dark, it’s mostly just basic sociology
>Weber: the state claims a monopoly on legitimate violence.
>Legal positivists: law is what the recognized sovereign promulgates and enforces.
>Nietzsche/Foucault: moral vocabularies track power relations, not the other way around.
>Mackie/Hume: no objective moral properties have been found; “ought” doesn’t drop out of “is.”
You don’t need to worship any of them to see the pattern: norms are stabilized by power.
“But we all believe in rights!”
Belief is part of the machinery—but belief by whom? Convince enough citizens, judges, police unions, and international partners, and the “right” has teeth. Fail to convince (or keep them convinced), and your right dissolves at the speed of a press conference. Belief helps coordinate; capacity decides persistence.
Historical snapshots that don’t require cope
>Prohibitions and black markets: where enforcement thins, markets reappear. Price + risk ≈ tax.
>Revolutions/coups: new constitutions appear overnight once a coalition gains control of guns, cash, and media. The “old rights” become “former rights.”
>International “law”: binding for small states, advisory for great powers. Vetoes and logistics say more than signatures.
>Emergency powers: property, movement, speech can be throttled with a vote and a badge. The debate is loud; the outcome tracks who controls the switch.

>>17979874

Common pushbacks (and why they don’t land)
>“Social contract!”
It’s a story that helps justify rule; useful, yes. Empirical? No. The real contract is whatever the dominant coalition can collect in taxes and compliance without collapsing legitimacy.
>“Consent!”
Consent matters, but it’s downstream of the option set. Power defines the menu, then asks you to choose. “Voluntary” inside a pre-filtered set is still bounded by—guess what—power.
>“Moral progress proves objective rights.”
Or it proves changing tech/economics/demography shift coalitions and incentives. Printing press literacy new legitimation schemes. Industry labor leverage new rights. Internet platform leverage new chokepoints. “Progress” often maps cleanly to who gained capacity to say no.
So what is “truth” here?
The operational truth is power: the ability to make or block outcomes across time. Not just violence—also money, expertise, networks, legitimacy, logistics, attention. All the nice words either express it (“justice served”), launder it (“rule of law”), or negotiate it (“rights advocacy”). When power leaves the room, the words stop working.
Does this mean “might makes right” (normatively), no. It means might makes reality (descriptively). You can still prefer kindness, fairness, and dignity—most of us do because stable cooperation is high-EV. But treat those preferences as strategies that need backing, not talismans. If you want durable “rights,” build or borrow the capacities that keep them costly to violate.

>>17979876

Practical corollaries (not moral advice, just mechanics)
> Institutions > intentions. A weak institution with noble goals loses to a strong one with mediocre goals.
>Incentives > slogans. Change payoffs, not posters.
>Legitimacy is a power source. “Soft power” shapes what enforcers and bystanders will tolerate.
>Redundancy beats purity. Rights protected by courts and civil society and economic leverage last longer than rights with one brittle guardian.
TL;DR: Rules, rights, and justice are coordination myths with enforcement budgets. They’re great myths—civilization-grade tech—but they are not freestanding facts of nature. When the budget (coercion, cash, legitimacy, logistics) runs out, the myth flickers. If you care about the myth, don’t argue with air—build the power that keeps it true tomorrow.

AI garbage.

>>17979873 (OP)
fascism is the way

>>17980186
Somehow you are even more of a faggot than OP, I guess Gorky was right...

>>17979873 (OP)
please tell me more about power being the only reality when I'm pointing a loaded rifle at you in your bedroom at 3AM.

>>17980565
figures, power only matters when the power thirsty lunatic is the one with the gun
humans couldn't have survived this long without the powerful giving up their power for the good of everyone
even the great men like caesar knew this
this thread is childish

>>17979873 (OP)
I agree with your post, but stop using chatgpt.

We’re told about “rights” and the “rule of law” to dull us from recognizing that we’re enslaved by the powerful. Normtards unironically believe there’s a moral order to the universe, being good pays off and bad people eventually get their comeuppance. But the reality is, if you’re powerful enough, you can get away with “evil” and live a happier, more joyful life than your victims.

>>17979873 (OP)
Tell that to the division of power between temple and monarch since ancient times, or in the Principate era, even in the Tetrarchy era, or in Feudalism, or in Absolutism which the monarchs still relied on prestige and competency in balancing the interests of the estates. Even in Fascism leaders relied on the power of the military and the generals.

>>17980573
1. That’s just an expression of their power, to have that many people obey their commands.

2. You’re just saying they weren’t powerful enough. If the promises of AI hold true, then you wouldn’t need a human element in administration. Machines could handle everything, answering solely to the whims of a dictator.

>>17980186
If you think about it without bias, fascism is not the way

>>17979873 (OP)
Funny you post that picture because a lot of Romans were shocked at how brutal Caesar was in Gaul and the Senate planned to use it against him.

Yeah, I guess this makes sense. “We demand justice!” sounds a whole lot better than “We want more power.”

>>17980564
this is an image board
post images
not whiney text
>kek