Comment by MarsIronPI
1 day ago
When it comes to formalized social systems vs. informal ones, I think deciding which is better comes down to what you're trying to optimize for. Some people prefer a more rigid, punctual and formal society, where you know precisely what to expect and what not to expect, and you can rightly get upset when the expectations aren't met. Others (myself included) prefer those societies where everyone knows everyone else and everybody's related if you go back 10 generations. In my experience, which to be fair was as somewhat of an insider to the group, these kinds of societies are less stressful. They feel better to live in.
> Others (myself included) prefer those societies where everyone knows everyone else and everybody's related if you go back 10 generations. In my experience, which to be fair was as somewhat of an insider to the group, these kinds of societies are less stressful. They feel better to live in.
I agree. My mom comes from a family with thirteen siblings in Bangladesh, and moving to the U.S. was a very lonely experience. I felt the loss, but mostly got over it because I was young. My mom never did. My dad remembers a very happy childhood in his village, even though back then 20% of kids died before age 5.
But if you’re optimizing for economic development, informal societies are a hindrance. Informal societies have strong kinship networks,[1] and the intensity of kinship networks is correlated with many negative metrics: less functioning political institutions, less innovation, less specialization of labor, and lower economic growth: https://historicalpsychology.fas.harvard.edu/assets/files/20... ("We establish a tight empirical relationship between kinship intensity and economic development ... A one-SD-increase in the KII is associated with: ... a ~35% decrease in per capita luminosity and GDP worldwide ... [and] a ~10% decrease ..., within-country."); https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic... ("We report a robust association between in-marriage practices and corruption both across countries and within countries.").
[1] I'm not aware of any informal societies that don't have strong kinship networks.