Sometimes I have a crazy intuition like “if people just categorically refused to work with anybody who seemed untrustworthy or “fake” or trying to take advantage, the world would be better.”
-
Show this thread
-
This is crazy because people need to work to survive and what if their only options are people who are trying to take advantage? I get that. It’s not a practical proposal.
4 replies 0 retweets 16 likesShow this thread -
But all the actual productive capacity of the economy is in people who are making positive-sum contributions. The “nation” of positive-sum builders and helpers is, by necessity, richer than the “nation” of zero-sum takers. In actual resources if not dollars.
2 replies 1 retweet 27 likesShow this thread -
Imagine if everyone went on a sort of “strike” all at once: don’t work with or for anyone you think is sleazy or unfair. Don’t do any job you think is pointless or immoral. Just actually listen to your personal judgment. Would everyone starve?
9 replies 1 retweet 24 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @s_r_constantin
Yes, this experiment was run many times as communism. People's intuitions about what's "bad" and "unfair" are an exceptionally poor way of organising society; personal morality just doesn't scale.
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @RokoMijicUK
Communism was not self-organized. It was led by revolutionary leaders who told the peasants what to do.
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @s_r_constantin @RokoMijicUK
I’m thinking more like Quakerism. Quakers got rich in the 18th-19th centuries. They had much more of an ideology of “literally everyone should follow their own consciences” than Communists ever did.
2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
And people’s intuitions about bad/unfair *don’t* scale, but they may be okay locally, which is what you need here: “disassociate from the people you know personally that you don’t respect or trust.”
-
-
Replying to @s_r_constantin
I don't think that works very well. It gives all the good people a horrible collective action problem where the first to defect gets rewarded and no enforcement mechanism because it's a local algorithm. The version of this with enforcement is called rule of law.
0 replies 0 retweets 1 likeThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.