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I think the bottom line, is this is just what a low trust society looks like. Everyone smashes the defect button as often and as quickly as possible, in every situation. There is literally no solving this problem, only clearing the way for a different species of defector who will ruin things, do material damage, and end lives with their greedy, corruption and indifference.
I was sitting in the car one day, pondering how low trust our society has become. I was at a gas station while my wife was using the bathroom. And I couldn't help but notice that the emergency gas shutoff switch is just out there, in the open, totally exposed. It got me thinking about the damage that will be caused when our low trust society devours that. I mean, it's there, unguarded, for a reason. Gasoline is dangerous, you can't just have it spilling all over the place. In case of emergency, you might not have time to grab the manager, have them get their keys, etc, etc. So it's just out there, for anybody to hit, whether there is an emergency or not. Which makes me wonder how long until some asshole tiktok prank becomes smashing that button as many times a day as possible until gas stations across the country have to start locking them up. Which then leads to more avoidable accidents at gas stations.
It's just going to be this way with everything. Nothing is going to be too trivial, or too important for some asshole to pillage, either metaphorically or literally.
What it looks like to me is that it's far from "everyone" that smashes the defect button - more like 10% of dysfunctional criminals and elite sociopaths. The rest try to cooperate, it's just that your tribe's definition of "cooperate" is not the other tribe's.
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I often feel like people get the system they deserve. That the system is a product of the people, and trying to change a system’s rules on its own can only have marginal effect. We have a low trust, somewhat dysfunctional society and so any form of healthcare is going to be similarly dysfunctional.
Nerdy discussions of voting systems like ranked choice vs FPTP always trigger this feeling in me, like the voting system doesn’t matter at all. Maine implemented ranked choice and it’s not really going to improve Maine, Maine was only able to do it because it’s the whitest state in the country and as a result extremely non-polarized.
I think honestly this isn’t a system we created and thus don’t “deserve”. The thing is that we’ve been taught to be cynical hyper-individualistic, hedonistic, lazy jerks. It comes from everywhere. You’ve been taught that your traditions are old and stodgy and nobody cares about them anymore. You’ve been taught that your ancestors were rotten, terrible people who genocide their way around the globe. You’ve been taught that striving is pointless and that the rich will keep you down. You’ve been taught to deconstruct everything, but never to construct.
There are lots of reasons for it. Some are hyper-consumption: if you lose access to a community in which someone can solve your problem for free, then you have to buy that service somewhere. You don’t know someone who can cook and you don’t know how to? Door Dash. Daycares are essentially replacements for extended family. It used to be that if both parents needed to work, grandparents were close by and retired and the kid could stay in a place where he’d be safe and with a loved one. Now you hire a company who pays strangers less than $20 an hour to do the same. Go down the list of home repairs, car repairs, lawn maintenance, and a lot of services replace community.
The other part is that traditional systems are terrible for governments who want to control their populations. A strong community doesn’t need or want much government interference. The Amish have their communities in pretty good order without too much need for the state to come in and control them. They don’t need welfare because they have their church to help those in need.
The final thing is the issue of legitimacy. Legitimacy comes from the people. But in order to get people to vote for whatever it is that you want, job one is to convince them to want it, or convince them that they’ve always wanted it, or that “good people” are like this. So people vote as they’ve been taught to do. You have to be taught to believe in an atomized society with no deep connections so that you’re more willing to accept the breakdowns, less willing to trust community.
Thank you. I... Guess I should say something else but actually I'm just thanking you because you voiced one of my frustrations eloquently. People making worse versions of things because the good version is patented, people creating deadweight loss to get rid of to reap the benefits... or inducing unnecessary paradigm shifts so that they can be at the top of the transition team...
I guess I really do believe that theres no actual way to create more value for people. The modern amish have everything they need really. What was the point of all this junk we made? The medicine is nice yes. The food. The energy. I don't mind the AIs, though people trying to sell them to us is just another example. Take away friends, replace with 20$/month subscription. The cars... seemed nice but slowly grow to disgust me as I see how the travel distances expand to match their speed, keeping me only farther from other people. The trinkets and stopwatches and beer umbrellas add spice... but it turns to ash in my mouth without someone to share them with.
I don’t think it’s the technology. It’s the mindset that comes through the media that’s teaching everyone to defect, that everything is rotten, and that you should focus on yourself and getting yours. And when 300 million of us get that from the firehouse of media, we act on it. And the results are pretty clear. When no one is trustworthy, and nothing is worth protecting, you get defections.
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I think you’re assuming the conclusion. The economic forces which make babysitters and dishwashers ubiquitous wouldn’t disappear if we’d never started critiquing imperialism.
I also think your view of the past is rose-tinted as hell. 1700s America wasn’t an endless quilt of Amish communities, waiting to be tempted out of Eden. It was a hungry, dirty, disease-ridden frontier just starting to climb the curve of industrialization. Communities weren’t solving each others’ problems “for free.” They were paying their dues on their own social contract.
We've seen a remarkable, unprecedented increase in GDP per capita in the last 200 years. However, the GDP gains may overstate the actual gain in wealth. In 1800, someone would take part in fulfilling but unpaid labor such as child rearing or food preparation. This is not measured in GDP because no goods or services were exchanged. Nowadays, the equivalent person might use daycare and Door Dash while they pursue their higher paying job as a laptop worker for a big nonprofit. More GDP is being created by the commoditization of previously unpaid work even if no more value to society is being created.
So maybe GDP per capita has increased 5,000% but real wealth has only increased like 2,000% or something. We're vastly better off now than before, but imagine how much better things could be with stronger communities.
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I think this is a large part of it. Scott even has an essay on this topic where he discusses reasons the Amish pay between a fifth and a tenth of what the rest of us pay for healthcare. A few of those reasons (the second, fourth, sixth and arguably the seventh too) basically come down to the Amish being honest and everyone else knowing they're honest.
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By law, they can't lock them up. In a blue state we'll just get op-eds and politicos opining about how this is why we need to ban gasoline cars and go to all electric. There IS a solution to this particular class of problems, but it's banned. Basically the "railroad bull" solution -- swift and painful punishment for the assholes that do it.
I have lately wondered if what we're missing is a bunch of, I suppose, nuns with rulers or the equivalent to punish modest anti-social behavior (defecting, in this conversation) promptly with a transient painful stimulus that neither leaves lasting marks nor a permanent legal record.
But I don't think it would work in all cases, or maybe even at all. And it's almost certainly disallowed by the Constitution. And suffers from a lot of ambiguity as to where to draw the lines.
There's nothing in the Constitution that bars corporal punishment. There's a prohibition on "cruel and unusual" punishment, but we know this doesn't mean all corporal punishment, because it was widely practiced at the time and not ended until long after the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
Certainly it's plausible that a Supreme Court containing at least five left-leaning Justices who take a somewhat cavalier attitude towards their oath to uphold the Constitution might rule that the Eighth Amendment bans corporal punishment, but that would be them, not the Constitution.
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