Josh: I think maybe this is the difference between our perceptions: I favor the

Josh: I think maybe this is the difference between our perceptions: I favor the cost of institutional solutions that produce incentives by self interest that make the cost of providing the high cost of violence unnecessary. Because while violence alters immediacy, the cost of diligence and the distraction of shocks means the incentive to retaliate against you remains. Yet if institutions exist at all times and cause people to monitor each other, vastly more dramatic shocks are necessary to cause a change in state, and when you are otherwise occupied you do not leave an opening for retaliation and change in state.

I express this sometimes as the difference between strategy and tactics. But perhaps I needed to say this in terms of costs and opportunities.

If men(or women) are incapable of sovereignty, then maturing them into freemen by the use of institutions is merely cheaper, more competitive, more rewarding, and safer than the alternatives.

This is nothing except a statement of the cost of domesticating animals.

The Spartans were never as safe as the Romans. The Romans over extended. But the Spartans couldn’t even extend.