3 ms·

I don't really think looking at road traffic is a good example here. I grew up in the US, so my first thoughts are "well the signage is inadequate, it appears l

I don't really think looking at road traffic is a good example here. I grew up in the US, so my first thoughts are "well the signage is inadequate, it appears lanes aren't respected & if there are traffic control devices they aren't being followed". I've also driven in a bunch of different places, including the left-hand drive portion of the United States. So I've seen the wide spectrum of driving. I could just as easily remark that in some parts of Asia, road traffic has a general degree of lawlessness to it. Laws aren't enforced or are absent in the first place. Yet somehow it appears that in any populated area hundreds of thousands of people are able to participate in road traffic each day and somehow be productive members of society and economy. All of this happens in the absence of legal coercion. I'm not going to leap to "it's a libertarian utopia" but if people can co-exist in a society in a productive way without legal coercion and have it not just immediately become violent I think that is admirable.

Yizahi 9mo ago
To expand on this point - individualistic culture doesn't necessarily mean that individual wants to harm others or himself. It's just that's not a highest priority. So yes, in the chaotic driving people manage to not kill each other most of the time. But it doesn't make it cooperative per definition. It's carefully adversarial more like. For example a pedestrian crossing the road will never see a driver braking and stopping to allow him to pass. Such action gives no immediate benefit to the driver and is only possible in the cooperative culture. So instead pedestrian and driver are not collaborating and just hope to wing it somehow on the spot. And if pedestrian is not moving predictably, it's not a driver's problem. Or worker rights for example. Maybe one can hope to negotiate a better salary for himself if everyone is secretive and individualistic all the time (the temporary embarrassed millionaire trope), so no one pushes for unionization and worker rights and benefits together. Stuff like that.

Yizahi 9mo ago

To expand on this point - individualistic culture doesn't necessarily mean that individual wants to harm others or himself. It's just that's not a highest priority. So yes, in the chaotic driving people manage to not kill each other most of the time. But it doesn't make it cooperative per definition. It's carefully adversarial more like. For example a pedestrian crossing the road will never see a driver braking and stopping to allow him to pass. Such action gives no immediate benefit to the driver and is only possible in the cooperative culture. So instead pedestrian and driver are not collaborating and just hope to wing it somehow on the spot. And if pedestrian is not moving predictably, it's not a driver's problem. Or worker rights for example. Maybe one can hope to negotiate a better salary for himself if everyone is secretive and individualistic all the time (the temporary embarrassed millionaire trope), so no one pushes for unionization and worker rights and benefits together. Stuff like that.