I don’t think humans are capable of governing themselves on a voluntary individual basis.
Someone always wants an upper hand, to tilt things in their favor, which ultimately leads to conflict and violence until a more organized society steps in and takes over.
If this was not true we’d have clear examples of it working. The fact that we don’t says the world over time optimized for organized societies with leaders and governing bodies.
Notice im not saying anything about the size of that government.
I don’t I agree. I believe it’s very size dependent. The more we centralize control, the more space there is for mob-like rule and the more the ruling class become parasites rather than producing members of society.
If more/most services were organized and managed at a local/regional level I think we’d see a vast improvement in efficiency and quality and it would be more cooperative and flexible to boot.
While I do agree with you that most people don't want to be fully and radically responsible for their own wellbeing I don't think that precludes them from being capable of contributing to self-governance at the local level. We've lost quality local governance over the last 100 years because the centralized state has taken more and more power for itself and left nothing of import at the local level. So you end up with poor leaders fighting over crumbs and frivolous rules at the levels that should be running everything.
I think in this context efficiency needs to be well defined. Since efficiency is often related to monetary things. I think here it needs to be improved, so the rules of a community fit the local and current needs best. Independent of how many hours have to be spent. Since when everyone is integrated a lot of hours can be used for negociating. But it is efficiently, since everyone knows why the community decided against their argument.
Yup. I agree. I was meaning it in the monetary/time sense. It takes time to get humans to move together in the same direction, but it's an important step of leadership that ultimately allows you to go faster and in a more aligned way.
I am not sure if I understand you well. But to include all community members in the decision, I think leads to slower decisions. But when everyone gets to speek up this slow decision is there to stand. I feel like this is most efficient longterm.
It seems like investing a lot. But a fast government will just decide rapidly instead of wise. And end up in some kind of wave from pole to pole. While the inclusion of every member should rather lead to a very niveled governing, where rarely something needs to be adjusted, since everyone assumes, that there will be the same conclusion for the same topic, if the data are unchanged and the people included in the decision are mostly the same.
Where in a centralized small government a change of some politicians can already lead to new discussions.
I stand very much for maximum democracy to have a slow and and stable government over fast changes and lot of instability.
Since moth ethical questions do not change too much in any point of time, rules shouldn't as well.
We're saying the same thing. But I don't think you'll ever get perfect consensus in a large group. Having a space to speak is obviously important but eventually people have to "disagree and commit" to the decision and move forward.
How small of a group do you imagine? City? District of a city? We already have these structures in place and they ultimately produce the current environment. Cities want someone to dispute their conflicts which leads to counties and states and the federal level.
There is not a nation state in the world that is not centrally governed. The world has q already optimized for this structure. You always need someone to settle disputes without resorting to violence, and this dispute resolution just goes up the ladder, eventually escalating in war.
Id like to see an example of self governance in the real world or even an imagined one that takes into consideration the current state of the world.
For everything the catchment size will be a little different. Basic health services might be smaller, specialities slightly larger. Education likely to be very small (neighborhood level). There are likely to be very high level agreements on basic stuff like, "Don't dump toxic waste in the river" and high level arbitration mechanisms to deal with that. But those don't have to be government run. In fact, the whole reason that many companies choose Delaware for incorporation is that they have their own system of chancery courts that make it faster, cheaper, and easier to settle disputes.
The logical fallacy in your thinking is that people look up the ladder right now because that's what we've been trained to do. There's no reason that this is the natural state of things. Giant nation states are a remnant of colonialism and imperialism. We have decentralized planetary light speed communications and decentralized planetary light speed money now. People are far more self-organizing and cooperative than you're giving them credit for here.
Don't fall into the Hobbesian "Nasty, brutish, and short" trap.
I think one of the core issues is the political education. I think it is crutial, that participants of a community learn to elect their representation based on their actions.
To see their actions freedom of speech and a lot of good journalist, practicing this right to documant what politicians vote for is crutial.
Since I think democracy can only work fine, if the actions of politicians are all transparent. And most voters elect their politicians based on their actions. Not their words. When we accomplish to propagate how to do this, maby people grow and start understanding democracy, importance of objective quality journalism and the participation of themselves.
Attempting to tilt things in your favor has always been good for survival, therefore it's hardwired.
I think the only way it works is when there is a collective understanding that one’s survival depends on cooperation with other people.
The problem is that now individuals can be psychopathic, selfish, underhanded, and manipulative and still survive.
Our communities are not tight knit enough, or transparent enough, to understand how much we need each other and whether other individuals are contributing or detracting from the success of the group.
Probably due in part to population explosion and Dunbar limit.
In the ancient world there were far fewer people, less technology to distract. It was easier to know and be engaged in your community. Now it feels almost irrelevant. Cities often act against the interests of people when there’s a juicy corporate carrot dangling around.
I am a human. I govern myself on a voluntary individual basis daily. I don't steal from my neighbors, I don't don't seek favor outside of business contracts, but since they're voluntary... It's mutually benefitial
🎯 This is why things cycle and stay the same.
Humans are geed driven why we have been successful. We strive to out compete other species and now includes other humans. Peace wise we were the most at peace just surviving and staying in smaller tribes in larger spread. But in the end innovation has been pushed by us trying to kill each other.
Humans are like any other creature on this planet. Humans will always seek the most gain for the least amount of effort. Humans who have no problem with making an effort don’t want or need governance. Some humans believe they have something to gain by allowing others to take responsibility for them. Humans are rarely satisfied with how much their keepers can give them or do for them. It is the human with the “upper hand” that always gains much more by demonizing the responsible and coddling the incapable.
possible, but after 14 to 20 years in indoctrination camps and every day listening to propaganda, we can't draw conclusions from the current state of man.
in addition, the state is just the biggest criminal gang rising to the top, which means less inter gang fights but also a higher rate of extortion (over 70% here).
Humans in one generation are not capable.
Humans at today's level of technological refinement, based on the work of past generations, might be capable.
Humans in the future will either be capable or dead.
I think it’s just a matter of scale and power dynamics. You can self govern at small scale but as soon as you get too big, there’s a struggle for power which leads to a chain of events that ultimately amount to some power structure to govern those who get tired of conflict.
At large scales, bad people are just too successful in outnumbering and using brute force to dominate good people.
They keep setting up more and more bloodshed, and whether there will be any survivors at all is dependent on whether the timeline includes sufficiently fast development of a sufficient proportion of sufficiently functional humans in the population.
For humans to finally "get good" through all this bloodshed is a long shot. Highly unlikely. But, thanks to modern technology, not completely impossible. For example, cameras and microphones and ways to store their data could potentially help shift the balance against the power of lying with guns, if that balance is ever going to shift at all.
If the species isn't learning to govern itself right now before climate change wipes us out, it never will have the chance again.
