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Why work a 9-to-5 when you could be peddling dope?
Crooks and gangbangers aren't trying to build stable, productive lives. They aren't aiming for the same win condition, so they aren't playing by the same rules. If one does not share their goals, some of their tactics are useless or actively counterproductive.
I think a more productive framing would be to examine what level of disobedience people are willing and able to enact. "Always cooperate", always work within the system, is clearly a bad strategy in an adverse environment. The question is how to strike a balance between defending oneself against adverse action, and compromising actual goals. Currently, it's clear that people generally lean way too hard toward compliance at all costs, with avoiding all risk, and that their risk-aversion makes them easy to manipulate. Unfortunately, figuring out what level of risk is acceptable is actually very difficult to do well, and the consequences are significant. It's not obvious to me that individual action is a solution here, since a lot of the threats are actively being coordinated at the level of overall society. Taking drug-dealer risks for CCW-benefits is a pretty questionable idea. On the other hand, the capacity to resist must be cultivated, and that means accepting some non-zero level of risk.
Concurrently it seems obvious to me that individual action is the only viable solution, because it's the only thing anyone can actually control. See this bit from Micheal Collins. "Irish democracy" (IE feigning deference to those "in charge" only to go and do whatever you were gonna do anyway) is the ultimate democracy.
The linked scene is Michael Collins arguing to a crowd that they need to take collective action. They do, fighting back against the Constables who attack Collins and the crowd. Collins himself fights, before being hustled to safety by two others.
They are each acting individually, and Collins' argument is a specific appeal to individual action: "if they shoot me, which specific one of you will step up to take my place?" But that individual action is welded into a common purpose, a common cause, collective action, collective identity. And this process, by which individuals individually choose to act in concert, is the entire basis for his plan. What makes his victory possible is the fact that not only one person will step up to replace him, but many and more.
Coordination defeats individual action. People are stronger together than they are apart. "Irish Democracy" required the Irish, and wasn't going to happen without them. Individuals can attempt something similar, but the potential payoffs are much different. That doesn't make pure individualism a bad idea, but it does make coordination much stronger for a variety of reasons.
In the same way, POWs attempt to form organization with their fellow prisoners, and their captors often make every effort to keep them isolated from each other. the captors would much rather coordinate against individuals than against a group; the prisoners would rather compete group vs group than individual vs group.
I'm not claiming collective action is a general solution, only that individual action isn't either. There are no general solutions. It's a hard problem all the way around.
This is why speed limits are so well respected.
Well said
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And the point I'm trying to get at is, what is collective action if not a collection of individual actions?
It's coordinated individual action, the sort of coordination which leads to convictions for seditious conspiracy. If three people attempt such co-ordination, at least two of them are Feds.
Only in a metaphorical sense. One of the undercover cops is a Fed, the other one is State. Otherwise why the need for two?
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coordination and cooperation and a recognition of common identity, a "you and I together", I think? Or is this what makes them a "collection"? One can act as an individual without these, and should, but they make one's individual action a lot more effective. I'll freely admit that people, myself unfortunately included, tend to treat these things as though they are necessary for individual action, when they absolutely are not, or that they replace individual action, which they absolutely do not.
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I don't think that is clear. The consequences for a non-habitual-criminal being non-compliant in ways the state cares about are very high, and the state capacity to find and punish them is also very high. Unless the chance of being carried by 6 is nearly 100%, it's best not to risk being judged by 12 -- because being judged by 12 is almost as bad as being dead. Maybe worse, depending on how bad the prison you end up in is.
It's not clear to me that this is actually true. It is very clear that Blue Tribe and the authorities do everything in their power to make it appear to be true, but actual prosecutions seem quite rare.
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