On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 3:55 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 12/21/2014 3:36 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > But it's not just the bandits, it's also game theory. Modern democracies > suffer from a strong tendency to become Keynesian beauty contests. Very > easily the optimal strategy for the big parties becomes a move to the > average opinion. Some people say this is a good thing. I think it's a > dangerous thing because it's self-reinforcing and because consensus and > truth are very different things. > > > So are truth and personal opinion, especially on questions of value. >
Indeed. This is why personal freedom is so important. > There are many advantages to cooperation and community. > Of course! > So there is a trade-off between having rules of social interaction which > support cooperation and limiting the rules so as to allow individuality. > Ok, but this assumes that rules are the only way to promote cooperation. I don't think they are the only way at all. I think that trade is a better way (at least in many cases). > In general I'd say modern societies provide far more individual freedom > than did the tribal societies in which humans evolved - just as a big city > provides much more anonymity than a small town. > Modern societies provide more potential freedom, for sure. I could theoretically travel to almost any part of the world I desire and be there having breakfast before Christmas. Do modern societies provide more real freedom? Consider the life of the peasants under european medieval feudalism. The modern view on this part of history is that peasants had much more free time to use as they pleased in comparison to modern middle class workers. Consider even kids. They are less free than they ever were. These days, their entire lives consist of structured activities (which is necessary to accommodate their parents also highly structured lives). Telmo. > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
