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Perhaps ironically, there are still institutions that to some extent rely on social trust in autocracies. For example, the black market is an institution. As is
by Sharlin 8mo ago
Perhaps ironically, there are still institutions that to some extent rely on social trust in autocracies. For example, the black market is an institution. As is the "bribe economy" – the general understanding that getting X done generally costs you around Y, where Y is not arbitrary. Then there's the whole thing about criminal organizations that typically rely on social cohesion and upholding all kinds of rules.
- eru 8mo agoThe 'bribe economy' you described is one of the conjectured reasons PR China grew faster than India.
- watwut 8mo agoBlack market participants do not trust each other and defraud each other. Then they settle the differences via violence. Likewise, bribe economy has an element of "they took the bribe and did nothing". > Then there's the whole thing about criminal organizations that typically rely on social cohesion and upholding all kinds of rules. Those rules are broken constantly and have to be reinforced via force constantly. The members of actual criminal organizations do not trust each other. They take the risk of betrayal very seriously. Including by pre-emptively killing own friends to protect themselves.
- bojan 8mo agoThe black market is not an institution, it's a messy anarchy where you have zero guarantee you'll get what you paid for. > As is the "bribe economy" – the general understanding that getting X done generally costs you around Y, where Y is not arbitrary That's really not how that works. Sometimes your bribe will be refused. Sometimes they'll ask for more money even when you think you paid. Sometimes they'll simply not do whatever you bribed them to do. Sometimes it will work as expected. There is no certainty in autocracies, no guarantees. If Americans only knew what they're heading into, they'd be fighting tooth and nail to avoid it.
- bluGill 8mo agoMost are not making one trip to the black market - they start to figure out who delivers and this reputation matters. However there is a limit to how much you can deliver in a black market and so it is low trust not zero trust.
- Sharlin 8mo agoI'm obviously not defending these things, but people do get things done in everyday life in deeply corrupt countries. It's not chaos. Society is self-organizing like that, and this stuff is all iterated prisoner's dilemma in the end.
- danans 8mo ago> Society is self-organizing like that, and this stuff is all iterated prisoner's dilemma in the end.. "Iterating the prisoners dilemma" at all levels of interface with government, moral qualms about autocracy/authoritarianism aside, is a very inefficient way to run a society, because government is an inherent and natural monopoly. Even in private commerce, it only works where there are choices and not monopolies. "Zero trust" is optimal for machine communication networks, not human organizations.
- Sharlin 8mo agoI never said it was efficient. There's clearly a lot of potential value wasted compared to more trustable institutions. Your point about monopoly is off the mark, though – in every high-trust society it's the government that people need to trust, because it's the ultimate enforcer of trust in any other institutions.
- danans 7mo ago> Your point about monopoly is off the mark, though – in every high-trust society it's the government that people need to trust, because it's the ultimate enforcer of trust in any other institutions. I'm not sure where the disagreement is. I agree that people need to trust government in a high trust society. Government is also the ultimate inherent monopoly.