3 ms·

What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed? Society isn't some uniform, monolithic thing that exists in own right, that w

by Gormo 16y ago

What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed? Society isn't some uniform, monolithic thing that exists in own right, that we either choose to participate in or not. Society is the product of actual relationships among real people. They don't depend upon external institutions as a precondition of cooperating toward mutual benefit, but establish those institutions as a consequence of doing so. Everything we call 'society' is the result of people making the choice to interact with each other. From there, communities arise, customs emerge, and economies develop. But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid. When we so stridently pursue policies intended to 'upkeep' an abstract, taken-for-granted concept of society, we risk undermining the basis on which real, actual societies function.

lutorm 16y ago
What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed? How about enforcement of contracts, roads, and currency, to name the first three that came to mind? But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid. I have no idea where you came up with this. It's empirically falsified just by looking at which of the populations of low-tax, laissez-faire America and high-tax, social democrat Western Europe is the most disconnected and paranoid...
- Gormo 16y ago
  Roads and currency? I suppose we could get into a detailed conversation about how well decentralized, voluntary forms of organization could create and sustain these - I'd suggest that they could, and often do - but for the sake of argument, I'll concede the point. Roads are slabs of pavement in the ground; currency are tokens used as a means of exchange. These are pretty mundane things, hardly the wellspring of society, and I do hope you'd agree that roads, currency, and other similar goods are consequences of, and not prerequisites for, a well-functioning society. The question of contract enforcement is more interesting. I would entirely agree that law is a necessary mechanism, without which the few 'bad apples' in society would spoil the rest. But I think it's important to note that if breaches of contract - that is, failure of people to maintain their voluntary arrangements in good faith - were the general case rather than outliers, no amount of law could prevent society from failing. The judicial process is a tool we can use as a fallback solution to protect those arrangements we freely create with others. But it should be clearly distinguished from the regulatory mentality which seeks to prescriptively define those relationships in advance, and compel adherence to a set of prepackaged social models without specific regard to the preferences and expectations of the individuals in each case. The regulatory model designs the overarching system around the outlier failure conditions rather than permitting the flexibility that optimizes the general case. Law is appropriately the brake pedal, not the gas. I'd disagree with your perceptions of America as being particularly disconnected and paranoid - Americans are stereotypically confident and optimistic - although I think that individualism and cultural pluralism in America might often lead to more paranoia about social policies that seek universal solutions to complex problems. There may be a reason why the social democratic model seems to work most effectively in the cultures where 'Jante law' is most evident.

by Gormo 16y ago

lutorm 16y ago

What are these structures of society that make it possible for people to succeed? How about enforcement of contracts, roads, and currency, to name the first three that came to mind? But every tax, regulation, divisive political program, and every faction seeking to impose its narrow agenda on everyone at once just have the effect of raising the stakes of participating in society. They give people more to lose and more to fear in openly relating to others; people become less likely to form stable networks of trust and more likely to become isolated, disconnected, and paranoid. I have no idea where you came up with this. It's empirically falsified just by looking at which of the populations of low-tax, laissez-faire America and high-tax, social democrat Western Europe is the most disconnected and paranoid...

Gormo 16y ago
Roads and currency? I suppose we could get into a detailed conversation about how well decentralized, voluntary forms of organization could create and sustain these - I'd suggest that they could, and often do - but for the sake of argument, I'll concede the point. Roads are slabs of pavement in the ground; currency are tokens used as a means of exchange. These are pretty mundane things, hardly the wellspring of society, and I do hope you'd agree that roads, currency, and other similar goods are consequences of, and not prerequisites for, a well-functioning society. The question of contract enforcement is more interesting. I would entirely agree that law is a necessary mechanism, without which the few 'bad apples' in society would spoil the rest. But I think it's important to note that if breaches of contract - that is, failure of people to maintain their voluntary arrangements in good faith - were the general case rather than outliers, no amount of law could prevent society from failing. The judicial process is a tool we can use as a fallback solution to protect those arrangements we freely create with others. But it should be clearly distinguished from the regulatory mentality which seeks to prescriptively define those relationships in advance, and compel adherence to a set of prepackaged social models without specific regard to the preferences and expectations of the individuals in each case. The regulatory model designs the overarching system around the outlier failure conditions rather than permitting the flexibility that optimizes the general case. Law is appropriately the brake pedal, not the gas. I'd disagree with your perceptions of America as being particularly disconnected and paranoid - Americans are stereotypically confident and optimistic - although I think that individualism and cultural pluralism in America might often lead to more paranoia about social policies that seek universal solutions to complex problems. There may be a reason why the social democratic model seems to work most effectively in the cultures where 'Jante law' is most evident.