My political/economic philosophy priors: 1. No rule about political/economic systems is completely accurate or universal 2. In general, emergent phenomenon from low-level agents is better than top-down rules 3. Culture has huge impact, and often determines the success of a system
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Rape, cancer, malaria (parasites in general), cheating, organised crime, war, female genital mutilation, slavery .... Emergent phenomena in groups of agents are generically awful because of how game theory works.
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(And if you believe otherwise you have a very serious mistake in your worldview)
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I think the reply here is missing an implied point that you are referring to hypothetical top down vs emergent phenomena that are aimed towards the same end. I.e., free markets vs planned economies. The rape example lacks a top down competitor aimed towards the same goal.
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It's just an example of a phenomenon that emerges and is bad. Parasites of various kinds are other examples.
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A good example of a counterpoint would be city planning. The roads in European cities that were allowed to develop naturally are far less easily navigable than the grid system in the US. Obviously this entails different trade offs in aesthetics and other values though.
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Even that's underestimating it because top-down planners work to fix road networks in Europe You really want to look at roads in very poor developing countries to see just how bad emergent can be.
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