Comment by oersted
1 day ago
This doesn't make sense to me, our current prosperity is founded on an enormous mountain of collaboration and shared beliefs. Usually not out of selflessness of course, often guided and forced by strong leadership and/or strong institutional structures to bend selfishness into selflessness (like capitalism to a degree).
Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental resource constraints but due to self-reinforcing loops of desperate crab-bucket like behavior, where everyone is cheating one another out of necessity (or culture). Broad collaboration and institution building is always the only way out of the hole, although the hole can be very deep and collaboration can be very costly until you get out.
You are right though, that for an individual living in a good collaborative system, often cheating is very effective, it's just that the system can only handle a certain amount of that behavior before it collapses.
As is discussed in the first scene of Plato's The Republic (surprisingly entertaining to modern tastes), the best play tends to be "to be unjust while seeming just". If people are going to be assholes, it is actually much better if they are discrete about it and keep a pretense of civilization. When people start acting conspicuously like assholes, out of a weird sense of honesty, that's when it propagates and the whole thing collapses, like a bank-run. It's an ancient story that we are still living.
> Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental resource constraints
Sometimes highly shrewd rich countries infiltrate the power structure of poor countries through N-pronged strategy to keep them stuck in a rut so that they don't become future threat, also extract their resources in the meantime.
Indeed, the way out of that is also broad collaboration, sometimes not peaceful or clean.
And the last century showed that this also works at a large scale, we all got a lot richer as a global community by letting poor countries develop and doing business with them, instead of exploiting them to death.
Yes, strongly believe this is the case. The corrupt leaders are rarely chosen by the people; they are installed by foreign powers. There are many cases you can dig into which are absolutely atrocious; like people getting paid big money by western leaders to assassinate their friends to take power and pass laws which facilitate the extraction of resources by foreign corporations.
Like the story of Thomas Sankara's assassination by his trusted childhood friend Blaise Compaoré is quite disturbing. It seems like Compaoré was leader for a very long time and is still in politics... I cannot think of a more morally deprived individual. If game theory was as claimed; nobody should want to work with such deeply disloyal and psychopathic individual. It's just like I say; people have a strong tolerance, even attraction to abusers. If you look at the real story, you notice this pattern over and over... but we are so badly gaslit about such things (aka 'PR') that we don't notice.
Ed Witten here : "So first of all thanks very much. I'm very honored to have the chance to give this talk. Of course Nima and I both wish we could do more for peace than just to give talks at an online meeting for peace. Unfortunately we know that there are lots of bad things happening in the world and we hope that there will be better days ahead. Hopefully as one would say in Hebrew [..] which means soon in our own day.
https://youtu.be/Ta5Dx327KQc?t=4899
> Poor countries tend to stay poor not due to fundamental resource constraints but due to self-reinforcing loops of desperate crab-bucket like behavior, where everyone is cheating one another out of necessity (or culture)
This doesn't seem true and I'd be interested in any stats that back this up. It reminds me of a very interesting result (that most never internalize) which is that the number one way to avoid corruption is to pay public servants handsomely such that the job rivals the private sphere. Most developing countries can't do that, and that's why most of them have issues with corruption.
Rich countries also have crab-bucket like behavior. You don't have to look twice at the current US administration to see lots of corruption and cheating and fraud, for example.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/thumbnail/self-reported-t...
Pretty clear trend: low-trust societies have low gdp and high-trust societies have high gdp, regardless of resource distribution. Africa/South America are resource rich, japan/iceland are resource poor.
Which direction does the causation within that correlation (if any) flow?
I can easily conjure a scenario where high per-capita GDP makes trusting easier (either because there’s enough to go around and/or because there are reliable police/judicial sanctions for violating trust) than in a hardscrabble low per-capita GDP society with lower (insufficient?) lawfulness.
That's terrible proof. Anything better?
Yemen and the US are equal shades on that trust polling map. That alone should show you it's not really a factor.
India has a higher GDP and GDP per capita than it's neighbor Pakistan, but Pakistan has quite a higher trust score on your map than India.
There are many more examples, just these jumped out at me.
I didn't mean it so literally. Having robust taxation and well supported institutions is what I mean by "broad collaboration" and an effective "culture", as in a social operating-system a set of values and habits, that continually support and self-heal such constructions.
I don't meant that everybody should be nice, and that poor countries are somehow culturally nasty, absolutely not. Real collaboration cannot be just founded on morals and good faith, it's not sustainable, it's more about incentives engineering.
In terms of references, the main one that comes to mind is the economics Nobel price from 2024: "for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity".
> the number one way to avoid corruption is to pay public servants handsomely such that the job rivals the private sphere
if this is true, then the public servant would earn only till he becomes rich equivalent to private sphere job. but nope, they go all the way in.
> the best play tends to be "to be unjust while seeming just"
Yep this is a huge problem now. I think wealth inequality is also making this worse because people often turn a blind eye to the bad behaviors of people who have power over them. This is an extremely powerful effect; it's everywhere. For example, Christians turning a blind eye to certain negative character traits of God as he appears in the old testament. Employees turning a blind eye to the immoral actions of their boss and coming up with justifications to keep them on a pedestal...
The social structure is not determined by morality; it's the other way round; morality is determined by the social structure.
It reminds me of an old French fable in which a lamb tries to reason with a wolf why he should let him live... The wolf listens to the lamb's logic but then he eats it anyway and the story ends with a sentence like "The reason of the strongest is always the best one."
My point (and Plato's) was rather that some people will definitely cheat, because it's locally rational, and it's actually better for everyone if they are "classy" about it and don't flaunt it too much. A minority will get away with terrible things, but somewhat bounded by conspicuousness, and at least the majority remains blissfully (willfully?) unaware and propping up the civilized system which is so much better for all of us.
It is quite a cynical point of view of course. It's a hard balance, when it gets bad sometimes it's better to air the dirty laundry and go through the pain of purging those cheaters.
But the worse thing is to have people be loud and proud cheaters, which is happening more and more. That's a deadly virus to a civilized society, everyone starts thinking they are dumb for not cheating, and we quickly go back to the dark ages.
It's a bit like calling out the bank for being a fraud because they don't have all the money in a vault, and rushing to get your cash out. If people start taking the red pill and shouting that society is just a game of pretend, which it kind of is, then our very real prosperity can vanish overnight.
>> then our very real prosperity can vanish overnight.
This sentence assumes a certain degree of shared prosperity. I think this is increasingly an illusion. IMO, Social media tends to create filter bubbles which create illusions of shared prosperity. Most of the social bubbles I participate in, the view is much more like 'monopolized prosperity' than 'shared prosperity'.
I've been in a unique position to have mingled with billionaires/millionaires and also normal people and the contrast is significant. In some circles; it's like even the company cook, janitor, receptionist and wall-painter is getting rich... In others, it's like there are some really talented people who keep failing over and over and can't make any money at all from their work; like they're suppressed by algorithms.
I think most people wouldn't mind seeing the whole system collapse as they don't feel they have any stake in it; their experience is that of being oppressed while simultaneously being gaslit about being privileged! It's actually deeply disturbing. I don't think most people on the other side have any idea how bad it is because their reality looks really wonderful.
My view is that the oppression which used to be carried out at a distance in Africa is now being carried out to large groups of people within the same country; and filter bubbles are used to create artificial distance.
My experience of the system is that it works by oppressing people whilst keeping them out of view so that those who benefit from that system can enjoy both physical as well as psychological comfort. The physical comfort is real but the psychological comfort is built on the illusion of meritocracy; which can be maintained by creating distance from the oppressed. It's why the media keeps spreading narratives about homeless people being 'crazy' and 'on drugs' IMO. Labeling people as crazy is a great way to ensure that nobody talks to them to actually learn about their experience. It's the ultimate way to dehumanize someone. Because their experiences would shock most people and create deep discomfort; it would sow distrust in the system.
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> For example, Christians turning a blind eye to certain negative character traits of God as he appears in the old testament.
If I were to extend your analogy, the problem in modern world has become aggresive. E.g. you have committed a crime or fraud. Everyone else has proved decisively and beyond doubt that you have committed fraud such that it has become common knowledge. yet the justice system isn't acting. In a sense, you are taunting and teasing me, "what you gonna do about it?" This is inviting violence. The guy killing insurance company CEO has exactly this line of thinking.
Re: Plato/Socrates
"Therefore Socrates said that it wasn’t enough to use the intellect in all things, but it was important to know for which cause one was exerting it. We would now say: One must serve the “good cause.” But to serve the good cause is—to be moral. Thus, Socrates is the founder of ethics.
"Socrates opened this war, and its peaceful end does not occur until the dying day of the old world."
Plato/Socrates are the original ghost story tellers. I spit on their grave. Republic is easily one of the worst books written in human history in terms of its impact. Right up there with Das Kapital.