Global counter-reaction to the rise of far-right in the West?

[Shroom Man 777]

I am aware of that. Along with the Brietbart chief who is now their Karl Rove.

[K. A. Pital]

I think you both need to consider that the rise of the "security" industry is just people taking advantage of other people's anxieties. Security guards and body guards are pretty common things in the Third World even before the whole globalization thing and are hardly the heralds of a corporate Gestapo. Indeed, in the Philippines "security" agencies tend to be small, fragmented, and barely able to recoup the costs even though they essentially give zero training or effective weaponry to their security guards. This is why virtually no major corporation in the Philippines maintains its own private security arm and instead outsources it to a smaller (and often barely profitable) company. There's no real money to be made there. Threatening to pull out security guards would also be a very feeble one to the poorer sections of society - it's the rich that need them to begin with.

PMCs are a different story - those have actually helped depose some Third-World government - but as is their economics. I don't see PMCs being effective police force replacements when they cost even more than the private security industry.

Poor areas will not get good policing. Ghettos will multiply and become irrelevant. Subsections of towns which are meant for the rich will be gentrified and staffed with private security to make sure troublemakers steer clear of the high life districts.

Of course it is always the rich who need guards and the like. The poor have gotten an exceptionally rough deal with the constant cutbacks to public services, which most likely will intensify. Especially under globalists, but can also easily happen under right wing populists like Trump and the like.

There is no "corporate gestapo", they will simply throw you out into the ghettos and lock you out of any career prospects for life. For that they do not need a gestapo, just solidly written individual contracts and a good old ban on things like collective bargaining and firing protections.

[Zinegata]

Poor areas will not get good policing. Ghettos will multiply and become irrelevant. Subsections of towns which are meant for the rich will be gentrified and staffed with private security to make sure troublemakers steer clear of the high life districts.

Of course it is always the rich who need guards and the like. The poor have gotten an exceptionally rough deal with the constant cutbacks to public services, which most likely will intensify. Especially under globalists, but can also easily happen under right wing populists like Trump and the like.

There is no "corporate gestapo", they will simply throw you out into the ghettos and lock you out of any career prospects for life. For that they do not need a gestapo, just solidly written individual contracts and a good old ban on things like collective bargaining and firing protections.

Well, it sounds more like a recipe for replicating the areas of Mexico afflicted by the Drug War, which means that the disfranchised will end up organizing their own black economy and gang forces; with the latter potentially overrunning the private security. Or maybe you've been making the Elysium comparison too much .

[madd0ct0r]

That Angell manifesto was the most accurate and depressing thing I've read for a long time.

And hell, just like Stas I've taken steps to get myself into the mobile elite while decrying the vision. Worst of all, the only thing I see from otuside that vision breaking that certainty of vision is War. A series of large wars that reestablish the nation states in mutual jingoisim. A whole heap of people dead and progress lost to rerun the aftermath of the previous World Wars.

the smaller glimmer of hope I see are member-owned global corps, who while expanding less quickly than the AECOMs of the world, do hold their own against the total dying of the light.

[Simon_Jester]

I think you both need to consider that the rise of the "security" industry is just people taking advantage of other people's anxieties. Security guards and body guards are pretty common things in the Third World even before the whole globalization thing and are hardly the heralds of a corporate Gestapo.

Under conditions of near-anarchy, there is no fundamental reason for "private security" to be much better organized or disciplined than a street gang. You really only need to find toughs and pay them enough that they decide biting the hand that feeds them is a bad idea.

Any organization that pays more and is more organized, but is not an army, is likely to be ground down by the same relentless pseudo-market logic that threatens to grind down governments and the middle class. Sort of like how Uber is driving out the more regulated taxi services.

All this has happened before, the elite having groups of violent servants who would beat you for intruding on the wrong part of town was normative for most of pre-industrial history. And as a general rule, such servants were no more disciplined than they had to be of doing the job of protecting the aristocrats against random violence and petty crime coming from the masses.

[Zinegata]

Under conditions of near-anarchy, there is no fundamental reason for "private security" to be much better organized or disciplined than a street gang. You really only need to find toughs and pay them enough that they decide biting the hand that feeds them is a bad idea.

The problem with this idea is that poorly paid private security are much more inclined to just steal off the rich people they are guarding. This is why the local security agencies have such high turnover - sooner or later the guards just figure out that they're better off stealing from uncaring masters than continuing to live under a minimum wage. Indeed, I'd note that pretty much all of the big heists I've seen in my company involved collusion or outright participation by the security themselves, which is why we now regularly change agencies every couple of months and that further crushes the profitability of the security firms. Paying these guys more wouldn't change much - there's still too much of a gulf between their pay and the riches they protect.

Also, I have to note - American private security is hilariously expensive for its level of effectiveness, which is why I don't see them as serious "security" measures but are simply a racket preying on the fears of the American population. Your systems are too reliant on gadgets and toys - which are very impressive during the sales pitch - but will do nothing against one determined burglar with just a sledgehammer or some basic tools. Indeed, the premise of most of your "security" systems is that you still ultimately have to summon the police or a rent-a-cop agency as a final fail-safe, which is why they haven't seen widespread adoption of your systems outside of the US and Israel.

Moreover, folks who think that anarchy is easy to manage or keep at bay need to take a long and hard look at Syria and Mexico. ISIS and the cartels were born out of the areas of anarchy; and indeed they proved quite adept at defeating and putting to flight poorly paid and motivated security forces. Anarchy in fact does not necessarily mean chaos - in many cases "anarchy" is simply how people define a black market economy and society that they don't understand yet which has developed substantial capabilities that can overwhelm weak security forces.

[Simon_Jester]

Under conditions of near-anarchy, there is no fundamental reason for "private security" to be much better organized or disciplined than a street gang. You really only need to find toughs and pay them enough that they decide biting the hand that feeds them is a bad idea.

The problem with this idea is that poorly paid private security are much more inclined to just steal off the rich people they are guarding. This is why the local security agencies have such high turnover - sooner or later the guards just figure out that they're better off stealing from uncaring masters than continuing to live under a minimum wage. Indeed, I'd note that pretty much all of the big heists I've seen in my company involved collusion or outright participation by the security themselves, which is why we now regularly change agencies every couple of months and that further crushes the profitability of the security firms. Paying these guys more wouldn't change much - there's still too much of a gulf between their pay and the riches they protect.

I think we're in a condition of violent agreement here.

The kind of security we're both talking about is fairly limited in effectiveness- it serves mainly to deter casual intruders and people who aren't welcome in your part of town. That can be a useful function, but as you say, it doesn't deter organized thefts.

And as you say, anything more disciplined and capable tends to fall afoul of what I called "pseudo-market logic." That is, the race to the bottom that we often see in capability and price when the market is totally unregulated. Because a significant fraction of customers will always buy the service that is 10% cheaper, even if it is correspondingly 20% riskier, because they either fool themselves that the risks are small, or don't even seriously consider the risks. After this process has iterated enough times, you end up with a market totally dominated by very cheap but very risky services, and anyone trying to provide a high quality service runs into the obstacle that they're paying twice as much as they should.

But I think we all agree on where this process ends: the rich can dismantle law enforcement and rely on private security, but only if they're willing to accept that their rent-a-cop force is going to get their heads handed to them by the first militia to roll up with technicals and a popular support base. Mercenaries capable of fighting back against such a militia exist, but they're so expensive that in order to employ them, the oligarchy of a given country would have to pool their resources and, in effect, form a new government.

[Zinegata]

But I think we all agree on where this process ends: the rich can dismantle law enforcement and rely on private security, but only if they're willing to accept that their rent-a-cop force is going to get their heads handed to them by the first militia to roll up with technicals and a popular support base. Mercenaries capable of fighting back against such a militia exist, but they're so expensive that in order to employ them, the oligarchy of a given country would have to pool their resources and, in effect, form a new government.

Yep. Also, there's always the risk that competent thugs and mercenaries will simply decide to take over entirely. This is why "leaders" in the ancient world tended to be great warriors themselves. If the bodyguard thinks they can easily beat up the rich guy who hired them, why shouldn't the bodyguard just kill his employer and take over the riches himself?