Comment by andsoitis
1 day ago
> It's about enforcing single-minded-ness across masses, similar to soldier training. But this is not new. The very goal of a nation is to dismantle inner structures, independent thought
One of the reasons for humans’ success is our unrivaled ability cooperate across time, space, and culture. That requires shared stories like the ideas of nation, religion, and money.
It depends who's in charge of the nation though, you can have people planning for the long term well being of their population, or people planning for the next election cycle and making sure they amass as much power and money in the meantime.
That's the difference between planning nuclear reactors that will be built after your term, and used after your death, vs selling your national industries to foreigners, your ports to china, &c. to make a quick buck and insure a comfy retirement plan for you and your family.
> That's the difference between planning nuclear reactors that will be built after your term, and used after your death, vs selling your national industries to foreigners
Are you saying that in western liberal democracies politicians have been selling “national industries to foreigners”? What does that mean?
Stuff like that:
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1796887086647431277
https://www.dw.com/en/greece-in-the-port-of-piraeus-china-is...
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1819036/business-economy
Step 1: move all your factories abroad for short term gains
Step 2: sell all your shit to foreigners for short term gains
Step 3: profit ?
That's a fairly literal description of how privatization worked, yes. That's why British Steel is owned by Tata and the remains of British Leyland ended up with BMW. British nuclear reactors are operated by Electricite de France, and some of the trains are run by Dutch and German operators.
It sounds bad, but you can also not-misleadingly say "we took industries that were costing the taxpayer money and sold them for hard currency and foreign investment". The problem is the ongoing subsidy.
2 replies →
> ability cooperate across time, space, and culture. That requires shared stories like the ideas of nation, religion, and money.
Isn't it the opposite? Cooperation requires idea of unity and common goal, while ideas of nations and religion are - at large scale - divisive, not uniting. They boost in-group cooperation, but hurt out-group.
Some things are better off homogeneous. An absence of shared values and concerns leads to sectarianism and the erosion of inter-communal trust, which sucks.
Inter-communal trust sucks only when you consider well-being of a larger community which swallowed up smaller communities. You just created a larger community, which still has the same inter-communal trust issues with other large communities which were also created by similar swallowing up of other smaller communities. There is no single global community.
A larger community is still better than a smaller one, even if it's not as large as it can possibly be.
Do you prefer to be Japanese during the period of warring tribes or after unification? Do you prefer to be Irish during the Troubles or today? Do you prefer to be American during the Civil War or afterwards? It's pretty obvious when you think about historical case studies.
That is also how things wind down and progress ceases and civilizations decay. You need a measure of conflict and difference to move things forward.
I do agree however this needs to be controlled and within bounds so as not to be totally destructive and also because you can't get anywhere with everyone pulling in different directions.
In evolutionary terms, variation is the basis for natural selection. You have no variation then you have nothing to select from.
No stronger argument has been made to convince me to help the superintelligent AI enslave my fellow humans.