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Yeah. I find it weird that when people dream up the "best" social structure, it's often explained by a simple overarching philosophy. How convenient would it b

Yeah. I find it weird that when people dream up the "best" social structure, it's often explained by a simple overarching philosophy. How convenient would it be that the entire complexity of human society can be ideally governed by a small set of principles? It's always "only capitalism" or "only communism" or "no money" or "no government" or etc etc. It seems pretty obvious to me that the optimal solution isn't based purely on some philosophical idea about how things 'should' be (whatever 'should' even means!), but instead would be a pragmatic, adaptive solution based on what actually happens and works on a case-by-case basis. It would be a patchy, ugly system, compared to the perfect elegant algorithm people want. And indeed that's kind of what we have. We just gotta keep patching and amending. There are a lot of existing problems, but we have the framework for fixing them, and no doubt it is a difficult process. But to insist that the solution is to start over is naive and dismissive of the generations of sacrifice made to get to this point. It's frustrating when people argue that all evil is because of capitalism, or that capitalism is purely good. Can't we just acknowledge that there are good and bad aspects of all systems, and work to boost the good parts and improve or attenuate the bad parts? And work in the good parts of other "competing" systems too? Yes, things don't have to be 100% pure capitalism or not. Hybrid solutions exist! That's basically what is happening, I just wish people would stop arguing by simplifying everything into some catchy moral gimmick.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
> I just wish people would stop arguing by simplifying everything into some catchy moral gimmick. Things work well enough that we can afford the luxury of chasing a feeling of moral superiority. Under worse conditions, most people don't have time for that.
confounded 9y ago
I agree with your skepticism regarding people who express a lot of certainty about what will work, and what will happen in extreme and untested circumstances. However, I strongly disagree that principles and morality aren’t essential. This is because when figuring out, as you say, ‘what works best’, there is no single definition of ‘best’. In fact, as a general rule, there’s thousands of competing ones. Principles are how you do a reasonable job of making consistent decisions towards meaningful change. In addition to a system working well, it also needs to be understood to be working well by the people that live in it. If some definition of a ‘best’ metric was delivered by a Kafkaesque convoluted system that people found confusing, one which works well-enough on simple principles might be preferable.
- lifeformed 9y ago
  I agree. I didn't mean to imply that principles aren't important - surely there must be some metric to judge progress against. Principles should hold in a generalized, zoomed-out view of a society. But in practice, there are numerous exceptions and edge cases. Like, "maximize freedom" is generally a good rule but not always. I feel like the principles we come up with are just rough approximations of what we intuitively know but can't elegantly express. The true moral principle for society is probably a monstrous concatenation of if-else statements. If the zoom-out view of society still follows the principles, then I think that ought to be sufficient for its citizens' concerns about the society's effectiveness and direction.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

> I just wish people would stop arguing by simplifying everything into some catchy moral gimmick. Things work well enough that we can afford the luxury of chasing a feeling of moral superiority. Under worse conditions, most people don't have time for that.

confounded 9y ago

I agree with your skepticism regarding people who express a lot of certainty about what will work, and what will happen in extreme and untested circumstances. However, I strongly disagree that principles and morality aren’t essential. This is because when figuring out, as you say, ‘what works best’, there is no single definition of ‘best’. In fact, as a general rule, there’s thousands of competing ones. Principles are how you do a reasonable job of making consistent decisions towards meaningful change. In addition to a system working well, it also needs to be understood to be working well by the people that live in it. If some definition of a ‘best’ metric was delivered by a Kafkaesque convoluted system that people found confusing, one which works well-enough on simple principles might be preferable.

lifeformed 9y ago
I agree. I didn't mean to imply that principles aren't important - surely there must be some metric to judge progress against. Principles should hold in a generalized, zoomed-out view of a society. But in practice, there are numerous exceptions and edge cases. Like, "maximize freedom" is generally a good rule but not always. I feel like the principles we come up with are just rough approximations of what we intuitively know but can't elegantly express. The true moral principle for society is probably a monstrous concatenation of if-else statements. If the zoom-out view of society still follows the principles, then I think that ought to be sufficient for its citizens' concerns about the society's effectiveness and direction.