> There's always disputes, but no ones dying or being thrown out of their homes, people are being looked after. This is an underrated point; I think your large

> There's always disputes, but no ones dying or being thrown out of their homes, people are being looked after. This is an underrated point; I think your larger message, that cooperation isn't dying, is likely true. I think I have the tendency to focus on the problems that are growing (or continue to exist) without noticing areas where there is progress and my comment was a reflection of that. And I agree that it is good that we have started to have these conversations. But I also think there is something to be said for the point the OP was making: human systems simply don't function as well at scale. Or stated more precisely: humans are better at being prosocial in smaller groups than they are in bigger groups. There are a lot of reasons why this might be the case (see for example [0], [1], [2], [3]). As we scale our society to be more and more global, I think we are going to need to reckon with this at some point. [0] Not having enough interactions for tit-for-tat to function as a strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...) [1] Inability of humans to hit the requirements for a sense of community in very large social networks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_community#Membership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_community#Membership) [2] Not having enough interaction between individuals to encourage reciprocity and cause feelings of guilt (or shame) when an individual is muddying the commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number