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> Humans happen to be super cooperative, and that puts us more squarely in that space more often. Humans also happen to be super competitive, and downright hos

by tgv 5y ago

> Humans happen to be super cooperative, and that puts us more squarely in that space more often. Humans also happen to be super competitive, and downright hostile. The "leveling" the article speaks about has been tried: it's strong government on social-democratic principles. It works. And it gets abandoned as soon as general wealth has risen enough. Egalitarianism and democracy are, strangely enough, not natural partners. The article doesn't even mention it. Unfortunately, there's no link to the paper, so there's no way to tell what the assumptions are. In fact, I can't even find the journal.

mrow84 5y ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01059-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01059-y For reference, I simply typed “Nature Human Behavior” into google.
- tgv 5y ago
  I use DDG, and it wouldn't come up with the journal. I think the problem is I quoted it, and the name is in British English, Human Behaviour. Even then it's not the top hit, but the side bar result (which I tend to ignore). Thanks for straightening that out.
beckman466 5y ago
> Humans also happen to be super competitive, and downright hostile. I'm curious, what makes you say that?
- plutonorm 5y ago
  Living in America?
  - weare138 5y ago
    There's a difference between ideals and practice. The ultra rich and multi-billion dollar corporations are allowed to directly financially influence our politicians through lobbying which is just a legal form of bribery. We're not the best example of a pure democracy.
  - atoav 5y ago
    America is a nation mostly shaped by the idea that human nature is competitive and hostile (and capitalism would be the way to channel these emotions for productive outcomes). I rather live in a place that underlines a different trait of human nature. There will always be aggression and competitiveness, but places that make the base assumption of cooperation turn out to be much nicer, more liveable and generally more efficient. Also: if the US had the same voting system as most modern democracies where one vote has the same voting power, independent from which province or state you are voting, policy and live in the US would look a lot different.
    - mionhe 5y ago
      What places did you have in mind that exemplify that cooperation?
      - plutonorm 5y ago
        Nordic countries. Probably, as the article suggests, the lack of defensible high concentrations of resources. Up until the most recent centuries of course. But genetics and culture are slower to change.
    - luckylion 5y ago
      Do most modern democracies have equal power for each vote, regardless of their province/state/region? Don't most use voting districts to elect individuals?
      - ElFitz 5y ago
        Most democracies do indeed elect their representatives per voting district, with each vote inside said district having the same voting power, and each district electing one representative. Then, for those where a prime minister rules, the prime minister is chosen by the elected representatives. In presidential democracies, the president is usually directly elected by voters, on a nationwide basis, independently of voting districts. So having a majority of the votes gets you elected.
zozbot234 5y ago
Basically all developed societies are "super cooperative", irrespective of stuff like wealth inequality. You want to see a society where the "competitive" spirit OP talks about is still flourishing, look no further than Afghanistan. A remarkably "equal" society, since few people there have any wealth at all - but still not a place you would want to be in.
Ericson2314 5y ago
We've had one abandonment of social democracy cycle so far, I wouldn't draw timeless conclusions based on that. In particular, if uneven industrialization and colonization hadn't created such large scale inequality for norms arbitrage, it might have kept going. If I had to draw any conclusion from this n=1 it would be about the "thermodynamics" of post-colonialism, not the staying power of social democracy.
lmm 5y ago
> The "leveling" the article speaks about has been tried: it's strong government on social-democratic principles. It works. And it gets abandoned as soon as general wealth has risen enough. Is that really true? I don't see e.g. Scandinavia rushing to abandon all their social programs. The US took a big turn away from cooperation, but that seems to be much more about a breakdown of social trust relating to some specifics of US history (race relations, "stranger danger", ...) than some general principle about high general wealth societies.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  I would go even further and say that the US is the only Western democracy that has abandoned some of the most important social-democratic principles. E.g. it's the only Western democracy with no universal healthcare, an industrial prison complex, weak labour rights etc.
  - lmm 5y ago
    That's not true; the UK has gradually weakened healthcare (introducing prescription charges, privatising eyecare and dental), significantly weakened labour rights (legalising arbitrary firing in the first two years), and I think privatised part of the prison system as well. No doubt those from other countries will have their own stories.
    - cameronh90 5y ago
      The UK has privately managed prisons, which is quite a lot different to privately owned prisons in terms of incentives. I think it's a bad idea too, but I don't think it's quite the same as the prison industrial complex in the US.
  - tgv 5y ago
    IMO, there have been two waves of social-democratically inspired politics: at the end of the 19th century, and after WW2. Once some complacency was reached, the policies were slowly being undone. While West and North Europe have done so slower than the USA, there's been an undeniable tendency towards free market policies, favoring companies and capital and eroding worker's rights. The voters seem to agree: parties left of center have been in steady decline over the last decades. This is not purely driven by individual wealth, of course. Issues such as immigration and (more recently) climate change also play a role.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>The "leveling" the article speaks about has been tried: it's strong government on social-democratic principles. It works. And it gets abandoned as soon as general wealth has risen enough. Social spending by government has rapidly increased as societies have gotten wealthier: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... But that money just ends up as pension benefits for unionized public sector workers, a significant fraction of whom are now in the top 10% of income earners. A NYS public school teacher now receives approximately $88,000 a year for their pension if they retire after 35 years, and it's practically impossible to fire them: https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried-to-fire-154-teachers-for-incompetence-or-misconduct-75-were/ https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried... New York has nearly 300,000 unionized public sector employees receiving over $100,000 a year: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/26/why-new-york-is-in-trouble--290304-public-employees-with-100000-paychecks-cost-taxpayers-38-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/26/why...

by tgv 5y ago

mrow84 5y ago

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01059-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01059-y For reference, I simply typed “Nature Human Behavior” into google.

tgv 5y ago
I use DDG, and it wouldn't come up with the journal. I think the problem is I quoted it, and the name is in British English, Human Behaviour. Even then it's not the top hit, but the side bar result (which I tend to ignore). Thanks for straightening that out.

beckman466 5y ago

> Humans also happen to be super competitive, and downright hostile. I'm curious, what makes you say that?

plutonorm 5y ago
Living in America?
- weare138 5y ago
  There's a difference between ideals and practice. The ultra rich and multi-billion dollar corporations are allowed to directly financially influence our politicians through lobbying which is just a legal form of bribery. We're not the best example of a pure democracy.
- atoav 5y ago
  America is a nation mostly shaped by the idea that human nature is competitive and hostile (and capitalism would be the way to channel these emotions for productive outcomes). I rather live in a place that underlines a different trait of human nature. There will always be aggression and competitiveness, but places that make the base assumption of cooperation turn out to be much nicer, more liveable and generally more efficient. Also: if the US had the same voting system as most modern democracies where one vote has the same voting power, independent from which province or state you are voting, policy and live in the US would look a lot different.
  - mionhe 5y ago
    What places did you have in mind that exemplify that cooperation?
    - plutonorm 5y ago
      Nordic countries. Probably, as the article suggests, the lack of defensible high concentrations of resources. Up until the most recent centuries of course. But genetics and culture are slower to change.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    Do most modern democracies have equal power for each vote, regardless of their province/state/region? Don't most use voting districts to elect individuals?
    - ElFitz 5y ago
      Most democracies do indeed elect their representatives per voting district, with each vote inside said district having the same voting power, and each district electing one representative. Then, for those where a prime minister rules, the prime minister is chosen by the elected representatives. In presidential democracies, the president is usually directly elected by voters, on a nationwide basis, independently of voting districts. So having a majority of the votes gets you elected.

zozbot234 5y ago

Basically all developed societies are "super cooperative", irrespective of stuff like wealth inequality. You want to see a society where the "competitive" spirit OP talks about is still flourishing, look no further than Afghanistan. A remarkably "equal" society, since few people there have any wealth at all - but still not a place you would want to be in.

Ericson2314 5y ago

We've had one abandonment of social democracy cycle so far, I wouldn't draw timeless conclusions based on that. In particular, if uneven industrialization and colonization hadn't created such large scale inequality for norms arbitrage, it might have kept going. If I had to draw any conclusion from this n=1 it would be about the "thermodynamics" of post-colonialism, not the staying power of social democracy.

lmm 5y ago

> The "leveling" the article speaks about has been tried: it's strong government on social-democratic principles. It works. And it gets abandoned as soon as general wealth has risen enough. Is that really true? I don't see e.g. Scandinavia rushing to abandon all their social programs. The US took a big turn away from cooperation, but that seems to be much more about a breakdown of social trust relating to some specifics of US history (race relations, "stranger danger", ...) than some general principle about high general wealth societies.

Pyramus 5y ago
I would go even further and say that the US is the only Western democracy that has abandoned some of the most important social-democratic principles. E.g. it's the only Western democracy with no universal healthcare, an industrial prison complex, weak labour rights etc.
- lmm 5y ago
  That's not true; the UK has gradually weakened healthcare (introducing prescription charges, privatising eyecare and dental), significantly weakened labour rights (legalising arbitrary firing in the first two years), and I think privatised part of the prison system as well. No doubt those from other countries will have their own stories.
  - cameronh90 5y ago
    The UK has privately managed prisons, which is quite a lot different to privately owned prisons in terms of incentives. I think it's a bad idea too, but I don't think it's quite the same as the prison industrial complex in the US.
- tgv 5y ago
  IMO, there have been two waves of social-democratically inspired politics: at the end of the 19th century, and after WW2. Once some complacency was reached, the policies were slowly being undone. While West and North Europe have done so slower than the USA, there's been an undeniable tendency towards free market policies, favoring companies and capital and eroding worker's rights. The voters seem to agree: parties left of center have been in steady decline over the last decades. This is not purely driven by individual wealth, of course. Issues such as immigration and (more recently) climate change also play a role.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

>>The "leveling" the article speaks about has been tried: it's strong government on social-democratic principles. It works. And it gets abandoned as soon as general wealth has risen enough. Social spending by government has rapidly increased as societies have gotten wealthier: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... But that money just ends up as pension benefits for unionized public sector workers, a significant fraction of whom are now in the top 10% of income earners. A NYS public school teacher now receives approximately $88,000 a year for their pension if they retire after 35 years, and it's practically impossible to fire them: https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried-to-fire-154-teachers-for-incompetence-or-misconduct-75-were/ https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried... New York has nearly 300,000 unionized public sector employees receiving over $100,000 a year: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/26/why-new-york-is-in-trouble--290304-public-employees-with-100000-paychecks-cost-taxpayers-38-billion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/26/why...