|
|||||
Samizdata quote of the day – High trust systems cannot survive in the presence of low trust peopleYou put in self check out in response to high wage costs, but then you find new problems. High trust systems cannot survive in the presence of low trust people. And this is why, in the second world, you cannot have nice things… And ultimately, the incentives and selectors turn the systems into pastiches of their intent. May 6th, 2025 |
 54 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – High trust systems cannot survive in the presence of low trust peopleLeave a Reply |
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Cultural homogeneity. One tribe wishes to produce a global version of that, with an equal scattered diversity spread everywhere. Through this, they think they can end disputes between nations and peoples.
But what they really produce is a constant high stress life of local and personal conflict between incompatible cultures.
“incompatible cultures”?
Or to paraphrase the great American philosopher, “Do not take moochers into thine hut”.
Western civilization is an extended phenotype of western people. It is as much a part of them as their arms and legs. It has no separate existence and cannot be shared with or given to non western people.
I’m not sure you can read some deep profound meaning into the fact that one extremely badly designed system isn’t working well. From that somehow we get to Puerto Ricans are not trustworthy? I hear people complaining about these checkouts all the time “if I have to do the work of a checkout person shouldn’t I be getting paid for it.” But we have to remember it wasn’t long ago that you went to the grocery store and gave the clerk a list of items and he went and got them for you. Now you have to walk about the big warehouse of a store and find stuff yourself. “FFS why have they moved the chicken noodle soup AGAIN!” “Where the hell do I find Breeze Laundry detergent?” “Excuse me Miss, do they have any Colgate minty fresh in the back? You are out of stock on the shelves.” I mean if you have to do the work of a stock picker shouldn’t you be getting paid?
It seems to me that that old model with a quick update would work perfectly well. In fact it does. At my local Walmart you can order online and drive over to the store where they will have boxed it all up for you and put it in your car. Do any of your Brits remember a store called Argus (I think that was the name.) My memory of it is very hazy, but I remember going with my mum when I was really young. It was a catalog store where you went in and they had these huge catalogs as books. You placed an order on a little piece of paper and waited a bit and then your order came out on a conveyer belt from the warehouse. I fully expected Bruce Forsyth to announce “Didn’t he do well!!”. Am I misremembering this? You could easily imagine grocery stores that way, enhanced with smart phones, robots and a Starbucks and allowing for a separate produce section where people who are picky can pick their own fruit.
Fraser
Argos is still very much a thing in the UK, it now seems to be allied with and located in the larger branches of Sainsbury’s.
In my local branch at least the surprisingly efficient underground picking service is absent. Instead it holds what appears to be a much reduced level of stock, possibly mainly pre-ordered goods, on ground floor shelving.
Many years ago I was told by those doing temporary work during the holidays that working underground was exhausting as the performance standards of rapidly locating, picking and transferring ordered goods were set at an extremely high level. However the pay was also very good so they stuck at it, generally enjoyed the challenge and were consequently merciless with colleagues who were seen to be slacking. Not a bad business model.
@Roue
With the greatest of respect, I profoundly disagree-it’s culture. My sister-in-law is Nigerian and has fully bought into English (and I mean English) culture. Her adherence to high-trust, “western” behaviour puts most Brits to shame. Her children are being raised in the same culture, with high levels of discipline and the expectation of strong self-control and respect for others.
Clovis:
It’s culture
…adherence to high-trust, “western” behaviour
…high levels of discipline
…the expectation of strong self-control and respect for others
—————————-
While some of this flows directly and uniquely from Judeo-Christian monotheism, some of it is found in all successful – or simply coherent – cultures.
Some of it was necessary for survival throughout most of human history.
Japan is just one example: no history of Judeo-Christian humanism, but a very high-trust society and a culture of discipline, self-control, and respect…. which coexists alongside persistent racism towards non-Japanese, and non-Western morality.
These ideas seem uniquely Judeo-Christian, and set hard limits on the adoption of “western culture” by other societies:
1. Universal human worth, equality, and suffrage
2. Free will and personal responsibility
Well yes – a country, or a city or a town (or even a village) is not just lines on a map, it is the PEOPLE.
You can not have lots of new people, by migration and natural increase of the new population (or new populations), and expect the community to remain the same. If Japan and Pakistan swapped populations – would Japan remain Japan and Pakistan remain Pakistan? If you answer “yes” – you are either a liar or a moron.
In Britain saying such things can attract severe punishment – so I had better stop here. Other than to say that it is NOT just migration and natural increase of a once migrant population (or populations) than can ruin an area – there can be cultural decline without it.
In the United Kingdom small, but influential, groups such as the Fabians and the Bloomsbury Set, wanted to corrupt the basic culture of the people (so they would no longer respect private property rights and so on) since at least the start of the 20th century – but their efforts to promote corruption and decay had little effect on most ordinary people till the 1960s – since then there has been a terrible decline which continues to this day, hence (for example) the ever increasing spending on Adult Social Care and Children’s Services – as families and fraternal associations (secular as well as religious) decay.
In the United States a similar process of planned (yes planned – deliberate) cultural decay has occurred.
In the end such men as John Adams and Roger Sherman were correct – everything depends on the moral character of ordinary people.
As Gladstone and John Bright understood in Britain.
The cultural principles that Kipling called “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”.
Can people from other parts of the world adopt the culture of a new country? Yes they can – although it is difficult (very difficult).
But they must first WANT TO.
Most of the mass (mass) immigration into Western nations has no such desire, and nor do most of their children, or children’s children.
No more than, for example, the Germanic tribes, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, wanted to adopt the culture of the Romano-Britons. Migration is not really “immigration”.
But, again, this is partly because Western culture is itself declining – Westerners are themselves being taught (increasingly over the decades) to despise it.
So it is logical that few people want to assimilate into a dying culture – a culture that the establishment elite of Western nations clearly, themselves, despise.
Regarding self checkouts. I generally use them because, unless the queues at the regular checkouts are very short, it is quicker. I also find it easier to pack the bags in a way that makes unpacking at home more straightforward. That said, the self check-out machines at Asda work very well. I shopped at Tesco while on holiday and their machine kept glitching and ended up taking me longer.
It seems from the article that the problem is not with the Puerto Rican culture, but with the self-checkout machines.
The poor design of the latter might well be a consequence of Puerto Rican culture, but that raises the issue: why not import self-checkout machines from countries that can design them?
What little problems i had with self-checkout machines, were mostly my own fault, both in Estonia and Italy. That is part of the reason why i keep using them: they help to keep me on my toes; just for a minute or two, nothing too stressful.
I’m mostly in agreement with Fraser above, although I’d have one caveat, which is that the self-checkout should be used by shoppers with a minimum number of items.
At the grocery store where I do my shopping, the sign says “Express Self-Checkout”. In a regular express checkout (ie. with cashier) in this supermarket, it’s 14 items or less. Also, the self-checkout here doesn’t have a conveyor belt, so it’s really better suited to not trying to do a whole week’s shopping.
Unfortunately, you get people consistently doing things that slow the line down, like buying an entire cart full of stuff, not packing as you go along, not knowing how to weigh stuff, trying to buy alcohol, and so on.
Culture is not genetically determined – phenotypes are.
This is exactly the sort of pig-ignorant idea that enables governments to brand things like “Islamophobia” as “racism”.
But worse than that it is a dismal concept of genetics determining behaviour, society and culture. You might as well say the, “The poor buggers can’t help it”.
It is also, on the flip-side exactly the same mentality behind the “positive” discimination of DEI.
That right there is a nice encapsulation of the progressive doctrine concerning non-white people.
Unless you say it out loud. Then they hate you.
Westerners go to a foreign land and build a western style society. The westerners leave. The western society society crumbles. Seems perfectly straightforward to me.
Clovis, I’m not saying it is impossible for non westerners to fit into western society, I’m saying it is virtually impossible for non westerners to build and/or maintain a western society. For example, Africans were exposed to all the great civilizations of the past without feeling any need to emulate them. Why should we expect them to respond any differently to western civilization?
NickM, my view of Africans is they have to a large extent self selected themselves to be the way they are. If you give reproductive preference to successful warriors, you get a society consisting entirely of warriors and you don’t have the building blocks for a civilization. This could be reversed if the will was there, in the US instead of giving underclass young black women wanting a baby welfare, insist they marry a guy with a job. Otherwise you are financing reproductive preference to gangstas and you get a society of gangstas. It’s not rocket science.
@Ben David
These ideas seem uniquely Judeo-Christian, and set hard limits on the adoption of “western culture” by other societies:
1. Universal human worth, equality, and suffrage
2. Free will and personal responsibility
I don’t think that is true at all. Ideas of universal human worth, equality and suffrage are EXTREMELY new ideas in the west. And they certainly aren’t ideas captured in the doctrines of either Judaism or Christianity, not the early versions of them anyway. We had at least 1500 years of Christian civilization before such ideas were even contemplated. Rather it was the enlightenment and all the complex causes of this, such as printing, the growth of science, broadening of education, increased middle class wealth, the industrial revolution and so forth that made such ideas even possible.
I think these ideas are precious, and in a way surprising. Humans are tribal animals, it is built into our nature by biology. To think of universal human worth is to entirely go against our very nature. So the fact that it did not arise in other parts of the world is not at all surprising, it is the fact that it did arise in the west that is, in my view, little short of a miracle. When one thinks of the founding of the American republic in particular — it is what it is today because of a remarkable, surprising group of men who came together to shape it in a way that has resisted the assaults of the barbarians for 250 years. And look at those men? Deeply flawed men. Many of them massive slaveholders. It is like a beautiful rose growing up out of a cow pat.
Fraser,
I don’t know if you are aware of it but Rafe Haydel Mankoo makes an excellent argument that the Catholic church’s banning of consanguineous marriages contributed to the decline of tribalism in the west.
I make a similar argument regarding monogamy. Any population will, over time produce sports, individuals with unusual talents. Monogamy allows those talents to propagate down the generations. Thus, when you come to build a civilization, you have the full spectrum of talents available, your engineers, mathematicians and philosophers are already present. By contrast, societies that give reproductive preference to those already successful in the current environment will inevitably stagnate.
In the local supermarket here in Kettering there are self service checkouts.
But staff stand by them (all day) and there is also an alarm system on the exit – which goes off if someone has not scanned the item, the staff are, officially, standing by the self service checkouts to help people (remember government regulations mean you have to pay for shopping bags – so staff have to hand them to you), but are really there to prevent people stealing stuff.
Kettering is clearly not a high trust society.
One thing that could be done is to adopt the German system of automatically paying a deposit for a shopping trolly which is (automatically) returned when one returns the shopping trolly – this would reduce the number of shopping discarded in various places in the town.
I am told that in some areas of England the German shopping trolly deposit system is already used.
As for Puerto Rico – nothing seems to work there.
Perhaps the place should be fully independent – as 127 years of various hybrid systems of government has clearly failed.
It should most certainly NOT be a State of the United States.
Yes – give the people there independence, whether they want independence or not.
The “labour shortage” in Puerto Rico is caused by government benefits – for example sickness and disability benefits, Food Stamps and so on.
Get rid of government benefits – and there will be no labour shortage.
The late Milton Friedman argued that there would be no major disincentive to work as long as wages were higher than benefits – this is at the heart of his “Negative Income Tax” proposal (which is really a return to the “Speenhamland” system that started to spread in England and Wales in the late 1790s and was abolished by the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834).
Professor Friedman radically underestimated the “disutility” people have from many (boring) jobs. Many people have to really suffer before they will do such jobs.
Roué,
There is so much wrong with your reply to me that I’ll leave it for now except to point out something which really isn’t “rocket science” either…
You started by saying, “my view of Africans” at which point I knew prairie oysters were going to be the dish of the day. Do you have any idea what a bizarre generalisation of an entire continent of 1.5 billion people that is? Just try that phras on with “Americans” or “Asians”.
As to your bizarre “genetic” theory. Oh, FFS! I’m giving that zero Lamarks out of ten.
Fraser – I’d be amazed if any Brit older than 30 or so doesn’t know Argos. Their brand recognition was in the high 90%s, and they *had* over 700 stores, both high street and retail park. In certain areas, they had over 20% market share in retail – which for a generalist is huge. A comedian here (Peter Kay, I think?) referred to their catalogue as the “Book Of Dreams” – most households would have one in their home (you’d go and pick one up when they came out every six months), and as a kid, you’d go through the toy section of their “Winter Catalogue” and red circle what you wanted for Christmas (as a lad, Star Wars and Transformers toys, whilst your mum would encourage you to ask for the Scrabble or otherwise “educational” stuff in the board games section)
Your memory of how it works is accurate; however I’ll note that in roughly 2010ish, they trialled and then rolled out touchscreens alongside the “pen and paper” method; you’d still use the laminated catalogue installed on the “stations”, but would enter the number on a screen and take a paper copy to the till. Eventually, they rolled out a fuller version – you’d search for your product, select it – all on the screen – and then wait to be called for “order 66” whereupon you’d collect your goods and leave.
They were a hugely successful business. The reasons are many and varied – at least partly because they’re culturally important, as illustrated by “everyone remembers making their Christmas list in their catalogue” joke from the comedian, but also because they were very well-run. They didn’t just get rid of paper and pen – they trialled it, learned from it, adjusted as necessary, and only *then* rolled out the system. They were part of a bigger group (Home Retail Group)_which also owned Homebase, a more traditional type of retailer in terms of how you paid for stuff (sort of DIY, but higher-end – you could get paint, sure, but they sold home decor like rugs, furniture, etc – I don’t know the US equivalent – not Home Depot, anyway)
The two businesses were run separately, and at least in Argos, the functions were split by their expertise. As a very process-driven business, they were *excellent* in how they handled it. You had just about enough autonomy to do what was needed, along with huge support to do what needed doing.
It was a very horizontal business, which is why they did so well; choosing what went into the catalogue, and what didn’t, was obviously an extremely important decision, and so the directors got involved and *signed off on it and then took accountability* – giving a level of protection when people – inevitably – made the odd wrong decision. It’s a delicate balance between being able to make your own decisions, and being protected if you make the wrong ones, and they trod it well. They paid well, they treated their staff well, and they despite having huge buying power, were not prone to abuse it. I won’t say they were 100% ethical in everything they did – of course not – but the culture was set-up to encourage ethics. As “big bastard retail corporations” go, they were one of the better.
In terms of the technical stuff, though, around how they operated, they were very “let’s trial, let’s make mistakes – and that’s okay! – and then roll-out once we’ve learned from them”
Reading the original post and link, it’s pretty clear that this hadn’t been done, or at least, if it had, any mistakes were ignored, since that isn’t a standard experience for “self-checkout” anywhere in the UK, and there’s some obviously daft features (not being able to pack as you go? It’s standard practice here in the UK that you pack as go. Not having bags on the self-checkout? No, utter nonsense – in the UK. Everywhere I’ve ever shopped has them). I’ve not shopped in Puerto Rico, but it doesn’t strike me as a particular problem to Puerto Rico, more of a problem of a poorly designed system in an individual instance.
(As John says – things have now changed in Argos. They were sold to Sainsbury’s back in 2016-ish, and are no longer run as an independent business. I’ve heard that things have gone downhill – certainly most of their 700 stores have now been shuttered in favour of “collection points” in Sainsbury’s supermarkets, and they’re struggling now. “Centralisation” in the sense of having to report into Sainsbury’s has hit them hard)
From my experience – at least as a brand -is still going. I bought a Samsung phone recently. Amazon had a ludicrous lag so I got it for the same price at Argos (online) and picked it up at my local Sainsburys the next day. Had to get general shopping in anyway.
Oh, yes, it’s still going, definitely. And, yeah, 100% – I’ve seen arguments, and I *sort of* agree with, that it’s mutually beneficial relationship. I still shop with them when I can (I get a decent discount still), but I cannot remember the last time I went to a standalone store – I’m gonna say, pre-2020?
Sainsbury’s isn’t my supermarket of choice, normally, but whilst I’m there…no reason not to stock up on stuff I can’t find in my local Co-Op – or even if I could, to get it whilst I’m there, so I’m sure they’re gaining something.
My understanding – very much based on conversations and not first-hand – is that it’s no longer “what it once was” for employees, but that’s all anecdotal, of course, and not a hill I’d die on. A couple of bruises at best.
(It’s a “shame” that they discontinued the Catalogue, but it did cost…a lot…to produce twice a year. I totally can see why they did it, in the digital age, totally, but still)
Roué,
Genes do not have magical powers which is what you seem to believe.
I know what Argos is, but I am pretty sure I’ve never actually set foot in one. But then I’m posh a fuck so more of a Waitrose & Harrods sort of chap back in the day 😀
Agree. This is something along the lines of the old theory that all human societies progress from “hunters > shepherds > farmers > merchants” – it’s utter bollocks, and there’s so much evidence against that that it’s really hard to take seriously if someone proposes it. Even if someone hasn’t read any anthropology, it’s hard to take seriously anyone with a stake in the argument who believes that in 300,000 odd years of available human history, this is an “inevitable” thing (I can accept it from people who’ve had no reason to think about it), because it’s bloody obvious that during that time they’ll be many, many different ways of living, forming a society, structuring that society, and so on, that don’t conform to that simplistic pattern.
But you *know of it*, regardless of whether you never as a child sat there of an October circling the Ewok Village for your Christmas list. One of the largest brand recognitions (amongst retail, which is my experience), that I’ve ever come across. From memory, only Tesco, Sainsburys etc are up there in the same tier.
Glad, of course, to see you supporting a co-operative!
(a bit tongue in cheek, JLP are not without their problems)
Fraser:
I don’t think that is true at all. Ideas of universal human worth, equality and suffrage are EXTREMELY new ideas in the west.
—————————–
Oy vey = remember this?
I had pity on you Fraserleh – I didn’t quote the more obvious Genesis 1:27
Then we have:
Not even out of Genesis yet – haven’t reached the Exodus… first let’s look in on the first Communist Utopia:
——————
That is, what they propose to do TO EACH OTHER. (insert link to pictures of Rape of Nanking/Auschwitz/Rhodesia…)
The solution:
Our Story So Far
Having created beings with:
Inherent dignity of His image
Moral conscience
Free will
This G-d now takes the awesome/awful decision to sacrifice unity to ensure individual conscience and diversity of opinion… from now on, all totalitarians are doomed to fail… you may call it Progress but back in the village we have a different word for it.
This world will take the long way around to universal brotherhood, although we are closer.
The story continues with the Exodus, and the giving of a law that details and builds out a society based on these principles.
The US Constitution continues that work.
Sorry Fraserleh – these ideas are not new, they spring from the deepest Jewish roots of the West.
And they are not found in any other cultures – not even in the Greco-Roman root of the West.
Ben David:
Fraser Orr:
I revel in the opportunity to disagree with 2 people at once; especially 2 people who disagree with each other.
Specifically, i disagree with Fraser on item #1: universal human worth is definitely a Judeo-Christian thing. That its practical implementation was not feasible before the printing press etc, can be taken to falsify this opinion only by strongly prejudiced minds. Especially when we look at the reappearance of slavery in Western offshoots when Christianity was weakened in the Renaissance .. and the reappearance of slavery in modern Britain.
But i also disagree with Ben on item #2. It seems to me, from the Sagas of Icelanders, Samurai tales, and histories of the Mongol Empire, that *some* pagan people had more of a sense of responsibility than most of us have today.
As for “free will”, i do not even think it is compatible with personal responsibility. In my conceited opinion, liberum arbitrium is compatible with personal responsibility, but “free will” is not. And i’ll leave it at that, unless Paul Marks wants to get into an argument.
@Snorri Godhi
Specifically, i disagree with Fraser on item #1: universal human worth is definitely a Judeo-Christian thing.
Universal human worth is rejected both in the theory of Christianity and in the practice. For sure the idea of Christ died for all is a common denominator, in fact if you read the New Testament it is what is called the mystery or in Greek the μυστηρίον: the shocking and surprising truth that Jews and Goyim are treated the same in this respect. But in all other practical ways it was only the enlightenment that brought on the idea that all men are free and equal before the law. Slaves were still slaves, women were still women, homosexuals and witches still worthy of the stake. The Bible is riddled with slavery and the practice of the church has been filled with discrimination from the earliest point it had the power to do so. In the New World and in Africa people were often taken into slavery in the name of the Church. And even as recently as Apartheid South Africa the Bible was used by the churches to support the idea of the inferiority and servility of black people. And in many more intense Christian groups (the Mormons, the Amish, the JW’s for example) women are very much still subject to their fathers and husbands.
Ironically often it was the Jews who were frequently the targets of their discrimination. But Judaism is at its root a discriminatory system with a distinction between the chosen people and the goyim. Though as a general rule Jews treated goyim fairly kindly, though I think mainly because Jews have rarely had the political power to do otherwise. But if you doubt their capacity or the view of the God of the Tanakh, on this you need only to ask the Amalekites. Except you can’t, because God had them all killed.
Fortunately both the Jews and Christians have taken on the morality of the enlightenment and made it their own, and they are all much nicer for it.
Universal human worth is an easy belief to follow if you get to decide who is worthy of the label “human.” That’s been the “out” forever.
Which tells me the aspiration was there to believe it all along – the value was recognized – but it was harder in practice.
@bobby b
Which tells me the aspiration was there to believe it all along – the value was recognized – but it was harder in practice.
I don’t think that is true, I think the truth is what I said initially. Let me ramble a bit more on this. Humans are not particularly strong, not especially robust, don’t have great claws or deadly teeth. Our biology would leave us very vulnerable to attack in the forests of Africa. So what we developed (as with many other species) was the idea of the tribe, a group of people who, together were much stronger and much more able to fend off attack, find food and so forth. We also developed a larger brain to facilitate this. Tribes can’t be too large or they become difficult to manage, but can’t be too small to undermine the “strength in numbers” idea. So it is built into our nature to work together in small groups, it is necessary for our protection. This means that our survival depends on the idea of “us verses them”. Who is in, who is out. It is at the root of a great deal of human behavior. So our nature really depends on the idea that we do not treat everyone (and every creature) equally. On the contrary, it depends on us treating our tribe special and dehumanizing the other. I come from Glasgow that has two soccer teams Rangers and Celtic. I mean it is ridiculous but that is more than tribal enough for some parts of one group to want the death of some of the others, I suppose especially when alcohol strips away some of our modern sophisticated constraints and we fall back into our more basic instincts.
Which is why is is really quite remarkable that we would eventually use our big brains to overcome our biology and decide to treat everyone equal, and even accord some rights to other animals. The male/female thing is a bit different but also (obviously) rooted in biology.
So that I why I disagree, in fact I think you have it backward. What was there all along with tribalism, the enlightenment allowed us to get beyond our narrow thinking and think of others as having humanity too. We didn’t start there, we grew into it.
@Ben David, I appreciate your valiant efforts, but appeals to conceptual things just doesn’t cut it. For example:
When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment, for the slave is the owner’s property.
That doesn’t seem very egalitarian. I mean there is some evidence that the Jews treated slaves a bit better than some contemporary societies, but hardly “equal”.
And what does God consider a great sign of success?
And for her sake he dealt well with Abram, and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels.
Apparently the slaves are mixed in with the donkeys. Which doesn’t seem very equal.
How about women? Here is a doozy, if a woman is found “not a virgin” which in those primitive times meant she didn’t bleed sufficiently on first intercourse:
she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house.
No doubt the boy who “defiled her” was down the pub getting high fives from his mates.
Not your book but:
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
And what about the aforementioned Amalekites? They didn’t receive equal treatment. On the contrary, God wanted to make sure that even the babies, still sucking at their mothers’ breasts were put the the sword.
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling (יוֹנֵק), ox and sheep, camel and ass.
I mean, nice try, but that is just some of what I can remember off the top of my head. The Bible and the Tanakh especially is a book of horrors, indecency, injustice and wrongdoing with a few nice parts, and some pretty parts. The fact that you will feel the need to dance around these horrible passages tells me that even you acknowledge that there is a moral authority that we have evolved as a society that we can use to judge the terrible things advocated in the Bible. I mean you seem like a good guy, so I am sure the idea of burning gay people and witches at the stake or stoning unchaste brides to death as utterly abhorrent as I do.
It’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma writ large. Most people cooperate for mutual gains, but just a handful of assholes can take advantage. If their numbers are kept small enough, the system still works.
But enough assholes, and people will default to the non-cooperative mode, and those mutual gains will all be lost.
This is especially problematic if those mutual gains are all that is sustaining a current civilisation or standard of living.
As for self-checkout, it works great in Singapore. High trust culture (sorta? Maybe more like law abiding because of harsh penalties), high intelligence population, no fuss, no muss.
There’s always the manned checkouts if you’re willing to wait, but most people are pressed for time and just zip through the self-checkout sequence.
Sucks to be you all.:p
Nick,
Westerns built a western civilization in Rhodesia and when they left it crumbled. The same can be said about northern Europe when the Romans left. A civilization is a part of the people who built it.
As for lumping the Africans together, yes,I am aware there is more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world combined, but you will look in vain for an African Rome, Athens or Thebes. Africans as a group do not “do” civilization and that includes ours. When Western civilization is a footnote in the history books Africans will still be Africans.
SteveD, feel free to Google Extended Phenotype. Genes may not be magic in the sense of supernatural, but it was western genes that put a man on the moon.
To return to my point, all humans are descended from the same protoplasm, as evidenced by the fact that we can interbreed, the differences we see in the races today are the result of selective breeding. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom in that we control our own reproduction. That is why, for example, monkeys will behave much the same wherever you find them in the world, while humans do not.
Fraser Orr:
But, looking through history, man has considered being human to be of the highest value. Why else have we spent so much time and energy and effort towards finding ways to be able to deny the full humanity of our enemies?
In our long history of conflicts – the chronic and the acute ones – wars and racial strife and social fights – we always spend a lot of effort derogatorily labeling and presenting our enemy as The Other. They’re krauts, niggers, faggots, hoales, mongols, kikes, libtards . . .
It’s always all designed so that we can consider them to be less worthy, less Human, than we are. That makes it so much easier and more efficient as we fight against them. Fewer messy moral issues and all. Why bother to dehumanize unless it means something?
I submit that none of this would be of any worth to us unless we, through history, saw “human” as being the highest value. Sadly, we’ve usually been bad at actually living up to that code.
The general cultural decline in Britain over the last 60 years (or so) is striking – and it can NOT all be blamed on mass immigration and the natural increase (births) of these new population, the culture of the “natives” has also declined.
Britain was a “high trust society” and now, at least in the cities and large towns, it no longer is.
Further on morality…
Mainstream moral thinkers over thousands of years, most certainly including Christian ones such as Thomas Aquinas, correctly stated that we can not love everyone equally – and that we SHOULD NOT do so, that we first look after our family and friends, then our local community, then our nation, then the wider world (see the natural hierarchy, order of things).
People who say they love the whole world equally really care about no one – they are like Rousseau – endlessly proclaiming his love for all humans, whilst dumping his own children in Foundling Homes to die.
Vice President J.D. Vance correctly pointed out this natural hierarchy of love – of morality, family, friends, local community, nation, world. And he was attacked by a clergyman for doing so.
That priest was Robert Prevost (a Cardinal from Chicago and now Pope Leo XIV) who answered that Jesus does demand that we love everyone equally – which is not true (as Jesus made no such demand) and utterly impossible.
By the way….
Of the great cities of the world Chicago is one of the clearest examples of the failures of government spending and regulations – the policies advocated (to an extent – NOT to the insane level that modern Chicago takes them) by Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical of 1891 (in the first paragraph of that 1891 Encyclical Pope Leo XIII makes two claims – namely that capitalism had led to a rise in poverty and decline in morality, both of these claims were utterly FALSE – people were not poorer or more immoral in 1891 than people had been in 1791 or 1491, or at any time – if anything people in 1891 were both better off materially and morally better than they had been before).
In Chicago a fortune is spent on government schools – yet most black children (who the leftist rulers declare they love) can not read or write, the Chicago government (and the State and Federal government) also spends a fortune on poverty – yet the communities of the city are in a vastly worse state than they were 60 or 70 years ago. And the endless government spending has made the city of Chicago, and Cook County, and the State of Illinois (and the Federal Government) one of the most indebted places on Earth.
Progressive education has failed, progressive government housing (the apartment blocks) has failed, government social services have failed, Progressive social policies have failed, Progressive criminal justice policies have failed – and so on.
And Chicago has been ground zero for these failures – how could Robert Prevost not notice the disaster in Chicago?
“He has spent a lot of time in Peru” – Progressive (Collectivist – Big Government) policies were an utter failure there, in Peru, as well.
Roue,
What about the pyramids… Or was that aliens 👽?
neon,
From my experience the Co-Op is an over-priced shitshow of epic proportions. Holier than thou, preachy, woke as Hell*, disorganised** and staffed by zombies with thousand yard stares. I’m not blaming the poor sods that work there. They start out OK but you see their essence leaching over the weeks like UHT from miss-handled Tetrapaks. I blame Co-Op radio in the stores relentlessly proclaiming how marvellous and moral the whole enterprise is.
My two points coalesce pleasingly here because the Co-Op once had a pyramid. In Stockport. Yes they did and they screwed that up as well.
Right now my local Co-Op looks like a disaster area in Pyongyang. There is nothing there apart from a smattering of canned goods. This is due to the cyber attack. I have heard this was possibly due to bad management or disgruntled employees leaving backdoors open. Neither would surprise me.
I’m OK with Sainsburys. Prefered Morrisons until they ditched the “market street” model and I love Lidl and Aldi (especially the thrill of the Middle Aisle!!!). Can’t stand ASDA but that’s probs because the one nearest me looks like a decaying STASI HQ and reeks of piss and despair…
*They recently had a two for one on soft drinks which exceeded the unit price if bought seperately.
*They sell ethical water whatever the fuck that is.
Paul,
Well, if you spend a fortune on anything why should it be a surprise if you get the deluxe edition? 😂
I nominate Paul for SQUOTD for that!
The Ancient Egyptians.
Before the arguments start – the Ancient Egyptians were, mainly, NEITHER like most modern Europeans genetically or like sub-saharan Africans (the Bantu peoples were largely in central Africa at the time – their great expansion was only just starting).
Genetically the Ancient Egyptians were mostly of ancient Anatolian (what is now Turkey – but the Turks arrived many thousands of years later) farmer ancestry – their closest modern relatives (genetically) are the Sardinians.
Although the people of Sardinia speak an Indo-European language (Italian) they are mostly pre Indo-European genetically (they are NOT, mainly, from the people of the Yamnaya or the Corded Ware cultures – that other Europeans are from) – so they show us what the Ancient Egyptians (mainly), and ancient Europeans, looked like.
In short – BOTH sides of this classic internet argument are wrong. The Ancient Egyptians were not Africans in-the-sense-that-this-term-is-now-used (no more than the Berbers of the rest of North Africa were – indeed the Ancient Berbers were even less “African” as we now use that word), BUT they were not like most Europeans either.
Fraser:
in reply to:
bobby b:
(emphasis mine)
Fraser, this reads to me like you’re not disagreeing, but actually agreeing.
I don’t think it’s controversial at all to point out that humanity has succeeded by banding together (for all the reasons you note), and indeed that banding together was crucial to our success as a species, a factor of evolution indeed.
I think it’s also reasonable to suggest that beyond the practical reasons for banding together and dividing labour amongst a group, including but not limited to hunting, gathering, farming, building and for protection, another reason is that…well, we’re a social species who like being in large groups. I mean, we probably wouldn’t have developed language otherwise.
So when you essentially say that we form bonds and groups, but only up to the uppermost limit practical in whatever context we’re talking about, and bobby b says “harder in practice”, it seems that these are the same thing. bobby’s “harder in practice” is covered by, and is covering, your “limit on size due to difficulties in management”.
Anthropology is a fascinating subject, but probably the most important lesson it can teach us is to break out of the limiting abstractions that say that all of humanity developed linearly from hunters through to agri-states to commerce – many societies didn’t. There’s plenty of evidence that a lot of societies developed into states, and then collectively went “lol this is rubbish actually, I prefer being free to having a ruler”, and moved back into pastoralism, or other forms of living (including “civilisation” in the sense of cities that were NOT states, of which there are plenty of examples).
Some, even, consciously split their time between being stateless hunter-gatherers when the seasons allowed, and a more hierarchical agricultural society at other times of the year, and then dissolved back into the more egalitarian hunter-gatherers at the end of the farming season – all peacefully, all completely voluntarily.
Point is, human history is long and endlessly rich with different ways of living, some made through choice – and others not.
“Against The Grain” by James C Scott is one of the better books on how states actually formed, if one is interested in getting away from the standard (and wrong) “hunters > shepherds > farmers > merchants” narrative that most of us have been fed and generally had no reason to question.
NickM
If I go to a supermarket* (I’m lucky to have a very decent butcher for meat, and I’m able to source at least some veg from elsewhere – markets, greengrocers, growing my own etc), then I go to Co-Op or Waitrose.
To be clear, neither are enormously inconvenient to me – I’m not making huge and glorious sacrifices to do so!
My local Co-Op is pretty large, and (this week aside!) well-stocked for my needs. Waitrose isn’t overly expensive vs other supermarkets, as long as you’re not buying ready-meals etc. If you cook for yourself from scratch, their veg, meat etc isn’t much more than Tesco or Asda.
There is an element of ideology here. Neither are perfect (at all**), but if I preach the virtues of “co-operatives”, it would be hypocritical of me to then shop at Tesco when I can shop at the closest equivalent to co-operatives that are available to me. I basically do my best to avoid being able to be accused of the “lol posted from an iPhone” meme. Or, to put it more fairly to myself, I try to practice what I preach 🙂
Like, the stuff that you might call preachy and woke, is in all honesty probably stuff that I’d actively seek out. Again, I try to “live” the stuff that I spout on the internet!
I do try to shop at places where I agree with their ethics. Tesco basically came up bottom, and Sainsburys came up very high, to be very fair to them. So, I’m not “unhappy” to shop with Sainsburys when it’s appropriate and convenient to do so; on the other hand, I’ve not stepped foot into a Tesco in roughly 15 years (except for having to use one of their petrol stations when I came very close to running out of petrol – embarrassing)
*don’t misunderstand or allow me to give you the wrong impression, I spend the majority of my grocery shop in supermarkets even so. As much as I wish to live “The Good Life”, I’m not there yet!
**I want to stress this: they are not perfect, and I do not pretend they are – but they are the better of a bad bunch in their field.
Paul,
Interesting. I may have mentioned that Maltese is structurally a semitic language. It sounds like Italian to me but it’s underlying grammar is closer to Hebrew or Arabic. And you mention the Bantu peoples. Well, the original, original peoples of what is now (roughly the RSA) probaby looked quite like folks from the Med (fits given the climate etc). The truly indiginous South Africans were wiped out well before the British or Dutch arrived or even existed in anything like the way we think of them now. And of course there was Shaka – the Ghenghis Khan of the Savannah!
I mean, honestly – this is one of the most profoundly questionable things I’ve seen recently. The idea that the further away someone is from you and yours, the less worthy they are? That’s the idea that only people of like minds/familial ties/ancestry etc are worthy – what you would normally call “collectivism” – and it’s a denial of the liberty of the individual just because they’re not in your inner circle.
Maybe we “cannot”, but the idea that we “should not” even try to…that’s poor. Very poor indeed.
neon,
Is Yoko aware you’re stealing her late hubby’s lyrics?
Fraser:
Just this sentence devalues all your comments on the subject.
You fail to take into account that slavery disappeared in Europe after the general acceptance of Chistianity. It reappeared in the colonies where, and when, the authority of the Church was weakened, and was finally abolished thanks to the action of religiously-motivated British people.
As religion has declined in the UK, slavery has arisen again.
As for women: Rodney Stark (in The Rise of Christianity) claims that the conversion of the Roman Empire was largely woman-driven. Women demanded to marry Christian men, because they would be treated better, not traded to another man, and not forced into abortion.
I never heard of homosexuals burned at the stake, so i can’t comment on that. As for witches: belief in witchcraft was actually considered a heresy in the early “dark ages”.
Finally, i note that it is rationalism (in its admittedly “less rational” forms) that led to central economic planning.
The first witchcraft Act in England was passed in 1542, after the break with Rome, and witch executions peaked under Elizabeth I. I’m unaware of any notable witch hunt campaigns in Europe prior to the 15th century, which is very late in what is normally considered the Middle Ages.
Fraser is stubbornly clinging to Whig history that’s largely been debunked.
@Snorri Godhi
You fail to take into account that slavery disappeared in Europe after the general acceptance of Chistianity.
That’s not true at all. Slavery was commonplace in post Roman Europe. For example, according to the Doomsday book 10% of the English population were slaves. It was extremely commonplace to enslave war captives, and even the church kept slaves (for example, the Papal states used galley slaves of Muslims captive from the Holy Lands.) Now it is true that medieval slavery began transforming into other forms such as serfdom — which is one step up from slavery, this was notably true in England after the Norman conquest, and there was strong opposition to the enslavement of Christians in the Church. But this latter point “don’t enslave Christians” is very much the exception that proves the rule that slavery of those who are not your co-religionists is perfectly acceptable.
As to women and homosexuals, you can’t seriously be arguing that these groups were treated “equally” in medieval Europe?
It is true that many great Christian men were involved in the abolition of slavery, and they certainly deserve admiration and respect for what they did. But one sparrow doth not a summer make.
Anyway, apologies for getting dragged so far OT.
@Martin
Fraser is stubbornly clinging to Whig history that’s largely been debunked.
Not Whig history, whatever that means, I was actually referencing the Bible which is pretty clear in its views on “witchcraft”.
err
Slavery was abolished when it was no longer economically viable for the British, Snorri.
I don’t want to ignore the contributions of people who were abolitionists for good, moral reasons, but the movement as a whole never got traction until it became an economic issue.
@neonsnake
I don’t want to ignore the contributions of people who were abolitionists for good, moral reasons, but the movement as a whole never got traction until it became an economic issue.
I think that is an overly cynical view of the situation. The Royal Navy spent considerably resources stopping the slave trade and were responsible for freeing thousands of slaves, and there seems to be no good reason for that except “doing what is right”. But perhaps I am naïve.
How much do you know about why Pitt pushed Wilburforce into supporting abolition?