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Collecting taxes and providing justice/vengeance and security. Rulership at is most basic level. Putting on my COIN hat, the cartels are fighting both an insurgency, currently at early stage three (developing standing uniformed forces and collecting revolutionary taxes) and a civil war with...

They (owners of mass media) mediate reality remember? 'Democracy' now only means their rule (the owners of mass media) and has nothing at all to do with the rule of the citizen class or any particular mechanistic procedural legalism.

But is it not true that the Cartels are not so slowly replacing the previously established state apparatus in Mexico? The old republic is no more, we the unorganized militia are no longer part of the state. So yes, the current Regime exists alongside a potential competitor that awaits the...

Legitimate to whom? Forget the 'monopoly' theory for a moment, a command is legitimate when it is obeyed without the application of coercion. A ruler is legitimate when he commands in this way.

Temporal rule is a Sword. Always has been. Always will be. There is no alternative.

Shrug. God defends the Right. If the Bandits win and pay their dues to get made, it is now in the interest of the general Peace and Truce of God to forgive what is now the past. Someone must rule, but God is no respecter of persons, there's no particular reason why it has to be *you*.

Except non legitimate uses of force are still illegitimate, see bandits. What legitimates the village of Nowheresville in the use of force is that the village has an overlord, who has an overlord, all the way up to the sovereign prince and through him, the Body of Christ, the Vicar of Christ...

Yes, but in previous eras this violence legitimization function of 'government' was more widely distributed, down to the heads of major families who had the duty of deciding to back the inter family violence of members of their family and commit to a feud, or pay the wergild and discipline the...