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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34399 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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vastly poorer, shittier, more corrupt, more violent countries don't have the problems that the above article notes exist in the Los Angeles metro.

Because they're not rich enough to (1) afford ubiquitous personal car transportation, (2) isolate themselves from the effects of luxury beliefs like "we should prioritize the feelings and welfare of criminals over having orderly public places"

Los Angeles is the second city of the richest country on earth. The median income in Los Angeles is $70,000 a year.

Right, rich enough to afford personal cars for most people, and luxury beliefs allying the guilty-feeling, effeminized elites and the underclasses.

isolate themselves from the effects of luxury beliefs like "we should prioritize the feelings and welfare of criminals over having orderly public places"

This makes a lot of sense, but I know a number of residents of SF, Oakland and other places like that, who aren't in any way rich enough to avoid the effects of the luxury beliefs, and they still largely support the policies that led to them. I mean, they're certainly not happy about people pooping on the streets or open drug markets, not to mention unending car breakins and other criminality, but somehow they never make the conclusion the policies they support are responsible for it. They just think it's "wrong Socialism" and as soon as they figure out how to make "true Socialism, that has never been tried" - which is right around the corner, we only need to tweak a couple of things and spend a couple of billions more - and it all will be fixed.

I guess my question is where do these magical beliefs come from? They seem to be ubiquitous among Reddit users but also white collar progressives in general. I'd like to blame midwit tier intelligence, but I don't think that's it. In fact, I would guess that intelligence and socialist beliefs are positively correlated.

Why is socialist worldview so appealing, even when (or especially when) it fails time and time again? And why is the more practical worldview (that people respond to incentives) so looked down upon?

Possibly because socialism is extremely common and extremely successful on the very small scale. As a general rule, this is how families work, and sometimes extremely tight-knit groups with very high in-group loyalty, like cults. The problem is that it doesn't scale up, and this is a massive problem when you're talking about organizing a society.

The insight of incentives, free markets, etc. is that you can have net-positive interactions without the reinforcement of high in-group loyalty to control defection. The "problem" is that this type of interaction doesn't scale down--it would be a bit ridiculous to run a family on a barter system: infants don't have anything of value to trade for food and diapers beyond weaponized cuteness. This is an illusory problem, though, when you're applying a system to the matching scale of its competence--socialism for family structures, markets for societies.

socialism for family structures, markets for societies.

Yes, and western culture seems to be trying to force the exact opposite on people at the moment: socialism at the society level and individualism at the family level.

This is wicked and can only end badly.

This is a great point. Also love the phrasing. Bravo.

Possibly because socialism is extremely common and extremely successful on the very small scale. As a general rule, this is how families work, and sometimes extremely tight-knit groups with very high in-group loyalty, like cults. The problem is that it doesn't scale up, and this is a massive problem when you're talking about organizing a society.

I'd call that communism rather than socialism, but that's a definitional quibble.

The bit that seems interesting to me is that this could plausibly boil down to evo-psych. Maybe we're communists at heart because we're evolved for communism? Large societies are pretty recent, after all...

I don't think you need evo-psych, so much as just recognizing patterns. For the most part, people grow up in families, and they are used to socializing gains and losses across the family unit. But you can't socialize gains and losses across too large a structure without destroying the individual incentive to succeed (barring extremely high in-group loyalty). Extending this outward, you get clan/extended family structures, and this is where you start to see the failure to scale.

John is in a poor society, but has managed to scrape together enough capital to start a small food stand. If John's society has a cultural expectation of "family member has food, therefore I have food," then enough cousins come out of the woodwork, eat all of John's food for free, and ruin his potential small business. The only way John's business can survive is if he's got the cultural backing to set boundaries and refuse to socialize his gains to his cousins. (Alternatively, John tries, fails, says "fuck this" and moves to America to get away from his cousins, but more importantly, to get away from the cultural expectation that the cousins have a right to his profits.) This is a very common pattern in poor societies, and I'd say, adequately explains why they stay poor.

So, these people in poor societies look pretty dumb for not figuring out the dynamic that keeps them poor, yes? I'd say yes, but actually no. How does a potential reformer present the message "you need to not automatically share with your cousins" without coming across as a selfish defect-bot? If he's saying we shouldn't automatically share with our cousins, does that mean we also shouldn't share with our children?

This is where Ayn Rand points out that this was her core insight: "greed is good." I think she's directionally correct in many instances, but no, charity is still a virtue. It's not about whether John shares his food with his cousins or does not. It's about whether he has the right to choose to share or not--whether his society permits him to make that choice without penalty. It's a culture where a cousin may ask, but--on average--will accept a "no" without trashing John's reputation, and will himself be seen as greedy if he insists on a right to John's assets. Charity cannot exist without choice. There are various arguments for differing levels of socialism, but "creating a charitable society" is flatly wrong.

This is where Ayn Rand points out that this was her core insight: "greed is good." I think she's directionally correct in many instances, but no, charity is still a virtue.

I happen to be re-reading Atlas Shrugged through audiobook on x1.5 speed mostly out of spite for its anti-fans. I appreciate her depiction of a communist dystopia which is, if anything, less dystopic than the real thing. But it's driving me insane how much her "greed is good" pitch relies on her putting pro-charity arguments in the mouths of the most snivelling hypocritical wretches you ever met, while having callipygian I-invented-calculus-at-age-twelve gigachads tell you how they only work for money.

It would be so much the better book if she left it as "yeah, communism sounds nice but everything falls apart."

The bit that seems interesting to me is that this could plausibly boil down to evo-psych. Maybe we're communists at heart because we're evolved for communism? Large societies are pretty recent, after all...

Below Dunbar's number, we're all communists, and it works. Your family is a commune.

The higher you go above Dunbar's number, the harder it becomes to detect and handle defectbots.

Then, at scale, sub-dunbar units within the society themselves become defectbots. You can see the collapse of communism by looking at societies as they scale in size, from bands to tribes to chiefdoms and then states.

Whose family is a commune? Traditionally they were patriarchies or sometimes matriarchies. Nowadays they may be more equal partnerships, but little Billy doesn't own the house in common, neither legally nor in reality.

Little Billy does in fact refer to it as "his house," and he is correct to do so. No, he cannot sell it, but there is a meaningful sense in which it is "his." "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need" is a good approximation of how families are run. If you point to a patriarch in charge of a family, I can point to any communist regime ever with an obvious patriarch at the top of society.

but little Billy doesn't own the house in common, neither legally nor in reality.

"Own" is a contract with the larger society. Billy gets to live in it and use it and the things in it in accordance to his needs. Dad pays the mortgage and does 80% of the yardwork in accordance with his abilities. If Billy shatters his spine and becomes paraplegic, he can do 0% of the work and not only will his claim to the resources of the house not be threatened, it will increase and Stacey will be expected to pick up the slack and forgo things she used to get that the house can no longer afford.

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