Hoosgot

http://radgeek.com/gt/2008/04/23/tribal_feud/ asks Hoosgot,

Dear LazyWeb, Jared Diamond makes the following claim in [his recent article on tribal blood feuds in New Guinea: Without state government, war between local groups is chronic; coöperation between local groups on projects bringing benefits to everyone—such as large-scale irrigation systems, free rights of travel, and long-distance trade—becomes much more difficult; and even the frequency of murder within a local group is higher. It’s true, of course, that twentieth-century state societies, having developed potent technologies of mass killing, have broken all historical records for violent deaths. But this is because they enjoy the advantage of having by far the largest populations of potential victims in human history; the actual percentage of the population that died violently was on the …

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