[Kosh]

I found a description (and a very brief summary) of the book, and I thought it was interesting.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HE20Aa01.html

SAO PAULO - Pentagon planners must have loved what happened in South America's premier hypercity in the past few days; as urban warfare goes, it was more illuminating than Baghdad or Gaza. The leaders of the First Capital Command (PCC, for Primeiro Comando da Capital) - a super-gang involved in drug and arms trafficking, kidnappings, bank robberies and extortion and controlling most of Sao Paulo's overcrowded and notoriously corrupt prisons - declared war against Brazil's wealthiest state

It goes over more than just that, of course. What do you guys think about this?

[Rictor]

I'm not too worried. Even assuming that a)the conditions and organized crime of places like Rio become widespread and b) that the criminal organization eventually triumph over the state, both of which are exceedingly unlikely, the criminal organizations will find themselves in the same position as governments a few hundred years ago. The use of naked force for power only works up to a point. Eventually, people start making demands like rights, justice and the rule of law, which must in time be granted. So these criminal groups, if they somehow took power, would very quickly be forced to start acting like a somewhat legitimate government, or else face general opposition which would threaten their rule.

Whoever becomes the state, whether they are criminals, theocrats, artists or anything in between, takes on the characteristics of the state.

[Kosh]

So we should all just ignore the problem, even though issues like this are major destablizing factors?

[Rictor]

I never said that. In my opinion. organized crime will be kept to more or less acceptable level through the usual techniques which have worked so far. It's not an apocalyptic thing. The far more important shift in the societal change which will come with billions of people living in urban spaces. The urban society is very much different than the rural one. The mindset is different. Having most of the world's population living in cities is bound to seriously alter the social fabric. It doesn't matter whether the city happens to be poor like Rio or rich like Tokyo, there are a thousand little things which are tied to urbanism, which are not necessarily visibile but which will wreak havoc with the established order of mankind. That, to me, is the far more real and frightening prospect.

And I'm not even necessarily talking about a negative change, just a very large one. Which is negative in and of itself.

[Kosh]

Did you read the article? It isn't necessarily about big organized crime gangs, but what it does discuss is the slums themselves, the effect they are having, and the effect they will have as they grow bigger.

You really can't compare Tokyo to Sao Paulo, as Tokyo doesn't have the vast shanty towns that SP does.

The situation in India, China, and Brazil is that a few people are getting really rich, but lots of people are not rich at all.

In China, education (even kindergarten), is not free. Everything has a price. This is one of the many negative things about neo-liberalism, it effectively locks the poorer people out of opportunities. The poor people in China are waking up to this, and now there are literally tens of thousands of protests in the countryside. One of their common complaints is that they are getting locked out of all these wonderful opportunities. This is having a major destabalizing effect.

[Flaser]

Rictor, read up on your history books (and get some Red history too - reading the books of Gulag inmates can be an eyeopener).
The reason why coups done in the name of raw force are inherently instabile and bound to collapse has nothing to do with the 'rights' of the people or resistance movements.

That's an idealized American view of both pre-collapse Soviet society as well as that of the 3rd Riech.
Both are fundamentally flawed. (However I won't go into a deep analysis of these, as the reasons are widespread and the issue is nowhere as clear cut as some of the 'analysts' would let you believe.)

Actually David Weber has got it quite right (though the guy is way too much in love with liberal-imperialism than is healthy): upsurping the legitimate powerstructure - even if that structure is corrupt and immoral - by naked force lets the genie out of the bottle.
The question is the following: If you could upsurp power, what prevents anyone else from doing the same to you?
You numerical superiority or just rhethorics won't stop anyone. After all, the old regime has also preached to be rightful just as you do, they also had all the cards you do - and none of these stopped YOU from taking them out.
Inevitably this means that all revolutions end up in reigns of terror and police states.

This inevitably ceases as the status quo stabilizes and your legitimacy is accepted. (Or your own terrormachine will bring you down.)

The only way one can do a revolt without this chaos is to build your powerbase on an already existing status quo (like the American revolution, that merly disposed and outside influence) or revitalise an earlier concept of status quo that can be still rekindled in the people (royalist, imperial, fundamental ect....anything could do).