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?
"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.]
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.
“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
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.
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.
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. :)
"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.]
DEI: Didn’t Earn It.
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.
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.
“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