It is currently widely understood that no single entity within the United States has the ability to violently defy the jurisdiction of the government without being militarily overpowered. Following the description of Max Weber, the US government currently generally succeeds in holding the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize physical force against residents of its territory.
This market gauges whether this state of affairs will change before 2035, such that among informed observers, the US government clearly and obviously no longer holds a monopoly on violence.
This market intends to have a high bar for what would qualify for a YES resolution. Here are some examples:
The government has de facto ceded law enforcement, within a region larger than 25 sq. kilometers, to be fully and exclusively managed by an entity which is not accountable to the US legal system, not counting Native tribes.
The US has lost more than 25 sq. kilometers of territory within its borders in war.
Organized criminal entities act in open defiance of the law, in a manner that reveals an inability, even with reasonable military effort, for the US government to control its territory. This is intended as a high bar which no organization in modern US history (including the Mafia) has met.
The US Federal Government is toppled or fractured, such that it is no longer a unified political and military entity.
Anything else which clearly indicates that the government has lost its de facto monopoly on violence
[For the record, I really, really don't want this to happen!]
1,000
3.00thanks for the clarification. But de jure accountability and de facto accountability can be very different -- the loss of the monopoly on violence might only be on paper. I think there's a sense in which every country in the world is accountable to the US empire, and this is not so much weaker than the sense in which a charter city would be accountable to the US. The whole point of a charter city is to be exempt from the host country's laws and regulations, except perhaps certain fundamental ones that the host country won't tolerate any deviation from. The charter city can mostly do what it wants, under the implicit threat that if they piss off the USG enough the USG will take over and impose its will. Which is about the same implicit threat as most other countries in the world are working under.
This question resolves YES to a de facto loss of the monopoly on violence, but also to full de jure legal separation. You are right that there are many nations which are de facto accountable to the US, because of the hard and soft power the US holds. But this would not make it fair to say that the US government retains a monopoly on violence in, say, Canada. The Canadian government can legitimately administer force against its residents, and the US legal system can't veto or review its decisions.
Here's a standard I think is reasonable for charter cities: if a murder committed in the city would not be handled through the US legal system, in favor of an alternative mechanism managed by the city which cannot be officially vetoed or reviewed by US courts, I'll count that as enough legal separation for a YES resolution. I'm happy to discuss this more, though.
this seems like a reasonable take! thanks OP
Hmm. Would a bunch of collective organized crime organizations count? how tied together would they have to be? would a state attempting to secede count?
What about if it was possible that a group could have this kind of control easily but just doesn't, like, say, if there were a cold-war-style scenario where some would, at a specific person's go-ahead, attempt takeover of a reigon? What about a second civil war?
(sorry for all the questions, and I hope the "Hmm." at the beginning doesn't make me sound pretentious.)
I'd say the bar should be really high for organized crime to count. It is not enough for the activity to be hard to completely root out, like Dark Net Markets, unless it reaches a point of open violent defiance of the law that far exceeds anything we've ever seen from organized violent crime. Something like persistent, organized, decentralized vandalism which results in more than $100B in economic damage and which withstands broad, militarized resistance from the government could count.
What about if it was possible that a group could have this kind of control easily but just doesn't?
I'd be willing to resolve YES in this case if the situation is plainly clear, though in most cases military confrontation would probably be necessary to meet this threshold. If it somehow becomes the case that Metooglesoft has its own drone army and a next-gen laser air defense system or something defending its cluster, and it's pretty clear that the USFG can't do much short of nuking the place, then I'd probably consider resolving YES at that point.
I like this question, because it's helpful to specify where on the timeline--from de facto loss of control to military confrontation--this market would resolve. Yes, this market would have resolved YES at the onset of the Civil War, since the USFG no longer maintained military control over parts of the country. There would be a weak argument for resolving upon South Carolina's secession, since an attempt to immediately send federal troops to the state would likely have met armed resistance. There's a stronger argument for resolving at Lincoln's inauguration, when he announced U.S. marshals and judges would be withdrawn wherever federal law could not peacefully be enforced. This market would have resolved YES unambiguously after the Battle of Fort Sumter.
The takeaway is that I'll lean towards waiting for instances of direct military confrontation before resolving, though official announcements of withdrawals or agreements that cede power would also generally be enough.
Good point, that’s how the phrase is often understood. In this question, I’m also using it to refer to de facto military control.