@FeralRobots what pipe are you smoking? (or is it not a pipe?)

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it’s a weird time when you read a line about a “complex surgical operation” in a hospital and then realize no doctor would be involved.

@magitweeter @whatzaname @HeavenlyPossum @passenger i think there are ends that would be desirable. whether there are means that might achieve those ends that wouldn’t ultimately subvert them, that would at least improve our situation rather than harm it, is a question that i think can’t be answered abstractly. we have to consider possibilities in their details.

@violetmadder @HeavenlyPossum @passenger absolutely. much of how we’ve fucked up the world is by normalizing use of extrinsic, venal motivations for excellences and kindnesses that can only thrive when derived from intrinsic motivation. no “incentivizer” can make kindness profitable in ways that won’t be gamed and subverted.

@magitweeter @whatzaname @HeavenlyPossum @passenger i agree with you. but they think their definition of noncoercive is the right one. and though i’m sure theirs is wrong, i don’t think there is a right one that would be sufficient to organize our behavior in ways that would be both functional and not compose to domination in the way theirs does. “non-“ anything is not a good basis for what actually to do.

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger @whatzaname Stationary bandits, Mancur Olson called them. The community pays for, really provides, everything the state provides, for sure. That doesn't mean the state is a bad way of organizing the community's provision, even if one way of understanding how states emerge is as bandits civilized by the need to maximize the value of the pool from which they steal.

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger @whatzaname This is very good. Because I am an enthusiast of the possibilities of states (on that dimension i suspect we will remain opposites, hopefully not bitterly), I read in it a lot of great strategies for helping to discipline and direct a variety of institutions, including states (which I see as fire-like technologies, wonderful when directed well, catastrophic when not). In general, you catalog a lot of good techniques for preventing and subverting domination.

@HeavenlyPossum @whatzaname @passenger let's just say i went off on a hobbyhorse then, and we're all agreed at least this much.

@HeavenlyPossum @whatzaname @passenger i apologize for the word "easy". but i'm doubting the idea that good outcomes are the default, if only bad ways of being or thinking would be abjured. you don't get good from simply an absence of bad. you have to cooperate actively to create what is good. humans have to develop institutions that support and sustain those. they are inevitably imperfect, somebody games them, internal dynamics blind them to some harms. it's hard, never "right", still necessary

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger It's possible that in the absense of things that exist basically everywhere, everything would be great. We can't observe that condition. It does suggest that, even if that were the case, it might be a condition difficult to sustain, given the places we have fallen to, pretty much everywhere. (not everywhere has a meaningful state, but the places that don't don't seem admirable. perhaps bc of the meddling of states! but we can't really say, or prevent that.)

@violetmadder @HeavenlyPossum @passenger I'm really glad to consider alternatives! But I think they have to be positive constructions — what should we do, and how, and this is why people are going to live and act together in ways that lead to good outcomes — rather than negative proscriptions (this is what we dislike, we just won't do that). I don't think eliminating what is bad is a sufficient path to creating what might be good.

@HeavenlyPossum @whatzaname @passenger i agree in practice that's what they are. but i think many of them begin sincerely enough, imagining their creed is about noncoercion and solely voluntary cooperation.

(they tend also to begin from a position of having, or being likely to have, so they are looking for something consistent with keeping. i can extend some benefit of the doubt, but i'll agree one can extend too much.)

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger publics don't provide them in very many elsewheres though. those states seem like a part of a coordination arrangement that works remarkably well. i'm certainly open to other coordination arrangements that might work better, but so far those strike me as the most appealing demostrably feasible models.

@whatzaname @HeavenlyPossum @passenger all i'm saying is they are a cautionary tale. starting from a principal on noncoercion, at an *individual* level, you can find your behavior composes into systems that are terribly coercive. i think freedom, prosperity, cooperation without domination are challenging problems, not easy defaults.

@whatzaname @HeavenlyPossum @passenger they are just capitalists. but they build their capitalism from first principles, from a definition of voluntary-vs-coercive that is as internally coherent (if you accept their axioms and definitions) as it is foolish and destructive.

@whatzaname @HeavenlyPossum @passenger I guess I'd point to the libertarians as a group that claims to hate anything that is coercive and love only the voluntary. but since their definition of noncoercion includes no obligation of the better-off to help the worse-off, and under free exchange the initially lucky and rich tend to get richer, they ultimately endorse tremendous exploitation that they see only as voluntary exchange. I don't see these kinds of "non-xxx" principles as sufficient.

@violetmadder @HeavenlyPossum @passenger Everything is terrible. We are grading on a curve. What is best among feasible alternatives? We can always imagine nearly perfect, but the further we jump from things that exist, the greater the risk of simple collapse to ugly forms of disorder.