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> Large impersonal institutions are much easier to hold accountable than local communities. I think this is exactly backwards. > but they are often hell for t

by titzer 5y ago

> Large impersonal institutions are much easier to hold accountable than local communities. I think this is exactly backwards. > but they are often hell for that one gay resident. Contrarily, people are way more likely to accept a person once they know them personally as part of their community. Small towns don't operate like high school locker rooms.

elurg 5y ago
> > Large impersonal institutions are much easier to hold accountable than local communities. > I think this is exactly backwards. No it is not. States and corporations are bound by law and to a great extent by public opinion while smaller communities are much freer to tyrannize their members. Being part of the same "community" didn't stop school segregation in the south, the federal government did.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Large communities will literally genocide you and everyone who shows a hint of sharing your belief system, do it through euphemism so he general populace has plausible deniability, burn all the books that refer to you with any sentiment other than poison, and imprison anyone who mentions you in passing while smiling. With your reasoning, feudalism is the most accountable form of government, safest for minorities.
  - prompttt1 5y ago
    Feudalism is just governance in arbitrarily-sized lordship-fiefs, it has nothing to do with community dynamics or scale. If anything, most forms of feudalism began and ended in a historical age of small, isolated communities and unresolved barriers to cross-community communication.
  - elurg 5y ago
    Small communities will literally lynch you and after the fact they will all agree you were a rapist. It's not clear why you brought up feudalism but systems in which a local lord is responsible for dispensing justice allow for far more abuse that those with centralized legal systems. It is always better for judges to be as far removed from the outcome of the case as possible.
- titzer 5y ago
  > States and corporations are bound by law and to a great extent by public opinion In theory. In practice, corporations do risk analysis and compute liabilities and flout the law all the time. Particularly environmental laws. One disaster after another. Coverups, bribery, corruption, evading accountability. You're living in an alternate universe, because this one is full of malfeasance and screwups from huge organizations with zero consequences.
bluetomcat 5y ago
In the case of a large institution adhering to some law-encoded conducts and held accountable by the wider public, there is less chance for targeting random individuals based on their specific views, relationships and personal states of affairs. Again, it is key that the institution is accountable and not some repressive apparatus of a totalitarian state.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  > Again, it is key that the institution is accountable and not some repressive apparatus of a totalitarian state. In that case, doesn't the institution become the totalitarian state?
prompttt1 5y ago
> Small towns don't operate like high school locker rooms. On the one hand we have endless accounts of people deathly afraid of coming out, even to families that "know them personally" (and grave consequences in cases where the truth inadvertently comes to light), even when the larger community/law explicitly protects them. On the other we have your vague assertion that it'll be all right. I doubt "just get to know the other" works outside of specific constraints that are absent from most "organic" threats to the local orthodoxy.

by titzer 5y ago

elurg 5y ago

> > Large impersonal institutions are much easier to hold accountable than local communities. > I think this is exactly backwards. No it is not. States and corporations are bound by law and to a great extent by public opinion while smaller communities are much freer to tyrannize their members. Being part of the same "community" didn't stop school segregation in the south, the federal government did.

pessimizer 5y ago
Large communities will literally genocide you and everyone who shows a hint of sharing your belief system, do it through euphemism so he general populace has plausible deniability, burn all the books that refer to you with any sentiment other than poison, and imprison anyone who mentions you in passing while smiling. With your reasoning, feudalism is the most accountable form of government, safest for minorities.
- prompttt1 5y ago
  Feudalism is just governance in arbitrarily-sized lordship-fiefs, it has nothing to do with community dynamics or scale. If anything, most forms of feudalism began and ended in a historical age of small, isolated communities and unresolved barriers to cross-community communication.
- elurg 5y ago
  Small communities will literally lynch you and after the fact they will all agree you were a rapist. It's not clear why you brought up feudalism but systems in which a local lord is responsible for dispensing justice allow for far more abuse that those with centralized legal systems. It is always better for judges to be as far removed from the outcome of the case as possible.
titzer 5y ago
> States and corporations are bound by law and to a great extent by public opinion In theory. In practice, corporations do risk analysis and compute liabilities and flout the law all the time. Particularly environmental laws. One disaster after another. Coverups, bribery, corruption, evading accountability. You're living in an alternate universe, because this one is full of malfeasance and screwups from huge organizations with zero consequences.

bluetomcat 5y ago

In the case of a large institution adhering to some law-encoded conducts and held accountable by the wider public, there is less chance for targeting random individuals based on their specific views, relationships and personal states of affairs. Again, it is key that the institution is accountable and not some repressive apparatus of a totalitarian state.

jimbokun 5y ago
> Again, it is key that the institution is accountable and not some repressive apparatus of a totalitarian state. In that case, doesn't the institution become the totalitarian state?

prompttt1 5y ago

> Small towns don't operate like high school locker rooms. On the one hand we have endless accounts of people deathly afraid of coming out, even to families that "know them personally" (and grave consequences in cases where the truth inadvertently comes to light), even when the larger community/law explicitly protects them. On the other we have your vague assertion that it'll be all right. I doubt "just get to know the other" works outside of specific constraints that are absent from most "organic" threats to the local orthodoxy.