Comment by ryandrake
3 years ago
People don’t follow the rules because they are self-centered assholes who believe they are the main character of a movie, and they value their own personal convenience and comfort over the lives of other people they see as NPCs.
People aren't taking their luggage with them during an airplane fire because of their distrust of The Deep State.
Would it be possible to make an even more negative interpretation of this comment? I don’t think so.
You irritation (to the extreme, I mean you just linked the deep state with assholes) is probably due to powerlessness in fixing the issue, let alone interpreting it properly.
However, it is still a widely-acknowledged idea that an unhinged state like the former-USSR-newly-Putin-land makes people afraid of not being able to feed themselves the next day.
I don’t suppose you oppose the idea that when the state organize something, civil servants’ interests are so badly aligned with the proper execution of the plan that it’s a shitshow every single time. And with entirely incompetent people in power, one’s better off doing the opposite of what regularly-proven liars tell them to do.
If you’re upset, is it because you envision lying as a normal form of citizen management? How’s that going for your camp? Do you feel that people trust you?
I'm not saying that there aren't people out there motivated by government distrust--I'm sure there are, maybe more in Russia--I don't know, I'm not Russian.
I'm saying that's not the common case. If you pick 100 random people out there who are disobeying some safety rule, where the outcome is greater convenience for themselves, I'd be willing to bet money that at least 90 of them are doing it out of selfishness and not some principled distrust of the government.