interestingasfuck

All of our cognitive and social abilities break down when you get into large groups. We’re evolved to be able to work with extended family units where we have a reasonable ability to build personal relationships and trust networks among all of the people we interact with.

Our usual mechanisms for punishing betrayal through reputation damage and ostracism fall apart in an anonymous society. In more recent history we relied on societal institutions (democratic and judicial as well as private societies) and the media (newspapers, magazines, TV news) to cover some of this role but it was imperfect and only applied to the most infamous offenders.

Cool and agreed, but the original point holds up that greed and self-preservation always ruin things for groups of people trying to do anything together. Everything you mentioned is a symptom of corporate interests subverting democracies. Look, there’s nothing inherently wrong with corporations having an interest in their success, but govts. need to be able to curtail their worst tendencies because it makes sense to prioritize long-term benefits over short-term gains.

If people really give a fuck about monied interests and their control over democracies, then they should be pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy (like 250K or more per year) like it’s an existential crises. Because it is. Tbf, 250K is pretty normal in a HCOL, so higher taxes should take that into account.