Why is Consensus Important for People with Views not Winning?

[Eric the Green]

(02-12-2022, 04:10 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(02-11-2022, 09:07 AM)David Horn Wrote: That's unlikely to work in practice.  First, the most predatory members of society reign when the rules are slack to nonexistent.

I'm not asking for a lack of rules, I'm asking for more streamlined rules, with a focus on giving existing laws teeth rather than adding additional layers of red tape Things like, for example, reporting requirements and additional kinds of audits rather than trying to micromanage people's behavior for moralistic reasons or pry into more private matters. Admittedly, the idea of "fuck the rules" style anarchy is appealing to me on some level, but in practice, yes, it's basically just a power vacuum, which creates a culture too unstable to allow for the kind of long term planning necessary to make markets work.

Quote:Second, destroying any pretext of social cohesion makes response to the First problem nearly impossible.  Third, once things get bad enough, the only way out is the long wait for death ... and that be insufficient as well.

Since when does social cohesion have to come from top-down mandates? I'd argue that, if anything, our sense of community was stronger when our institutions were a little more lean. People form bonds by sharing common experiences, actually doing things together, not having bureaucratic structures enforce more rules.

That would be a new style of consensus. It would be nice, and I once believed it could happen. I am disillusioned with such an idea now. Humans have confirmed in recent decades that they can't function without top-down mandates, especially in the economics sphere more than the moralistic sphere (but doubtful there as well). As David alluded to, the economics rules were relaxed about 40 years ago, and since then Reaganomics has only resulted in an unequal society with less opportunity and much more damage to the environment, no social progress, diminished education and an ignorant populace easily deceived by a rich celebrity bully. No, we certainly have no consensus that can be formed now from leaner institutions.

I don't know when community was stronger because institutions were a little more lean. The robber baron era was not a community, and neither were slave plantations, nor the colonies under a king, nor a new republic in which only rich white men could participate.