"Civilizations also seem to consistently decay, in ways we don’t fully understand. Maybe if we better understood the debts that civilizations accumulate, we could better repay them, and make civilizations immortal"
I think that the institutions important for growth are different from the institutions important for maintenance.
For example, (short term) efficiency is important for growth but stability (= long term efficiency) is important for maintenance. And it is not well understood how processes on different time scales interact in complex systems.
If memory serves, In the book “Scale”, Geoffrey West argues that cities are immortal. He talks about how some kinds of organizations scale linearly and others don’t and how this affects networks and relationships. Seems pertinent to this discussion.
My thoughts are that deficits explain some of the decay we see in civilization, but I would chalk more of it up to the steady rise in rent seeking, bureaucratic bloat and complexity (ala Mancur Olsen).
Another type of debt that all organizations accumulate is ambition debt. Over time, organizations tend to replace capable members with the ambitious members. Whereas capable members try to move the organization towards successful outcomes, ambitious members try to move the org in whichever direction will support their ambition.
I’m pretty sure financial debt is the primary cause of current cultural change, which is not drift but specifically change directed towards lesser prudence, less disposition to attempt to repay debts, and more positioning to renegotiate debts through forms of coordination which the debt collection apparatus is empirically found to be vulnerable to.
In the end, financial debt is only about wealth distribution, right? And wealth distribution can easily be addressed by changing the tax rules. So does current cultural change boil down to the way we tax?
Changing the rules could change things. But wealth distribution is the wrong way to think about it. It’s about what gets rewarded, not about concentration or diffusion.
I didnt think about it before in exactly this way. But it is interesting. If we want to study how culture and the economy interact, the history of tax systems would make a very interesting case study. Surely somebody must have worked on this?
Here’s a societal debt that has accumulated until today—universal suffrage. The concept that everyone in this society, regardless of knowledge, ability, and contribution, should have an equal say at the ballot box has finally led us to where we are today—that anyone from anywhere in the world can cross our border, take up residence and vote in local elections—in short, the eradication of the very concept of country and culture. American “democracy” is not simply an idea and never was.
It does not look like “maintenance” can correct the problem at this stage of dysfunction, or rather it’s impossible to “patch/correct” the former system economically. In such cases, one simply scraps the old system and begins constructs a new one. New concepts, work flows, etc. Unfortunately, the only modern examples of that wrt countries involves those that have suffered terrible calamities such as Japan in the aftermath of WWII—a so it may well be with us.
In the attention economy, understanding the concept of "equal say" requires understanding how much attention one's say gets. In our current technological-economic system, the amount of attention somebody gets seems to be largely proportionate to that person's wealth. It therefore seems to me that a discussion of "equal say" cannot be independent of a discussion of wealth inequality.
Definitely, there is a relationship. However, why/how is there a wealth discrepancy? What causes such? I would say that there is a difference among the people, such that one class—the wealthy—contribute more to society and are rewarded for such effort. Compare such to our “welfare” class. Of course, if you believe that all wealth is “theft” and tend toward socialism/communism concepts of societal inequality and repair, then we have little to discuss. I also might add that wealth allows a broader reach to the public, but that it “takes two” as they say. The wealthy, and I include the famous here, have a broader reach because there is a large segment of the populace who unthinkingly buy into their fame and wealth and in some manner assume such “authority”carries on into wisdom wrt societal situations and “solutions” far beyond their capabilities.
Sure, but the tax rules are set to promote risk taking and innovation and commerce. I have most of my relatives in Europe. I was treated to a celebration of one of the family members opening of a construction firm waay back when. I thought, what’s the big deal, congrats. My father—also with me—had his own firm (in America) since the mid sixties. Then I started to be told exactly how hard it was to open a business in a country with social equity as a guiding value. For example, there was still was ability to “lay off” staff when downsizing, but there had to be payment of wages at 95% for a year. And don’t forget one doesn’t live to work in this State utopia, staff got 12 weeks paid vacation. I can go on, but the point is made. America may lean too far in the opposite direction. I can cite examples—particularly wrt worker health and safety. For those, I like the China example—a quick “show” trail and a public execution.
“Sure, but the tax rules are set to promote risk taking and innovation and commerce.”
😂😂😂😂
While I’d agree that those *should* be the primary criteria (for a given level of funding of government), the idea that those *actually* are how they are set is… shall we say, highly questionable, at best.
Given your closing icons, there really is nothing to discuss as you indicate your derision for all to see. Such is the response for those who make gratuitous assertions. Sigh.
Democracy is indeed the worst form of government ever invented…
…except for all the others.
[To be clear, I indeed prefer the U.S. system of democratic elections in a constitutional republic with strong protection of minority rights. But I think this was implicit in your comment as well - or at least you made no distinction.]
I like the sandpile/avalanche/earthquake model for societal change.
Every society sees a gradual accumulation of crud from various causes: Entropy, vested interests subverting the common good, historical overhang, uncontrolled debt spending, and so on. Most of the time society tolerates this slowly accumulating crud. This tolerance is because established norms and relationships in the system tend to resist change.
However once you cross some threshold, the accumulated tension in the system overwhelms that tendency to resist change and you get a quick reconfiguration. In a societal context "quick" can be literally overnight, as when the Berlin Wall fell, or it can take some years as during the Great Depression. The point is, these are periods where the usual rules are suspended and all bets are off.
This dynamic leads to a perceptual bias: Choose a random point in time and it is typically true that things are getting worse. But this mis-perceives the real long term trend. We tend to discount the periods of renewal because they come quickly, and unpredictably.
> Human workers often accumulate recreation and rest debts, which degrades their productivity in the absence of sufficient breaks and vacations.
Slaves typically didn't work all the time, and had breaks enough to recover their energy, but I don't think they were really granted vacations. They were associated with lower productivity than free workers, but I don't think that was because of a lack of vacations, but instead due to them not having an incentive to do a good job beyond what monitoring could detect.
"Civilizations also seem to consistently decay, in ways we don’t fully understand. Maybe if we better understood the debts that civilizations accumulate, we could better repay them, and make civilizations immortal"
I think that the institutions important for growth are different from the institutions important for maintenance.
For example, (short term) efficiency is important for growth but stability (= long term efficiency) is important for maintenance. And it is not well understood how processes on different time scales interact in complex systems.
If memory serves, In the book “Scale”, Geoffrey West argues that cities are immortal. He talks about how some kinds of organizations scale linearly and others don’t and how this affects networks and relationships. Seems pertinent to this discussion.
My thoughts are that deficits explain some of the decay we see in civilization, but I would chalk more of it up to the steady rise in rent seeking, bureaucratic bloat and complexity (ala Mancur Olsen).
Another type of debt that all organizations accumulate is ambition debt. Over time, organizations tend to replace capable members with the ambitious members. Whereas capable members try to move the organization towards successful outcomes, ambitious members try to move the org in whichever direction will support their ambition.
This seems plausibly a cause of cultural drift.
Thanks, I didnt know the term ambition debt.
I’m pretty sure financial debt is the primary cause of current cultural change, which is not drift but specifically change directed towards lesser prudence, less disposition to attempt to repay debts, and more positioning to renegotiate debts through forms of coordination which the debt collection apparatus is empirically found to be vulnerable to.
In the end, financial debt is only about wealth distribution, right? And wealth distribution can easily be addressed by changing the tax rules. So does current cultural change boil down to the way we tax?
Changing the rules could change things. But wealth distribution is the wrong way to think about it. It’s about what gets rewarded, not about concentration or diffusion.
I didnt think about it before in exactly this way. But it is interesting. If we want to study how culture and the economy interact, the history of tax systems would make a very interesting case study. Surely somebody must have worked on this?
So what is being rewarded in our current system? Wealth creation or rent extraction?
Here’s a societal debt that has accumulated until today—universal suffrage. The concept that everyone in this society, regardless of knowledge, ability, and contribution, should have an equal say at the ballot box has finally led us to where we are today—that anyone from anywhere in the world can cross our border, take up residence and vote in local elections—in short, the eradication of the very concept of country and culture. American “democracy” is not simply an idea and never was.
It does not look like “maintenance” can correct the problem at this stage of dysfunction, or rather it’s impossible to “patch/correct” the former system economically. In such cases, one simply scraps the old system and begins constructs a new one. New concepts, work flows, etc. Unfortunately, the only modern examples of that wrt countries involves those that have suffered terrible calamities such as Japan in the aftermath of WWII—a so it may well be with us.
In the attention economy, understanding the concept of "equal say" requires understanding how much attention one's say gets. In our current technological-economic system, the amount of attention somebody gets seems to be largely proportionate to that person's wealth. It therefore seems to me that a discussion of "equal say" cannot be independent of a discussion of wealth inequality.
Definitely, there is a relationship. However, why/how is there a wealth discrepancy? What causes such? I would say that there is a difference among the people, such that one class—the wealthy—contribute more to society and are rewarded for such effort. Compare such to our “welfare” class. Of course, if you believe that all wealth is “theft” and tend toward socialism/communism concepts of societal inequality and repair, then we have little to discuss. I also might add that wealth allows a broader reach to the public, but that it “takes two” as they say. The wealthy, and I include the famous here, have a broader reach because there is a large segment of the populace who unthinkingly buy into their fame and wealth and in some manner assume such “authority”carries on into wisdom wrt societal situations and “solutions” far beyond their capabilities.
I think one easy way to explain wealth differences is by our tax rules.
Sure, but the tax rules are set to promote risk taking and innovation and commerce. I have most of my relatives in Europe. I was treated to a celebration of one of the family members opening of a construction firm waay back when. I thought, what’s the big deal, congrats. My father—also with me—had his own firm (in America) since the mid sixties. Then I started to be told exactly how hard it was to open a business in a country with social equity as a guiding value. For example, there was still was ability to “lay off” staff when downsizing, but there had to be payment of wages at 95% for a year. And don’t forget one doesn’t live to work in this State utopia, staff got 12 weeks paid vacation. I can go on, but the point is made. America may lean too far in the opposite direction. I can cite examples—particularly wrt worker health and safety. For those, I like the China example—a quick “show” trail and a public execution.
“Sure, but the tax rules are set to promote risk taking and innovation and commerce.”
😂😂😂😂
While I’d agree that those *should* be the primary criteria (for a given level of funding of government), the idea that those *actually* are how they are set is… shall we say, highly questionable, at best.
Given your closing icons, there really is nothing to discuss as you indicate your derision for all to see. Such is the response for those who make gratuitous assertions. Sigh.
Democracy is indeed the worst form of government ever invented…
…except for all the others.
[To be clear, I indeed prefer the U.S. system of democratic elections in a constitutional republic with strong protection of minority rights. But I think this was implicit in your comment as well - or at least you made no distinction.]
I like the direction this is going. Have you read any of the Maintenance manuscript that Stewart Brand has been publishing yet? Recommended!
https://www.amazon.com/Maintenance-Everything-Part-One/dp/1953953492 ? Thanks for recommending, I didnt know about this. Seems to be related to my comment as well.
There is also the book by Vinsel and Russell https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Delusion-Obsession-Disrupted-Matters/dp/B085K9158R
I like the sandpile/avalanche/earthquake model for societal change.
Every society sees a gradual accumulation of crud from various causes: Entropy, vested interests subverting the common good, historical overhang, uncontrolled debt spending, and so on. Most of the time society tolerates this slowly accumulating crud. This tolerance is because established norms and relationships in the system tend to resist change.
However once you cross some threshold, the accumulated tension in the system overwhelms that tendency to resist change and you get a quick reconfiguration. In a societal context "quick" can be literally overnight, as when the Berlin Wall fell, or it can take some years as during the Great Depression. The point is, these are periods where the usual rules are suspended and all bets are off.
This dynamic leads to a perceptual bias: Choose a random point in time and it is typically true that things are getting worse. But this mis-perceives the real long term trend. We tend to discount the periods of renewal because they come quickly, and unpredictably.
> until enough sleep replays it
Should be "repays".
> Human workers often accumulate recreation and rest debts, which degrades their productivity in the absence of sufficient breaks and vacations.
Slaves typically didn't work all the time, and had breaks enough to recover their energy, but I don't think they were really granted vacations. They were associated with lower productivity than free workers, but I don't think that was because of a lack of vacations, but instead due to them not having an incentive to do a good job beyond what monitoring could detect.
I review the lit on productivity vs breaks on different timescales in Age of Em.
Do you believe that cultural drift is a cause, or an effect, of this decay?