Oct 24, 2019, 8:20 PM
People are rational actors acting in their rational self interests, that observe the minimum conformance to rule, procedure, norm, tradition, regulation, legislation, and law, necessary to preserve their status in the social order. Period. End of Story. Good luck falsifying it.
People are not good, ethical, or moral. They are amoral. They discover what is in their self interest within the environmental limits and congratulate themselves for the content of their character (self image).
This is the empirical evidence from all people in all cultures, in all countries, in all civilizations, across all of history.
The civilization of man was performed by the incremental provision of incentives to find self congratulation in minimum accomodation of the various systems of rules, by the incremental evolution of law, norm, and custom to suppress as many opportunities for bad, unethical, immoral, conduct as affordable by the polity, and where incentives are possible to construct. Hence the necessity of sheriffs and policemen and populations increased in anonymity.
We must govern amoral humans because all are amoral.
Ergo we must govern pessimistically so that we continuously evolve the suppression of irreciprocity (the bad, unethical, immoral) as quickly as we evolve new methods of bad, unethical and immoral behavior.
Optimism is why progressive governments fail.
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