Re:Is Inequality Inevitable?
by nostrademons on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @08:02PM
(#21469415)
This works up until you get a big enough group where freeriding can pass undetected and unpunished.
The thing about lazyness & cynicism is that it's viral. When everybody sees everyone else around them pitching in to the best of their ability, they're inclined to pitch in as well. When one person starts enjoying the benefits of this without contributing, contributors start getting angry. When multiple people start doing this but there's no way to either punish or evict them from the group, contributors get depressed, and often switch their worldview. Why bother working hard for other people when the other people are not working hard in return?
Empirically, this seems to happen at a few thousand people, well below the size of a modern nation-state. The cultures you cite all have internal subdivisions (villages, tribes, clans) of around this size. Beyond it, the complexity of society grows to the point where freeriding cannot be detected & punished other than by institutional means (money, contracts, lawsuits), and so there's an incentive for everyone to freeride.
It doesn't even require malicious intent. Take the health care example, and imagine you're a physician's assistant. 99% of the patients who come to you just have a cough that they could've taken care of with bedrest & fluids. After seeing 99 patients, most of whom come from the more well-to-do if neurotic segments of society and none of them needing actual medical treatment, you start thinking "Man, all these folks don't have any actual problems, but they keep coming for medical care because it's free. What's the point in doing anything other than sending them home for rest & fluids?" The 100th person has aggressive lung cancer, but you send them home for bedrest and fluids, where they die. The PA's malpractice insurance covers the inevitable lawsuit, so they don't face any consequences for their cursory examination. They do, however, end up even more bitter about patients who are not only lazy but litigious too. The family of the deceased tells all their friends that the healthcare system is irretrievably broken, but there's nothing they can do about it - since it's a government institution, it's not like there's anywhere else they could go. Instead, it trickles down into how they do their own jobs: they get just a little bit more cynical about how much everyone else is pitching in to the common good, and decide they're going to pitch in a little bit less to keep the score even.
The thing about lazyness & cynicism is that it's viral. When everybody sees everyone else around them pitching in to the best of their ability, they're inclined to pitch in as well. When one person starts enjoying the benefits of this without contributing, contributors start getting angry. When multiple people start doing this but there's no way to either punish or evict them from the group, contributors get depressed, and often switch their worldview. Why bother working hard for other people when the other people are not working hard in return?
Empirically, this seems to happen at a few thousand people, well below the size of a modern nation-state. The cultures you cite all have internal subdivisions (villages, tribes, clans) of around this size. Beyond it, the complexity of society grows to the point where freeriding cannot be detected & punished other than by institutional means (money, contracts, lawsuits), and so there's an incentive for everyone to freeride.
It doesn't even require malicious intent. Take the health care example, and imagine you're a physician's assistant. 99% of the patients who come to you just have a cough that they could've taken care of with bedrest & fluids. After seeing 99 patients, most of whom come from the more well-to-do if neurotic segments of society and none of them needing actual medical treatment, you start thinking "Man, all these folks don't have any actual problems, but they keep coming for medical care because it's free. What's the point in doing anything other than sending them home for rest & fluids?" The 100th person has aggressive lung cancer, but you send them home for bedrest and fluids, where they die. The PA's malpractice insurance covers the inevitable lawsuit, so they don't face any consequences for their cursory examination. They do, however, end up even more bitter about patients who are not only lazy but litigious too. The family of the deceased tells all their friends that the healthcare system is irretrievably broken, but there's nothing they can do about it - since it's a government institution, it's not like there's anywhere else they could go. Instead, it trickles down into how they do their own jobs: they get just a little bit more cynical about how much everyone else is pitching in to the common good, and decide they're going to pitch in a little bit less to keep the score even.