77
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ScrimbloBimblo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Personally, I feel like most of the problems in the modern world come down to issues of scaling. We evolved our brains to coordinate in small bands of people, but we try use those same brains to coordinate groups of hundreds of millions.

The larger an organization (corporation, government, npo, etc.) gets, the worse they get at coordinating around a central goal or set of values, and the more likely they are to evolutionarily optimize around something entirely divorced from the values of any individual member.

A company of 100 employees is entirely capable of creating a high-quality product, compensating their workers well, and avoiding anti-consumer practices. This doesn't mean they'll always do this, but it's possible. Meanwhile, a multinational corporation of millions of people, even if run by the most ethical CEO on earth, will always gravitate toward maximizing profit at the expense of everything else. Even libertarians recognize this as a fundamental flaw in unchecked Capitalism.

Similarly, a government of a few thousand people can create a good constitution for an orderly society, but in a massive government of a country of 300 million people, trying to make any sort of effective, positive political change is borderline-impossible because everyone has different goals that gridlock each other. Even proponents of large government recognize this.

It's tempting to believe in some sort of easy action that could fix this, but truth be told, I think any simple solution would be horrifying, and I think any good solution is going to take an incredible amount of thought and be more complex than the sort of thing you'd see every day on the internet.

this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
77 points (94.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26669 readers
2091 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics.


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS