How do we manage human nature in liberal democracies?

[Peter Zemskov]

As Leo said on the blog, one of the main lessons of the last US elections is that the general population is just too dumb to sustain a high functioning democracy. Individual freedom leads to rampant hedonism, materialism, selfishness and the dilution of morality (as in pro social behavior, not the far right sense). We end up in a ruthless competition of all against all for vain things like status, money, popularity, sex... Individual freedom in practice means that most people act on their lowest instincts which in turn undermines liberal democracy itself. Freedom ends up destroying freedom.

If we want to to maintain our liberal democracies we are gonna have to somehow manage this part of human nature. I think the answer lies in the rearrangement of the incentive structure in our society. The fact that people are so stupid is the result of the badly aligned incentive structure that values selfish materialism and hedonism over more pro social, moral behavior. This can be best seen on social media where churning out dumb entertainment content gets you a lot more clicks and views than serious, productive, educational content. You are essentially rewarded for being shallow. It almost seems like being a deep thinker and doing something pro social is actually lowering your position in society. In order to make people strive to be more intelligent and "good" we need to restructure the incentives in such a way that those qualities are actually seen as highly valuable in society, not something that you're doing to your own detriment. Any thoughts on this? 

[sholomar]

The elites always thinking the masses are too stupid to make their own choices, and always want to bring on strict autocratic type systems to manage human nature that stifle innovation and progress.  The problem is that human nature itself corrupts such strict systems and turns them against the people in the long run. However it can be argued no system of government will work forever, because as a species we are wired to want change for the sake of change, power tends to attract corrupt and psychopathic people or simply turn them corrupt in time due to our nature, and since you can never please everyone, we tend to go through cycles of trying new things to see what works, and cycles based on the old saying 'Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.'

We managed human nature pretty well I would argue, when we adopted a more conservative, "God Fearing" culture that restricted the more sinful vices. Of course shit went on behind the scenes because humans will always try to get away with things when nobody is looking that their dopamine driven animal cravings desire, and we were a whole lot more racist back then, but all in all there were aspects of this more conservative culture that made society as a whole work better.  In this country we have the "right" versus "left" nonsense and then you have left wingers who support communist type systems which tend to lean autocratic in time because human nature makes them never work, or socialist systems that try to support too many unproductive people, which also doesn't work.  Autocracies themselves tend to adopt more conservative type value systems by their nature... look at China, Nazi Germany, or any autocracy that isn't a drug ridden high crime cesspool like Cuba. 

It's a balancing act. We could simply not decriminalize all drugs and impose harsh sentences for dealing them, but left wingers don't want to do that... they want anything goes, so here we are. They treat people like they'll just make all the right choices and do the right thing and then act shocked and have meltdowns when it doesn't happen. Shocker, our animal nature is stronger than our value systems without forceful imposition (not a shocker) In China for example they monitor a lot more and enforce laws in such a way that people don't as often try to "get away with things" that are outside the law. There is a sort of carrot and stick conditioning that makes the rules more readily followed. But would we really want that? Tough question. 

 We are materialistic because the global elites push consumption, population, and "perpetual growth" along with inflation to keep the unfunded liabilities from bankrupting the system.. pensions, social security, etc.   This is another reason they never try to stop this "disposable culture" in which we live and peddle the "economic growth" psyop globally among all media outlets.  If they actually made things to last, people would stop consuming and GDP would go down... something the Keynesians and modern monetary theorists simply cannot have.  All of modern society in the west is based around consumption. Built in inflation means simply saving cash is a losing proposition. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Detailing/comments/1g0qub5/the_paintfinish_on_new_cars_is_criminally/

For millions of years of human history we've never been able to have the personal freedom to experience all these things... I'd say it's a phase and we should just accept it, enjoy it, and evolve, or engage in genetic engineering to fix it.  You will never save everyone, please everyone, the best you can hope is a system that works well for the majority.  We do need something like stakeholder capitalism, which emphasizes better build quality, higher wages, and a stronger middle class, rather than this quantitative easing based system where everyone tries to be an investor, we bail them out, we drive up quarterly profits at the expense of wages, and the purchasing power of the middle class continues to decrease as the rich get richer and gobble up more assets with all their liquidity.  Homes should be for living in, not buying like stocks. 

Edited June 24 by sholomar

[BlueOak]

Correct. Shunning and demonising socialism shuns and demonises social safeguards, the common good, the social contract, collective responsibility, institutional trust, civic infrastructure, solidarity etc etc.

As always when one of the four political axis are villified the result is imbalance.

       Authoritarian
Socialist - Capitalist
          Liberal 

[Ulax]

I’d disagree that people are too dumb for liberal democracies. Being uneducated is an issue for democracies though. Because when people’s needs don’t get met they get resentful and then low consciousness actors manipulate that resentment with a false narrative as to why their needs are getting met. And then radicalisation and extremism emerges. I take this view from Jason Stanley (Yale/ Toronto prof).
Yes better education helps because it allows people to better understand why their needs aren’t getting met and therefore makes a population less vulnerable to manipulation. However, you don’t always need to fix educational levels to resolve radicalism. You can also work on meeting people’s needs better so that those resentments don’t arise. And therefore low consciousness actors have less to fuel to feed their manipulations. 

For example, I know Ian Shapiro (Yale polsci prof) argues that the radical politics since 2016 is the result of long term employment insecurity. So, according to Ian Shapiro, the focus ought be to fix employment insecurity in order to resolve the radical post 2016 politics. Note how there is no need to fix peoples level of education because it fixes the source of resentment. 

[Apparition of Jack]

Freedom is inevitable. MLK wasnt just making stuff up when he said “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it always bends to justice.”

Humans are far more conscious, forgiving, resilient and thoughtful than we give ourselves credit for. If we weren’t, we would’ve destroyed ourselves a thousand times over over the course of history. There are times when we are tested but it’s only so the victory can be even greater.

Any human, institution, organisation or system that fundamentally seeks to dominate and control, that fundamentally believes people are cattle and can’t be trusted - will have a very bad time indeed. 
 

Freedom isn’t some nebulous idea, it’s inherent in the human condition, and only resisted by those too afraid or too stupid to accept it. 
 

Sooner or later, every tyrant, every injustice, every evil deed or bold-faced lie will be revealed under the sun of truth. Control and domination collapses. The world is reborn.

[LordFall]

Like the Gandhi quote where we have enough on the planet for what we all need but not enough for what we all want. Gotta find realistic win-win solutions to fix that and not fall into utopian thinking. 
 

I think AI/Metaverse can be part of the solution. Soon enough we’ll have an alternate universe that’s even more realistic than the real world where you’ll be able to indulge all your base needs of power, sex, control, etc without affecting the rest of us.