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Way to overlook the glaring, obvious, collective action problem. All political power, even that of a dictator with an army of henchmen is held as the result of
by murbard2 11y ago
Way to overlook the glaring, obvious, collective action problem.
All political power, even that of a dictator with an army of henchmen is held as the result of a game theoretical equilibrium.
- ashark 11y agoBINGO! We have a winner. "Rising up" individually causes harm to oneself with no benefit to anyone. Rising up with others requires organization. Joining an organization that is planning to rise up when it hasn't already reached a certain size/certainty of actually carrying through with its mission carries many of the same risks as rising up individually, so no-one does that, either. And that's putting aside the efficacy of even a popular and well-attended revolt that's the end goal of this—for the sake of argument let's say it might actually have some meaningful effect, if not actually manage to topple a significant portion of the power structure. Even assuming it's a good idea and all the poor want to revolt, it's still unlikely that they will. Collective action and coordination issues are everywhere. They're fundamentally why we have governments, and why unions aren't usually very effective without mandatory membership.
- wutbrodo 11y agoI'm surprised this is so heavily downvoted, as this was my first thought too upon reading the headline. Hell, that would be my first answer to that question in any society in any time period in history.
- krmmalik 11y agoGenuine question. Can you give me an ELI5 version of your statement? I don't quite follow the point you're making.
- mikeash 11y agoThe short version is: If you stand up and rebel individually, all you accomplish is getting thrown in jail. If a million people stand up and rebel one after another, all they accomplish is getting thrown in jail. If a million people stand up and rebel together, only then do you accomplish anything. Getting a million people to rebel together is really hard, because each one is fearful of running into one of the first two situations instead.
- krmmalik 11y agoAh yes. That completely makes sense. I have been thinking this separately already. Thank you for explaining it though. I appreciate it. More to the point I agree with you.
- mikeash 11y agoGlad to help. And just to follow up real quickly, a "collective action problem" is the standard term in game theory for a situation which fits this kind of scenario, where everyone is better off if they all act together, but any individual acting alone is worse off than if he never acted at all.
- murbard2 11y agoRegarding the second part of the statement... Take Kim Jong Un. He holds considerable power, yet he is probably not particularly physically strong. Of course, he could use a firearm, but even then, he would be fairly easy to stop. However, he has body guard. Besides loyalty, a good reason for these body guards to obey his orders is that otherwise they will be arrested and executed. The people carrying out the arrest will also act on the same incentives. In the end, there is nothing intrinsically powerful about Kim, there just happens to be a complex meta-stable equilibrium of incentives which gives him considerable power.
- hwstar 11y ago"If a million people stand up and rebel together, only then do you accomplish anything." Even that might not be enough. The government would force the courts closed declaring martial law, then the national guard would construct prisoner detention facilities from tents and barbed wire to house the million rebels, then try them for treason with military tribunals. I think you would need about 25 million rebels to make it work.