There is substantial evidence that the rate of human violence has decreased dramatically over the course of human history. Two of the biggest turning points were the rise of the nation-state and the spread of democracy. Yes, individual politicians are often corrupt, violent or plain stupid and the political system has serious issues but politicians as a whole have been a boon to civilized society.
This sounds like bullshit on its face. Democracy has existed before now, so what is it about our (largely ineffective if we're honest) democracies that has managed to make the world a safer place?
Also, are you sure there is any correlation at all (assuming these stats are even right)? Couldn't it be that with the rise of nation-state and spread of democracy there was a spread of much better education? Better communication? It could have been any number of things or simply coincidence related to none of them, yet you pick the ones that those in charge would most want us to believe it was.
Ok, thanks, I added the book into my to-read list, so I'll read it when I have enough time.
My skepticism isn't unfounded: I remember watching some TED talk(I guess: by the author of this book -- I googled "Steven Pinker ted talk" but I didn't do any additional check). And this talk discussed rates of individual violence(IIRC, murder statistics or something like that), and I was wondering all the time why he excludes organized violence by governments/states in 20th century(and other too).
200 million is a serious number, and it can affect your stats significantly. If you "normalize" this number by year, you'll get 2 millions of people killed on average. 4x times more than individual murder rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
Well, I hope the book is better/clearer than his talk.
Why? It is several percents of current world population. As I point out in nearby comment, if you simply divide this number by 100, you'll get rate that is 4x more than individual murder rate.
The invidual murder rate doesn't seem to vary a lot across century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona... (judging by US), and total world population was 4 times lower in the beginning of 20th century, so I guess the "government murders : individual murders" ratio may be even bigger.
And this is not counting sick sad stuff like unfair incancernation: nazi concentration camps, gulag in the USSR, camps in North Korea(where people may spend their whole life after they are born).
For example, USSR government used capital punishment several times less often than imprisonment in gulag. Of course, on average gulag is better than capital punishment, but IMO - it is still government-made violence.
In modern Russia there are a lot of people suffering because court system is fucked up: 99%+ of court verdict are convictions(<1% acquittals). Of course, not all cases get in court(some get closed before), but it is not so difficult to fake evidence.
This is not an officially and centrally declared violence, but still it is violence. Regular criminals rob random people too.
>And this is not counting sick sad stuff like unfair incancernation: nazi concentration camps, gulag in the USSR, camps in North Korea
This is what I was getting at. Things like Nazi concentration camps, starvation in Russia, etc., count because governments did this. It's an important thing to keep in mind for the people who believe democracy is non-optimal. Of course it's non-optimal, but in my mind I'm not looking for optimal, I'm looking to avoid situations where people are murdered unjustly by the government with no recourse.
You should definitely look into anarchy. I am serious. If you don't like government, find that sort of anarchy which fits your beliefs.
For me, there is libertarian anarcho-capitalism. If you are interested, I recommend you to start with the book "For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto" : http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp (it is available for fownload for free)
Does it count organized Government led Drone attacks incl. "collateral damage" or targets in the US and other countries?
What about unpublished or unpopular genocides, mass murders and deaths as direct cause of corrupted politicians? People don't only die in 3rd world countries. How many poeple died because of fracking in the USA? How many died, because of corruption in the medical system, yes here in our 1st world country. Deaths because of corruption in the organ transplantation system.
I am sure that there are millions of souls that these statistics do no good.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312...