Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomohawk | Hacker News Reader

Cooperation used to be by free association through civic organizations. As the government has grown in scope, it has eclipsed these, and it really isn't surprising that civic society has declined as a result.

When people freely participate in civic activities, they are being generous. There is no coercion. When government does the same thing, it is coercive. The activity does not occur unless taxes are collected. Choice goes out the window.

I've heard many people ask why they should volunteer or help out others, when they're already paying lots of money in taxes to "take care of those problems".

This is the final tragedy of the government intervention. It turns activities where people are helping people into programs that solve problems.

View on HN

If there is a massive hail storm and my neighbor's roof is damaged and needs to be repaired, the reason all the neighbors don't pitch in and give him a new roof is insurance, not the government. You know, free market insurance. The part of your story about people pitching in has more to do with the skill sets of people back then vs now; even with all the desire in the world, I couldn't raise a barn.

And in the case of hurricanes, yes, the government does step in because even insurance companies can't afford that scale of loss. And if you look at the aftermath of things like Hurricane Katrina, yes, there was a lot of community involvement in coping with the losses.

There was more than enough misery to go around 100 years ago, and heaven help you if you weren't a member of the in-group. I'd much rather have the government help me out than having to pretend to be a member of the church, or whatever was required to be acceptable in such communities.

I remember reading stories of folks in hospitals and nursing homes left to die during Katrina. Or how many Congress people from a certain political party voted against helping out folks devastated by Sandy.

In fact, the "greed is good, corporations are people, etc." mentality that promotes selfishness as a vice is a major plank of one of the main political parties of the US.

I think that's generous. If only it were limited to greed is good. This is about class, not merely greed. Class is the idea that some people are simply better than other people, be it by bloodline, family name, meritocracy. The preservation of the aristocracy is paramount, but right there along with it is aristocrats first, others second. Sometimes a distant second. If you have more money you get better education, health care, justice, and might even pay lower taxes as a percentage of earned income.

This sort of nonsense is also where we get prosperity theology from. You'd think these people would have read Job.

I honestly believe this is just people being people and wanting to maintain their quality of life for their children and grandchildren.

Tell me that if ever become exceedingly wealthy you wouldn't do what you could to protect your wealth. I know I'm doing what I can with what I have.

Only the extremly wealthy can be philanthropic to an extreme extent.

> Only the extremly wealthy can be philanthropic to an extreme extent.

So it follows that the normally wealthy can be philanthropic to a normal extent, then?

Separately, I have to admit I'm unsure if you meant to conflate philanthropy with monetary value.

The question isn't why we didn't repair our neighbor's roof (I wouldn't know how either), but why we didn't invite them to sleep at our house while theirs was flooding.

What's this "we" business? I'd definitely invite my neighbours in if their house was flooded and they were out of options. I pay more than 50% tax when all is told. What's wrong with you?

Ah, the first downvotes of the day start at 8am Pacific Time. Go figure.

I used "we" to reflect we as a society, as the original article was noting a the general decline of cooperation.

Sorry if I misread you. Unfortunately your comment found harmony with a prevalent libertarian chorus.

Having insurance is prudent, but really beside the point. If you can safeguard your valuables by paying for a service, why wouldn't you? This really has nothing to do with civic society.

In the case of hurricanes, it's only because of government intervention and subsidies that people build in imperiled areas. Flood insurance mostly subsidizes more wealthy people to the tune of $3B/year. They would likely not choose to live in imperiled areas without the subsidies. Is it really a social good to promote the building of dwellings in places where it is likely the dwellings will be destroyed every 20 - 30 years or so?

Having seen the devastation of Katrina in MS first hand, this seems like a remarkably poor choice of things to subsidize and promote. In fact, when we were there about a year after the storm, the only people who were helping the people who were left were voluntary associations. The government had pretty much pulled out.

Tocqueville wrote extensively about associations and their beneficial impact on society. You should give his book, Democracy in America, a read. Here's an intro: http://www.learningtogive.org/resources/philanthropy-describ...

So you are proposing that high cooperation is dependent on low government intervention. This seems incorrect. In Denmark for example there is a far more interventionist state than in the US, while membership of associations and clubs is also very high.

Part of it is game theory. If your community is your means of survival then being cooperative in your community increases the chance of reciprocation when needed. But I think the size of the community isn't something that can be institutionally grown to scale. A community without accountability devolves into anarchy very quickly. Instead of trying to get out what you put in, the game is to take as much and contribute as little as possible.

Game Theory, is based on the premise that all individuals are selfish. It makes sense in an atomised society, where all relationships are utilitarian. It's an economic theory, not a sociological one, and it breaks down once you factor in actual "society" as a premise. If you take the position that society exists first, then the individual rather than the other way round it all becomes quite messy an unwieldy. A society will typically reject members that only take, and there are many studies (sorry, no citation at hand) that demonstrate this with animal groups and actual human groups. You "can" attempt to explain many social phenomena using game theory but you have to integrate all sorts of remote concepts in order to make it work.

> Game Theory, is based on the premise that all individuals are selfish

Wrong. Selfish strategies aren't sustainable. Why should I continue with anything else you said? Your basic premise leads me to believe you don't have a rudimentary grasp on game theory, economics, psychology or sociology.

> If you take the position that society exists first

Yeah don't do that. Reason from first principle first and work your way up. Not the other way around.

https://xkcd.com/435/

Your point is well written but you seem to be referencing some past golden age of inter-person cooperation before "big government" got involved. I'm not saying your wrong but anytime our thoughts lead us to imagine the past as a place wth less problems, it's a good clue we're maybe thinking about the situation less well than we could.

In your mind, when you imagine the 1920's, or the 1960's, do you think that there were incredibly high levels of cooperation between people? I don't want to put a huge burden of evidence of you, but am curious.

Also if anyone gets a chance please look into the book "The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz. Good examination of American family trends and activities over time.

I don't buy the golden age of giving scenario either, but it seems there was an era where people had more time (single income households), more disposable income, less pressure to save for education, retirement, medical expenses, etc.

My parents tell a story about how in the 1950's, my grandfather built his house himself. One day after work, he came to the site and his neighbors were at work helping out on it. Of course, he was an immigrant living in a relatively homogeneous ethnic community. So, maybe small communities took care of their own, but in the post-drug, post-industrial economy small communities aren't diverse enough to handle the load.

I think one aspect is income equality during the 1950s:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/income-...

Especially these graphs:

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/median...

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/mean%2...

And during this time, the GDP growth rate was great:

https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-year-3305543

Of course the average worker would be less stressed, have more time for communal activity, as well as rotate A LOT more money back into the economy compared with money sitting still on top.

The government hasn't recently grown in scope, in any meaningful way. Since the 1980's, the government as percent of GDP has stayed about the same 30-35% ... our taxes are lower and our 'welfare' is arguably lower than in the 80s, so if it was growth of government, you'd see it it correlated with that

I know it is cool to blame everything on the government, but ...

a percentage of GDP is a fairly meaningless measurement.

We've entered into an era of unprecedented government surveillance and power. We have agencies such as the DEA, NSA, homeland security, etc that wield enormous power over the lives of Americans.

Also the welfare programs are significantly more pervasive now. You have subsidized farming, subsidized food, subsidized business, subsidized housing, a subsidized economy.

At this point, aren't we all just living off the hand of the federal government? Isn't that by design?

> We've entered into an era of unprecedented government surveillance and power. We have agencies such as the DEA, NSA, homeland security, etc that wield enormous power over the lives of Americans.

You're claiming that people are less cooperative because the NSA is spying on them?

I'm saying the power and reach of our government into our personal lives has reached an unprecedented level, contrary to what GP was suggesting.

That must be why citizens of other countries like Australia and the UK are awfully uncooperative and uncharitable, right? /s

I also hate this idea that helping the poor should be left to personal whim. "Programs that solve problems" sounds more effective and egalitarian than "people helping people" if you ask me.

Presumably the '/s' implies that they are very charitable. Do you have numbers that show that they were more charitable than people in the US used to be?

It's called leading by example: do you want a government that shows people it's important to care about others, or do you want a government that doesn't care about it's people? A government that sets the example by lying, ignoring people that can't pay healthcare, can't pay for education, and basically shows it's all a fight about who gets to keep most money?

What example would you have citizens rather follow?

Also, if you think it coercive you are basically admitting your democracy isn't working. Otherwise it wouldn't be coercion but executing on the whishes of the people voting.

It's coercion regardless of democracy unless everyone is voting 100% the same way.

If 60% of the people vote to tax everyone and use that money to bomb the moon, the remaining 40% are going to feel coerced into supporting it.

The government forcing people to support things is not leading by example at all, because any other organization would be breaking the law if it tried to force support. How would you feel if the local church just started taking 30% of your income?

This is nice example why are some people less cooperative. Everybody paying for something that majority wants is labeled as "coercion". So "if I don't like I should be able to not cooperate". And we end up with game theory and tragedy of the commons.

It's coercive because you will be penalized unless you pay the taxes. The example the government is setting is that it is OK to take wealth from people and give it to others as long as whoever's in power has noble intent. There is certainly noble intent behind Head Start, but its an expensive program that doesn't work. There are many examples.

You can't say that we as a people are being generous when we're only doing what we're doing to avoid massive fines or imprisonment.

I don't think the scope of the government action has anything to do with civic activities. Take a step back and look across the Atlantic: plenty of European countries have both large government action and very active civic societies.

>I've heard many people ask why they should volunteer or help out others, when they're already paying lots of money in taxes to "take care of those problems".

They'll say that no matter what the tax rate is.

Seems to me like it's rather tangential to the true source of political division in America, in which both sides now tie ideas/facts to one of two "teams" / political parties, and actively reject discussion about something that appears to hurt their team or benefit the other. See: Republicans and global warming, Democrats and national debt, either party and any bad decision by a President of their party.

Doesn't help that when one side is wrong, the other makes sure to kick some dirt in the face and rub it in as long as possible.

Rise of "hot" media (radio, TV, social), decline of civility. Utterly unoriginal observation (McLuhan, Postman, many others).

While it lacks the satisfying simplicity of your government has a monopoly on violence, err, banality worldview, it does have some basis in objective reality.

> This is the final tragedy of the government intervention. It turns activities where people are helping people into programs that solve problems.

It's interesting that you think this is a tragedy. The point of such programs is to solve significant human problems, such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. This seems to me to be a superior goal to the alternative you propose, which seems to be to allow some altruistic people to feel good about themselves.

I think the coercion argument is nonsense. There are all kinds of coercion including economic coercion that happens in free markets.

It also ignores vastly top end income tax rates for nearly 4 decades, which weren't less than 75%. And ignores the relatively higher taxes in other countries where people, where trust in government is much higher than in the U.S.

Taxes should be seen as fair, and increasingly Americans think that you can avoid taxes by having clever accoutants and attorneys. Leona Helmsley "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes" is an example of how tax burden has changed.

Taxation is not voluntary. If you don't pay, there will be penalties. This is coercion. "Nice house you have there - too bad you didn't pay your taxes..."

If the collected money is then put to a purpose you don't like, or is incompetently managed, what can you do? Nothing in any realistic sense.

If you would have liked to have been generous with the money instead, too bad.

As an aside, tax rates are pretty meaningless. Revenues are at record levels.

Why should I believe what you say? It sounds truthy and has plenty of logic to it, but I've come to ask for more before believing something.

It could be kin selection. In the past people lived closer to and interacted more with people of similar genetic ancestry.

The real question is why wouldn't civic qualities decline.

You can look at this on an economic lens - people don't need to depend on familial relations as much because of money.

You can look at this with a racial/ethnic lens - more genetic variance reduces cooperative behaviours (see Charles Murray).

Then there's the libertarian version you've heard above.

Then there's the social lens - people have become atomized by individualism in their manners, social conditioning etc.

I like to think there's a non-relativistic way in which all of them are true, sometimes some of them more at certain times than others, but that they are models of the same phenomena.

Should we genetically manipulate ourselves to increase our pro-social behaviours? It seems clear that if society flies apart then all the critiques I've mentioned will be true simultaneously, I do not see how that can plausibly be positive. What about genetic intervention?

> Should we genetically manipulate ourselves to increase our pro-social behaviours? It seems clear that if society flies apart then all the critiques I've mentioned will be true simultaneously, I do not see how that can plausibly be positive. What about genetic intervention?

You had me and then you lost me.

Do you mean you don't agree or that you don't see what I meant?

The weight shifts but the overall value stays relatively constant: Quebecers give less than most Americans to homeless people because there are lots more social programs in place. Overalk, those in need get roughly the same amount of support.

I think your wrong, Quebec is one of the poorer Canadian provinces. You can't give what you don't have. I don't see Kansan's charity increasing as taxes went down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com