Two useful books on this topic of human cooperation are "The WEIRDest people in the world" by Joseph Henrich and "The Social Instinct" by Nichola Raihani.
There's a lot of layers here. Marxism / via Socialism actualy does work within a small layer. It just doesn't scale up. Conversely, Libertarianism doesn't scale down. They work at different levels. The problem is humans like to think in Binaries, not layers.
When you breakdown layers, I'm an anarchist, benevolant dictator, socialist, democrat, republican, and libertarian.
"Yet the priests are, as is notorious, the worst enemies—why? Because they are the weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. The really great haters in the history of the world have always been priests, who are also the cleverest haters—in comparison with the cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is practically negligible."
It's only amusing that these intellectuals fancy themselves intellectually-driven and not priestly. Then again, self-awareness and brutal honesty are foreign to them. Hoffer was certainly right to call them True Believers.
"The existence of any variation in income, wealth, careers, etc. between identity groups is taken as presumptive evidence of some form of unjust deprivation..."
This isn't quite right. Any variation favoring whites or males, relative to blacks or Hispanics, say, on such metrics is, of course, indisputable evidence of unjust structural privilege, but any variation favoring Jews, Asians, or women, say, relative to whites or men, is apparently no such thing. You'd be certain to be called a racist or misogynist for even mentioning this inconsistency, and be at serious risk of losing your job if you were foolish enough to broach the subject in many a professional setting. Among the problems with the Intersectional understanding of social reality is that it doesn't appeal to a consistent standard of evidence. Instead, it rests on a priori assumptions about who is privileged and who isn't. Since actual social reality is often quite different from what Intersectional Theory would predict, the theorists can only maintain the façade of credibility by threatening the livelihoods and reputations of those so impudent as to notice.
My experience is that people who espouse a belief “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” typically underestimate their abilities and overstate their needs.
Outstanding article. Among many other things, it reminds me that the scaling effect, especially where socialism is concerned, is something I've been curious about for many years now.
Several different kinds of human social organizing structures can work (at least reasonably well) for groups of fewer than Dunbar's Number of 150 people or so. The kibbutzim are one well-known practical example. Another is BBSs and MUDs and other small online groups from the Modem Age of social networks, which were frequently very good at self-policing into enjoyable and productive small communities. Discord servers are a similar success story today... but then there are the big social networks. These massively inflated chat groups aren't as successful, often turning incredibly toxic. Why does this happen?
Like the bar Cheers, small groups seem to work because "everybody knows your name" -- reliable personal trust can be established that lowers the predicted cost of cooperation with others in the group. (Axelrod's "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma" remains a fantastic resource for exploring how cooperation can emerge.)
When scaled up past 100, 150 or so participants, though, many social organizations break down from exploitation. It may be that the majority of social systems don't scale up well. But there are a few social structures that somehow do (mostly) work. Why? What makes the difference? What are the structural features that enable one social organizing system to be productive even with millions of participants, while another scales up so poorly that subterfuge, or moralizing abuse, or the gun (or some combination of all these) must be used to force people to participate in it?
Capitalism in particular (mostly) does work at scale. What are its distinctive norms and institutions that allow it to be so successful at filling in for the absence of personal trust among billions of people, where the distinctive structural features of socialism do not?
I would think at one level, the divorcing of business from solely kin based trust to wider trusted groups occurs simply because the parties to the transaction(s) desire them to succeed, as both buyers and sellers. And this desire for success follows all up and down the multitude of various (intersecting) supply chains. We are also genetically well endowed with psychological "cheat detectors", and will stop the gravy train [possibly with violence] if we observe/detect cheating. This whole network is also augmented with beneficial governmental investments in infrastructure, to which we all claim some version of "ownership" and so we usually do not abuse it either.
Lorenzo has mentioned his on-going exploration of the role of government in providing social/ civil order, and that perhaps that role is too often under appreciated when and where it exists (existed). Thus contracts and courts offer support for completing transactions per prior agreements, and these cases can bring mistakes or errors in past protective practices to the fore so they can be corrected for the future. Lorenzo has also mentioned the book Private Governance, by E P Stringham, presumably discussing the history of selected commercial or other cooperative efforts generated outside of direct governmental control.
Another aspect of these kinds of interactions depends on the relative value involved. We might grumble about being cheated out of $10; really make a modest effort for restitution if we are out $100 to $1000; and potentially pursue suits at law when larger losses are experienced. And our legal history seems to reflect this, too: look at all of the legal hoops required to buy real estate, including obtaining insurance and a mortgage; or the multitude of agencies and organizations in place to control major financial activities.
Desire to succeed is not enough to upscale such processes. Yes, you can have the personal connections of a bazaar economy, but certain sorts of institutions have to evolve to achieve such upscaling. Indeed, bazaars operate in the way they do because of the absence of such institutions.
Interesting - the program of wokeness is a worldwide exercise in re-socialization at scale. Does that mean it is destined to fail or will it be one of those few global social organizational efforts that achieves its goals?
I think that will depend on the nature of "wokeness."
Maybe it's an extrinsic and clearly implementable organizing principle (such as "property owners should be free to choose to exchange goods and services at a price they find mutually agreeable" or "wise and benevolent experts should redistribute value for the greatest common good"). In this case, scale effects would apply as fewer or more people begin to employ this principle in their social behaviors. The big question here, though, is: what is the organizing principle behind wokeness that's so easily understandable that lots of people can definitely participate in it?
If, on the other hand, wokeness actually is more of an intrinsic mindset -- what used to be called utopianism -- then its effects probably remain more or less stable for the time being because the fraction of the the population who innately have that worldview is stable. The apparent rise of woke power recently (if the "mindset" explanation is the more correct one) is because the stable population of utopians happened to have hired and promoted each other into mass communication institutions (education, news, entertainment, tech), and George Floyd's murder was the event where they looked around, realized "Hey! We own this place!" and went public with using the formerly trusted institution to carry their utopian messaging. But there's no significant growth available there. That's just the people already wired to believe that everyone else must be made to "grow" (for their own good in maximizing social justice), who've started using the power they currently have. It's not a widespread application by the general masses of a single, simple, easily understood organizing principle, whose capability for delivering value to most of that society may depend on scaling effects.
I could be wrong. Maybe there's something about wokeness that's more extrinsic than an innate worldview; maybe the Dialectical Faith really is a general principle of social organization that anyone can adopt and apply, and we'll endure seeing whether that scales up. I hope historians 20 years from now have the chance to write honestly about it.
"Believers get to sneer at—and denigrate as cognitively, morally and psychologically inadequate—all who do not embrace the Faith. This takes in all human striving across the millennia that does not suit the Faith." But so do the corresponding non-believers who lack or don't understand the "faith based versions". They also get to pursue "turn about is fair play".
I have been a religious non-believer since childhood, although usually keeping my "sneering" to myself unless I find a like minded person or someone with whom I can agree to disagree. It is only in the last few years that I realized the obvious fact that many devoutly faithful (usually religious) people are really also very intelligent, so that (I suspect) adopting a faith based view is something that has evolved psychologically in parallel with our evolved intelligence. It seems reasonable that both mental capabilities have aided within group cooperation and survival for several hundreds of millennia.
We also know there are many cases of people moving into and out of various belief and non-belief positions about religion and other topics. It is the supreme puzzle of my life as to how and why that happens. The complexity of genetics, psychology, and culture may make finding a real solution almost impossible. But some progress seems to have been made over the last 30 or so years seeking an explanation. I keep my eyes and ears open for promising reports, essays, and books discussing this [for example those supplied by Arnold Kling in the very first comment to this thread.]
Voltaire “Enter into the Royal Exchange of London, a place more respectable than many courts, in which deputies from all nations assemble for the advantage of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian bargain with one another as if they were of the same religion, and bestow the name of infidel on bankrupts only… Was there in London but one religion, despotism might be apprehended; if two only, they would seek to cut each other’s throats; but as there are at least thirty, they live together in peace and happiness.”
The Dialectical Faith does not operate like that, as it is so concerned with acquiring power and spreading social entropy. It is more like a power-seeking cult than a conventional religion. One that can launder its ideas through academic literature.
See Iain McGilchrist’s work in evolutionary psychology. Cognitive linguists made similar observations years ago, objective and subjective awareness are built with the same cognitive building blocks, arranged differently or something like that. George Lakoff, Mark Turner.
As Warby states brilliantly, religion is an evolved survival adaptation.
Darwin explained why morals are biological, also a survival adaptation that increased social cooperation.
Depending on the evolutionary stage/level of a culture “truth” will vary.
A culture that does not have some notion of the renunciation of evil and sin will usually be regressive to, or at, a more “primitive” stage of evolution, and will struggle or fail to meet the needs of social complexity. See Gerhard Lenski’s ecological-evolutionary theory for examples.
The general scheme: magical nature religion , hunting/gathering, -> pre-modern, mythic monotheism, agrarian, rational, industrial, -> postmodern, disital economy, pluralistic/relativist . Postmodern regression is the big deal: narcissism and nihilism. I’m on a trip, don’t have a good device or access to my reference archive. I’ll clarify later if needed. From memory: https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
Truths and morality are learned from experience. Great truths and morality that fosters human flourishing stand the test of time. At a minimum, a religion that is compatible with human nature and human flourishing will reinforce (sanctify?) such truths.
The Enlightenment and techno-economic disruption pushed mythical religion out of its dominant position. Everything is “learned” because the human species evolved to be a socially cooperative species with extensive shared learning. Learning doesn’t exist independent from biology.
What is being shared and learned evolved through stages: magical, mythic, rational, pluralistic.
If possible, respond to the material in the link on the current “crisis of meaning” as an indicator that a paradigm shift is happening, driven by disruptive, postmodern social conditions and the failure of legacy sense making systems to meet emergent needs.
Evolution is usually pretty brutal. See Chagnon’s study of the Yanomami tribe. If you define “well function” as survival adaptations, then the scientific evidence is that humans evolved the capacity to be both “nasty” and “nice” to those outside or inside their kinship group (gene pool). See Samuel Bowles’ 2008 Ulam lectures , Santa Fe Institute.
There's no reason for hunger and poverty anymore. There's so much money circulating on our planet. That even one person should go hungry or homeless when even one person is a billionaire, what to speak of having several, is just sinful.
The history of foreign aid, particularly in Africa, shows how much the issue is not just “money”. Disastrously dysfunctional institutions, or just poorly functional ones, will sop up any amount of money for little or no benefit: or even make things worse by enabling and extending dysfunction. The existence of wealthy folk ain’t the problem. The descent of South Africa into violent dysfunction is, alas, providing a sad demonstration of the institutions-and-policies problem. So, of course, does Venezuela.
Foreign aid comes at a steep price. The USA in particular isn't giving a dime to any other country without defense contractors, mercenaries, and major oil and other resource corporations being given a free pass in. Billionaires are individuals who need not go through government to just give individuals money directly, hand to hand. If I were a billionaire I wouldn't be one for long because I would give all my money away to the poorest people who could actually use it, while keeping for myself only that which I need to live safely and healthily on til I die, which certainly wouldn't be more than 1 million. But at the very least Elon Musk should be paying the slave children he has in the Democratic Republic of Congo mining cobalt for him a minimum of 100 dollars per hour.
The problem of foreign aid is not remotely limited to US foreign aid or even to government foreign aid. The capacity of any purchaser of any mineral to affect the wages of those mining the mineral is way more limited than folk seem to imagine. The employer has a much bigger say, but even with the best will in the world, it is hard to pay folk much above their productivity as a persistent pattern and stay in business. Miners in Western countries are paid way more because they, and the institutions they are embedded in, are way more productive, not because some benefactor transfers resources to them.
The reason why Musk and other billionaires employ both child and adult slaves is because that is the only way for them to become and stay billionaires. It's just pure evil. The entire monetary system that allows there to be billionaires and slaves at the same time is just evil.
You do realise you are talking to an Australian? Much of our exports consist of highly paid miners digging stuff out of the ground and exporting it around the world. They are highly paid because their skills, and the institutions they are embedded in, means they are highly productive.
The notion that poorly paid workers is necessary for great wealth is nonsense on stilts. The concentration of billionaires is highest where the numbers of highly workers are greatest. (China and India have lots of poor people but they also have middle classes that number in the hundreds of millions.) You need to sell at a massive scale to create such wealth, which means lots of consumers able to buy such products.
You're not understanding my point. There is no reason for a billionaire to employ child slaves.
Also, India's middle classes are not comparable to Australia's. The standards of living are so completely different. A comparable middle class Australian family simply would not be able to live with the standards that a typical middle class Indian family does. The only perk is that the Australian middle class family in India would be able to afford domestic helpers there whereas in Australia they wouldn't, but the rest would be almost unbearable. By the time the standard got bearable/comfortable they would be in the class of what in India is considered rich.
Money is not what ends poverty; wealth (that is food, clothing, shelter, and the capacity to produce them) ends poverty. Free market countries reward individuals who produce wealth. The result is less poverty.
Socialist countries - to the extent they redistribute wealth according to the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” - punish ability and reward need. The result is more poverty.
There is no *economic* reason that poverty still exists, but there are, unfortunately, many political reasons why it does (see Cuba, Haiti, North Korea, Venezuela, and anywhere else people are paid not to produce.)
"Money is not what ends poverty; wealth (that is food, clothing, shelter, and the capacity to produce them) ends poverty. Free market countries reward individuals who produce wealth. "
--- And yet the wealth producers are making pennies on the dollar, such as Musk's child slaves in the cobalt mines of DRC. They labor long hours in the hot Congo sun doing rigorous physical work producing wealth and yet they and their families are still poor because the free market does not reward wealth producers.
"Socialist countries - to the extent they redistribute wealth according to the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” - punish ability and reward need. The result is more poverty."
--- The USA is the country with the LEAST social mobility in the industrial, developed world. Sweden is the country with the most.
"There is no *economic* reason that poverty still exists, but there are, unfortunately, many political reasons why it does (see Cuba, Haiti, North Korea, Venezuela, and anywhere else people are paid not to produce.)"
--- See the USA. Where farmers are paid not to produce and the producers of wealth do not own the means of their own production. Bizarre!
The DRC was a Marxist-Leninist state from 1969 to 1992, and its economy is still largely driven by the government. It is perhaps the world’s least developed nation. As a result, its people are unproductive and desperately poor. Parents send their children to work in the mines because that is the least bad option available to them.
Child labor laws were passed in the United States only after they had become largely irrelevant. By that time, Americans were so productive that few children were working. Attempts to institute similar laws in undeveloped countries had disastrous results. Children had to choose between starvation and working illegally with no recourse to legal protections at all.
Regardless of relative economic mobility in the U.S. and Sweden, both countries are capitalist.
The fact that the U.S. government pays farmers not to produce is hardly an example of capitalism in action. Rather it’s an example of central planning gone awry.
More and more, the means of production are a smartphone and a laptop.
In a free market, the “producers of wealth” include workers, foremen, managers, financiers, marketers, engineers, programmers, accountants, entrepreneurs, and countless other people all cooperating and competing under a rule-of-law framework.
"The DRC was a Marxist-Leninist state from 1969 to 1992, and its economy is still largely driven by the government. It is perhaps the world’s least developed nation. As a result, its people are unproductive and desperately poor. Parents send their children to work in the mines because that is the least bad option available to them."
--- That's an old paradigm that is no longer relevant in an age of billionaires and globalization. Elon Musk can afford to pay each and every one of his child slaves their worth, which at a bare minimum I would put at 100 US dollars per hour (for the first year). He can lift those people out of poverty and MCGA, make Congo great again. There's just no excuse not to.
"Regardless of relative economic mobility in the U.S. and Sweden, both countries are capitalist.
--- The point is, the USA, world's richest country (still, I think), long sold the lie that social mobility was possible in the USA more than anywhere else in the world, and sometimes even pushed the lie it was the ONLY place social mobility was truly possible. This was part of our founding myth, our grand narrative. And it was always bullshit.
"More and more, the means of production are a smartphone and a laptop."
--- Those that make smartphones and laptops need to own the means of their production.
It's a sick, demented, purely evil system that allows billionaires to exist alongside starvation. Especially when many of the starving are working for those billionaires. Just pure Satanism.
Musk doesn’t own any mines. He purchases cobalt from Glencore’s Katanga Copper Company, which does mine cobalt in the DRC, but which maintains that it does not use child labor and that it does not purchase cobalt from artisanal mines.
On the other hand, according to Amnesty International, China’s Congo DongFang International Mining does source cobalt from artisanal mines. China has the resources to pay the children far more than what they currently earn. Why is capitalism in general, or Musk in particular, responsible for China’s actions? Why are the children who dig cobalt for China “Musk’s slaves”?
Can you quote one economist or any respected authority that has ever made the claim that the U.S. is the only place in the world where upward mobility is possible? And even if some crank did make such a ridiculous assertion, how did his claim become part of the country’s “founding myth”?
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people with little more than the clothes on their backs risk their lives to get to the United States. They certainly believe that they can materially improve their lives by coming here. You apparently believe that they are mistaken. But, if so, why do they keep coming?
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people also risk their lives to get to Europe. They too believe that they can improve their lives by doing so. Does the “authority” who claimed that upward mobility is possible only in America believe that these people are delusional?
Why do the people making cell phones and laptops need to own the means of producing cell phones and laptops?
"Why do the people making cell phones and laptops need to own the means of producing cell phones and laptops?"
--- Because they are the wealth creators and capitalism is supposed to reward that.
"Every year, hundreds of thousands of people with little more than the clothes on their backs risk their lives to get to the United States. They certainly believe that they can materially improve their lives by coming here. You apparently believe that they are mistaken. But, if so, why do they keep coming?"
--- Those people remain poor here. They work in slaughterhouses and pick tomatos and almonds in the hot sun and do the work American citizens won't do for any price.
"At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people also risk their lives to get to Europe. They too believe that they can improve their lives by doing so. Does the “authority” who claimed that upward mobility is possible only in America believe that these people are delusional?"
--- I certainly do.
"Musk doesn’t own any mines. He purchases cobalt from Glencore’s Katanga Copper Company, which does mine cobalt in the DRC, but which maintains that it does not use child labor and that it does not purchase cobalt from artisanal mines."
--- Documentaries have already exposed Musk's child slavery. And you still don't get it. Whether he owns mines or not, he has enough money to make a huge difference in the lives of these child slaves.
"On the other hand, according to Amnesty International, China’s Congo DongFang International Mining does source cobalt from artisanal mines. China has the resources to pay the children far more than what they currently earn."
--- And they need to be paying them a minimum of 100 US dollars per hour. The work they do and wealth they create for billionaires is actually worth much more than that but for the first year 100 bucks/hour is at least a good start. And Musk can supply the annual bonus and new smart homes for their families. Is he still banging on about "smart homes"? Talk is cheap. Let's see some action.
"Why is capitalism in general, or Musk in particular, responsible for China’s actions? Why are the children who dig cobalt for China “Musk’s slaves”?"
It is encoded. Their indoctrination of people in their cult decodes it for such cult followers such as to align them with deeper confirmation biases and emotive-subjective narratives that are ultimately tribalistic, narrow, pre-modern and pre-liberal.
The pre-modern, anti-liberal narratives held by medieval intellectual, artistic and religious elites, the the illiterate peasant classes had an earthy purity that was polluted by the expanding, literate, shopkeepers and merchant class which threatened the old elites, were just recycled by the left, or at least the part of the left that carried on Rousseau’s thinking (romanticism).
Hatred of the literate middle classes (“capitalism”) is the core of “wokeism”, which is, ironically a tool of “woke”, postmodern global and digital elites.
Radical-extremist leftism and “wokeism” is fundamentally a quasi-religious hate cult.
——-
Objective facts, evidence and data will not convince people to abandon their confirmation biases and favored narratives, even when wrong.
“Progressive politics” in the rest of the world means a social democracy. Which, certainly not coincidentally, happen to be the highest quality of life societies on earth. You folks are so scared of the proletariat having an education you go to the depths like this.
Ajit prop dribble not connecting to reality and deflection from issues that need addressed, urgently. Shame on you. No wonder your mother is so disappointed
I don’t recall a troll/sockpuppet ever being able to make a coherent comment. He is only here to vomit hate rhetoric, presumably a script from a “woke” troll farm or something like that.
“Progressive” ideology is rooted in Victorian moral panics. Egregores. See hwfo.substack.com for an in-depth analysis.
Pathological sense making system.
Ironically it retained the urge to do international missionary projects, just like the Victorians (Woodrow Wilson), so “progressivism” is ultimately always in bed with war mongers.
Two useful books on this topic of human cooperation are "The WEIRDest people in the world" by Joseph Henrich and "The Social Instinct" by Nichola Raihani.
I've read the Henrich but not the other author, so thanks.
I have read ‘The Secret of Our Success’ and the original WEIRD paper. I own both books on Kindle but have not read them yet.
I’m currently reading the Weirdest people in the world book. Highly recommend
Masterful as usual. Thank you!
There's a lot of layers here. Marxism / via Socialism actualy does work within a small layer. It just doesn't scale up. Conversely, Libertarianism doesn't scale down. They work at different levels. The problem is humans like to think in Binaries, not layers.
When you breakdown layers, I'm an anarchist, benevolant dictator, socialist, democrat, republican, and libertarian.
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/quantum-superposition-and-politics
"spiritual answers for resentful people"
Praise Nietzsche! From The Genealogy of Morality:
"Yet the priests are, as is notorious, the worst enemies—why? Because they are the weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. The really great haters in the history of the world have always been priests, who are also the cleverest haters—in comparison with the cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is practically negligible."
It's only amusing that these intellectuals fancy themselves intellectually-driven and not priestly. Then again, self-awareness and brutal honesty are foreign to them. Hoffer was certainly right to call them True Believers.
This is insightful and good, but four paragraphs of parentheticals upfront is a little much.
"The existence of any variation in income, wealth, careers, etc. between identity groups is taken as presumptive evidence of some form of unjust deprivation..."
This isn't quite right. Any variation favoring whites or males, relative to blacks or Hispanics, say, on such metrics is, of course, indisputable evidence of unjust structural privilege, but any variation favoring Jews, Asians, or women, say, relative to whites or men, is apparently no such thing. You'd be certain to be called a racist or misogynist for even mentioning this inconsistency, and be at serious risk of losing your job if you were foolish enough to broach the subject in many a professional setting. Among the problems with the Intersectional understanding of social reality is that it doesn't appeal to a consistent standard of evidence. Instead, it rests on a priori assumptions about who is privileged and who isn't. Since actual social reality is often quite different from what Intersectional Theory would predict, the theorists can only maintain the façade of credibility by threatening the livelihoods and reputations of those so impudent as to notice.
Useful correction, ta.
All this comes through school and universities, as does so much mischief.
We need comprehensive education reform 🔥
My experience is that people who espouse a belief “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” typically underestimate their abilities and overstate their needs.
Outstanding article. Among many other things, it reminds me that the scaling effect, especially where socialism is concerned, is something I've been curious about for many years now.
Several different kinds of human social organizing structures can work (at least reasonably well) for groups of fewer than Dunbar's Number of 150 people or so. The kibbutzim are one well-known practical example. Another is BBSs and MUDs and other small online groups from the Modem Age of social networks, which were frequently very good at self-policing into enjoyable and productive small communities. Discord servers are a similar success story today... but then there are the big social networks. These massively inflated chat groups aren't as successful, often turning incredibly toxic. Why does this happen?
Like the bar Cheers, small groups seem to work because "everybody knows your name" -- reliable personal trust can be established that lowers the predicted cost of cooperation with others in the group. (Axelrod's "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma" remains a fantastic resource for exploring how cooperation can emerge.)
When scaled up past 100, 150 or so participants, though, many social organizations break down from exploitation. It may be that the majority of social systems don't scale up well. But there are a few social structures that somehow do (mostly) work. Why? What makes the difference? What are the structural features that enable one social organizing system to be productive even with millions of participants, while another scales up so poorly that subterfuge, or moralizing abuse, or the gun (or some combination of all these) must be used to force people to participate in it?
Capitalism in particular (mostly) does work at scale. What are its distinctive norms and institutions that allow it to be so successful at filling in for the absence of personal trust among billions of people, where the distinctive structural features of socialism do not?
Fodder for a future article, maybe. :)
Great comment. Nothing else to say, really!
Shirley, that is not true. If nothing else, you could say it using Roman legal Latin!! :-)
I would think at one level, the divorcing of business from solely kin based trust to wider trusted groups occurs simply because the parties to the transaction(s) desire them to succeed, as both buyers and sellers. And this desire for success follows all up and down the multitude of various (intersecting) supply chains. We are also genetically well endowed with psychological "cheat detectors", and will stop the gravy train [possibly with violence] if we observe/detect cheating. This whole network is also augmented with beneficial governmental investments in infrastructure, to which we all claim some version of "ownership" and so we usually do not abuse it either.
Lorenzo has mentioned his on-going exploration of the role of government in providing social/ civil order, and that perhaps that role is too often under appreciated when and where it exists (existed). Thus contracts and courts offer support for completing transactions per prior agreements, and these cases can bring mistakes or errors in past protective practices to the fore so they can be corrected for the future. Lorenzo has also mentioned the book Private Governance, by E P Stringham, presumably discussing the history of selected commercial or other cooperative efforts generated outside of direct governmental control.
Another aspect of these kinds of interactions depends on the relative value involved. We might grumble about being cheated out of $10; really make a modest effort for restitution if we are out $100 to $1000; and potentially pursue suits at law when larger losses are experienced. And our legal history seems to reflect this, too: look at all of the legal hoops required to buy real estate, including obtaining insurance and a mortgage; or the multitude of agencies and organizations in place to control major financial activities.
Desire to succeed is not enough to upscale such processes. Yes, you can have the personal connections of a bazaar economy, but certain sorts of institutions have to evolve to achieve such upscaling. Indeed, bazaars operate in the way they do because of the absence of such institutions.
the short answer: the early church's ban on cousin marriage and the shift to later (non-teen) marriage and the nuclear family structure
---
re: HBD and other WEIRD stuff - origins of western civilization, high-social-trust, "capitalism"
"HBD Chick" worked on that for a while. Example of her work:
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/tag/general-theory-of-the-west/
the "jayman" blog has similar material:
https://www.unz.com/jman/clannishness-the-series-a-finer-grained-look-at-how-it-happened/
---
WEIRD itself can be seen on Joseph Henrich's Harvard web site. Helen previously discussed earlier versions/sources of Henrich's ideas.
Interesting - the program of wokeness is a worldwide exercise in re-socialization at scale. Does that mean it is destined to fail or will it be one of those few global social organizational efforts that achieves its goals?
How far it will get is as yet unclear.
I think that will depend on the nature of "wokeness."
Maybe it's an extrinsic and clearly implementable organizing principle (such as "property owners should be free to choose to exchange goods and services at a price they find mutually agreeable" or "wise and benevolent experts should redistribute value for the greatest common good"). In this case, scale effects would apply as fewer or more people begin to employ this principle in their social behaviors. The big question here, though, is: what is the organizing principle behind wokeness that's so easily understandable that lots of people can definitely participate in it?
If, on the other hand, wokeness actually is more of an intrinsic mindset -- what used to be called utopianism -- then its effects probably remain more or less stable for the time being because the fraction of the the population who innately have that worldview is stable. The apparent rise of woke power recently (if the "mindset" explanation is the more correct one) is because the stable population of utopians happened to have hired and promoted each other into mass communication institutions (education, news, entertainment, tech), and George Floyd's murder was the event where they looked around, realized "Hey! We own this place!" and went public with using the formerly trusted institution to carry their utopian messaging. But there's no significant growth available there. That's just the people already wired to believe that everyone else must be made to "grow" (for their own good in maximizing social justice), who've started using the power they currently have. It's not a widespread application by the general masses of a single, simple, easily understood organizing principle, whose capability for delivering value to most of that society may depend on scaling effects.
I could be wrong. Maybe there's something about wokeness that's more extrinsic than an innate worldview; maybe the Dialectical Faith really is a general principle of social organization that anyone can adopt and apply, and we'll endure seeing whether that scales up. I hope historians 20 years from now have the chance to write honestly about it.
"Believers get to sneer at—and denigrate as cognitively, morally and psychologically inadequate—all who do not embrace the Faith. This takes in all human striving across the millennia that does not suit the Faith." But so do the corresponding non-believers who lack or don't understand the "faith based versions". They also get to pursue "turn about is fair play".
I have been a religious non-believer since childhood, although usually keeping my "sneering" to myself unless I find a like minded person or someone with whom I can agree to disagree. It is only in the last few years that I realized the obvious fact that many devoutly faithful (usually religious) people are really also very intelligent, so that (I suspect) adopting a faith based view is something that has evolved psychologically in parallel with our evolved intelligence. It seems reasonable that both mental capabilities have aided within group cooperation and survival for several hundreds of millennia.
We also know there are many cases of people moving into and out of various belief and non-belief positions about religion and other topics. It is the supreme puzzle of my life as to how and why that happens. The complexity of genetics, psychology, and culture may make finding a real solution almost impossible. But some progress seems to have been made over the last 30 or so years seeking an explanation. I keep my eyes and ears open for promising reports, essays, and books discussing this [for example those supplied by Arnold Kling in the very first comment to this thread.]
Voltaire “Enter into the Royal Exchange of London, a place more respectable than many courts, in which deputies from all nations assemble for the advantage of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian bargain with one another as if they were of the same religion, and bestow the name of infidel on bankrupts only… Was there in London but one religion, despotism might be apprehended; if two only, they would seek to cut each other’s throats; but as there are at least thirty, they live together in peace and happiness.”
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/fleming-the-works-of-voltaire-vol-vi-philosophical-dictionary-part-4#
The Dialectical Faith does not operate like that, as it is so concerned with acquiring power and spreading social entropy. It is more like a power-seeking cult than a conventional religion. One that can launder its ideas through academic literature.
See Iain McGilchrist’s work in evolutionary psychology. Cognitive linguists made similar observations years ago, objective and subjective awareness are built with the same cognitive building blocks, arranged differently or something like that. George Lakoff, Mark Turner.
As Warby states brilliantly, religion is an evolved survival adaptation.
Darwin explained why morals are biological, also a survival adaptation that increased social cooperation.
“… religion is an evolved survival adaptation.”
Must there not, then, be some basic truth in the religion of a well-functioning society?
Literally false, metaphorically true is often in play. I.e. there are benefits from acting as if it were true.
I have come to the conclusion that decadence is the loss of the previously operating sense of the sacred.
Is there (literally) nothing sacred then? Is sanctity metaphorical only?
Depending on the evolutionary stage/level of a culture “truth” will vary.
A culture that does not have some notion of the renunciation of evil and sin will usually be regressive to, or at, a more “primitive” stage of evolution, and will struggle or fail to meet the needs of social complexity. See Gerhard Lenski’s ecological-evolutionary theory for examples.
The general scheme: magical nature religion , hunting/gathering, -> pre-modern, mythic monotheism, agrarian, rational, industrial, -> postmodern, disital economy, pluralistic/relativist . Postmodern regression is the big deal: narcissism and nihilism. I’m on a trip, don’t have a good device or access to my reference archive. I’ll clarify later if needed. From memory: https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
Truths and morality are learned from experience. Great truths and morality that fosters human flourishing stand the test of time. At a minimum, a religion that is compatible with human nature and human flourishing will reinforce (sanctify?) such truths.
The Enlightenment and techno-economic disruption pushed mythical religion out of its dominant position. Everything is “learned” because the human species evolved to be a socially cooperative species with extensive shared learning. Learning doesn’t exist independent from biology.
What is being shared and learned evolved through stages: magical, mythic, rational, pluralistic.
If possible, respond to the material in the link on the current “crisis of meaning” as an indicator that a paradigm shift is happening, driven by disruptive, postmodern social conditions and the failure of legacy sense making systems to meet emergent needs.
Evolution is usually pretty brutal. See Chagnon’s study of the Yanomami tribe. If you define “well function” as survival adaptations, then the scientific evidence is that humans evolved the capacity to be both “nasty” and “nice” to those outside or inside their kinship group (gene pool). See Samuel Bowles’ 2008 Ulam lectures , Santa Fe Institute.
DEI: Didn’t Earn It.
Golden!
Not mine, though. Saw it on Scott Adam’s, who retweeted someone else…
I will steal it even more shamelessly then.
Consider DIE: from abbrev. to acronym (for semantic clarity)
Utterly brilliant, as usual. Archived.
There's no reason for hunger and poverty anymore. There's so much money circulating on our planet. That even one person should go hungry or homeless when even one person is a billionaire, what to speak of having several, is just sinful.
The history of foreign aid, particularly in Africa, shows how much the issue is not just “money”. Disastrously dysfunctional institutions, or just poorly functional ones, will sop up any amount of money for little or no benefit: or even make things worse by enabling and extending dysfunction. The existence of wealthy folk ain’t the problem. The descent of South Africa into violent dysfunction is, alas, providing a sad demonstration of the institutions-and-policies problem. So, of course, does Venezuela.
Foreign aid comes at a steep price. The USA in particular isn't giving a dime to any other country without defense contractors, mercenaries, and major oil and other resource corporations being given a free pass in. Billionaires are individuals who need not go through government to just give individuals money directly, hand to hand. If I were a billionaire I wouldn't be one for long because I would give all my money away to the poorest people who could actually use it, while keeping for myself only that which I need to live safely and healthily on til I die, which certainly wouldn't be more than 1 million. But at the very least Elon Musk should be paying the slave children he has in the Democratic Republic of Congo mining cobalt for him a minimum of 100 dollars per hour.
The problem of foreign aid is not remotely limited to US foreign aid or even to government foreign aid. The capacity of any purchaser of any mineral to affect the wages of those mining the mineral is way more limited than folk seem to imagine. The employer has a much bigger say, but even with the best will in the world, it is hard to pay folk much above their productivity as a persistent pattern and stay in business. Miners in Western countries are paid way more because they, and the institutions they are embedded in, are way more productive, not because some benefactor transfers resources to them.
The reason why Musk and other billionaires employ both child and adult slaves is because that is the only way for them to become and stay billionaires. It's just pure evil. The entire monetary system that allows there to be billionaires and slaves at the same time is just evil.
You do realise you are talking to an Australian? Much of our exports consist of highly paid miners digging stuff out of the ground and exporting it around the world. They are highly paid because their skills, and the institutions they are embedded in, means they are highly productive.
The notion that poorly paid workers is necessary for great wealth is nonsense on stilts. The concentration of billionaires is highest where the numbers of highly workers are greatest. (China and India have lots of poor people but they also have middle classes that number in the hundreds of millions.) You need to sell at a massive scale to create such wealth, which means lots of consumers able to buy such products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires
You're not understanding my point. There is no reason for a billionaire to employ child slaves.
Also, India's middle classes are not comparable to Australia's. The standards of living are so completely different. A comparable middle class Australian family simply would not be able to live with the standards that a typical middle class Indian family does. The only perk is that the Australian middle class family in India would be able to afford domestic helpers there whereas in Australia they wouldn't, but the rest would be almost unbearable. By the time the standard got bearable/comfortable they would be in the class of what in India is considered rich.
Money is not what ends poverty; wealth (that is food, clothing, shelter, and the capacity to produce them) ends poverty. Free market countries reward individuals who produce wealth. The result is less poverty.
Socialist countries - to the extent they redistribute wealth according to the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” - punish ability and reward need. The result is more poverty.
There is no *economic* reason that poverty still exists, but there are, unfortunately, many political reasons why it does (see Cuba, Haiti, North Korea, Venezuela, and anywhere else people are paid not to produce.)
"Money is not what ends poverty; wealth (that is food, clothing, shelter, and the capacity to produce them) ends poverty. Free market countries reward individuals who produce wealth. "
--- And yet the wealth producers are making pennies on the dollar, such as Musk's child slaves in the cobalt mines of DRC. They labor long hours in the hot Congo sun doing rigorous physical work producing wealth and yet they and their families are still poor because the free market does not reward wealth producers.
"Socialist countries - to the extent they redistribute wealth according to the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” - punish ability and reward need. The result is more poverty."
--- The USA is the country with the LEAST social mobility in the industrial, developed world. Sweden is the country with the most.
"There is no *economic* reason that poverty still exists, but there are, unfortunately, many political reasons why it does (see Cuba, Haiti, North Korea, Venezuela, and anywhere else people are paid not to produce.)"
--- See the USA. Where farmers are paid not to produce and the producers of wealth do not own the means of their own production. Bizarre!
The DRC was a Marxist-Leninist state from 1969 to 1992, and its economy is still largely driven by the government. It is perhaps the world’s least developed nation. As a result, its people are unproductive and desperately poor. Parents send their children to work in the mines because that is the least bad option available to them.
Child labor laws were passed in the United States only after they had become largely irrelevant. By that time, Americans were so productive that few children were working. Attempts to institute similar laws in undeveloped countries had disastrous results. Children had to choose between starvation and working illegally with no recourse to legal protections at all.
Regardless of relative economic mobility in the U.S. and Sweden, both countries are capitalist.
The fact that the U.S. government pays farmers not to produce is hardly an example of capitalism in action. Rather it’s an example of central planning gone awry.
More and more, the means of production are a smartphone and a laptop.
In a free market, the “producers of wealth” include workers, foremen, managers, financiers, marketers, engineers, programmers, accountants, entrepreneurs, and countless other people all cooperating and competing under a rule-of-law framework.
"The DRC was a Marxist-Leninist state from 1969 to 1992, and its economy is still largely driven by the government. It is perhaps the world’s least developed nation. As a result, its people are unproductive and desperately poor. Parents send their children to work in the mines because that is the least bad option available to them."
--- That's an old paradigm that is no longer relevant in an age of billionaires and globalization. Elon Musk can afford to pay each and every one of his child slaves their worth, which at a bare minimum I would put at 100 US dollars per hour (for the first year). He can lift those people out of poverty and MCGA, make Congo great again. There's just no excuse not to.
"Regardless of relative economic mobility in the U.S. and Sweden, both countries are capitalist.
--- The point is, the USA, world's richest country (still, I think), long sold the lie that social mobility was possible in the USA more than anywhere else in the world, and sometimes even pushed the lie it was the ONLY place social mobility was truly possible. This was part of our founding myth, our grand narrative. And it was always bullshit.
"More and more, the means of production are a smartphone and a laptop."
--- Those that make smartphones and laptops need to own the means of their production.
It's a sick, demented, purely evil system that allows billionaires to exist alongside starvation. Especially when many of the starving are working for those billionaires. Just pure Satanism.
Musk doesn’t own any mines. He purchases cobalt from Glencore’s Katanga Copper Company, which does mine cobalt in the DRC, but which maintains that it does not use child labor and that it does not purchase cobalt from artisanal mines.
On the other hand, according to Amnesty International, China’s Congo DongFang International Mining does source cobalt from artisanal mines. China has the resources to pay the children far more than what they currently earn. Why is capitalism in general, or Musk in particular, responsible for China’s actions? Why are the children who dig cobalt for China “Musk’s slaves”?
Can you quote one economist or any respected authority that has ever made the claim that the U.S. is the only place in the world where upward mobility is possible? And even if some crank did make such a ridiculous assertion, how did his claim become part of the country’s “founding myth”?
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people with little more than the clothes on their backs risk their lives to get to the United States. They certainly believe that they can materially improve their lives by coming here. You apparently believe that they are mistaken. But, if so, why do they keep coming?
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people also risk their lives to get to Europe. They too believe that they can improve their lives by doing so. Does the “authority” who claimed that upward mobility is possible only in America believe that these people are delusional?
Why do the people making cell phones and laptops need to own the means of producing cell phones and laptops?
"Why do the people making cell phones and laptops need to own the means of producing cell phones and laptops?"
--- Because they are the wealth creators and capitalism is supposed to reward that.
"Every year, hundreds of thousands of people with little more than the clothes on their backs risk their lives to get to the United States. They certainly believe that they can materially improve their lives by coming here. You apparently believe that they are mistaken. But, if so, why do they keep coming?"
--- Those people remain poor here. They work in slaughterhouses and pick tomatos and almonds in the hot sun and do the work American citizens won't do for any price.
"At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people also risk their lives to get to Europe. They too believe that they can improve their lives by doing so. Does the “authority” who claimed that upward mobility is possible only in America believe that these people are delusional?"
--- I certainly do.
"Musk doesn’t own any mines. He purchases cobalt from Glencore’s Katanga Copper Company, which does mine cobalt in the DRC, but which maintains that it does not use child labor and that it does not purchase cobalt from artisanal mines."
--- Documentaries have already exposed Musk's child slavery. And you still don't get it. Whether he owns mines or not, he has enough money to make a huge difference in the lives of these child slaves.
"On the other hand, according to Amnesty International, China’s Congo DongFang International Mining does source cobalt from artisanal mines. China has the resources to pay the children far more than what they currently earn."
--- And they need to be paying them a minimum of 100 US dollars per hour. The work they do and wealth they create for billionaires is actually worth much more than that but for the first year 100 bucks/hour is at least a good start. And Musk can supply the annual bonus and new smart homes for their families. Is he still banging on about "smart homes"? Talk is cheap. Let's see some action.
"Why is capitalism in general, or Musk in particular, responsible for China’s actions? Why are the children who dig cobalt for China “Musk’s slaves”?"
--- China is capitalist.
Objective facts, evidence and data will not convince people to abandon their confirmation biases and favored narratives, even when wrong.
https://paultaylor.substack.com/p/psychologically-illogical-part-1
paultaylor. substack. com /p/psychologically-illogical-part-1
Equity can only be achieve by the loss of freedom.
Very good - you explain their ideology better than they do - perhaps they want it to be impenetrable.
It is encoded. Their indoctrination of people in their cult decodes it for such cult followers such as to align them with deeper confirmation biases and emotive-subjective narratives that are ultimately tribalistic, narrow, pre-modern and pre-liberal.
The pre-modern, anti-liberal narratives held by medieval intellectual, artistic and religious elites, the the illiterate peasant classes had an earthy purity that was polluted by the expanding, literate, shopkeepers and merchant class which threatened the old elites, were just recycled by the left, or at least the part of the left that carried on Rousseau’s thinking (romanticism).
Hatred of the literate middle classes (“capitalism”) is the core of “wokeism”, which is, ironically a tool of “woke”, postmodern global and digital elites.
Radical-extremist leftism and “wokeism” is fundamentally a quasi-religious hate cult.
——-
Objective facts, evidence and data will not convince people to abandon their confirmation biases and favored narratives, even when wrong.
https://paultaylor.substack.com/p/psychologically-illogical-part-1
paultaylor. substack. com /p/psychologically-illogical-part-1
“Progressive politics” in the rest of the world means a social democracy. Which, certainly not coincidentally, happen to be the highest quality of life societies on earth. You folks are so scared of the proletariat having an education you go to the depths like this.
Ajit prop dribble not connecting to reality and deflection from issues that need addressed, urgently. Shame on you. No wonder your mother is so disappointed
Troll
It was hard to parse the comment because the reference made in the essay to social democracy was positive.
I don’t recall a troll/sockpuppet ever being able to make a coherent comment. He is only here to vomit hate rhetoric, presumably a script from a “woke” troll farm or something like that.
“Progressive” ideology is rooted in Victorian moral panics. Egregores. See hwfo.substack.com for an in-depth analysis.
Pathological sense making system.
Ironically it retained the urge to do international missionary projects, just like the Victorians (Woodrow Wilson), so “progressivism” is ultimately always in bed with war mongers.