PowerSwitch

From another thread:

rs wrote:So for every step forward, we will take two back as someone somewhere tries to evade the system in order for their own gain.

I wish I could be more positive but whatever route I try to analyse I always arrive back at the same result.

This is a VERY interesting question! The rulebreakers. How to handle them? Let me begin with a theory of mine: About one in 50 to one in 100 in any society is a psychopath of some kind. Most of them find ways to stay out of criminality and "fit in", but psychopaths they are. This tiny minority has a tremendous influence on society since they brake just about any rules they can and provide just about any kind of excuse they can get away with. I think they are heavily overepresented in corporate boardrooms and in politics.

The examples they set, and get away with, are justifying the same ruthless behaviour from others.

Toghether with monetary systems, I think handling of psychopaths is absolutely central to surviving PeakOil/PeakEconomy.

I'm not sure about the percentages, but this is roughly the result I
would expect from game theory. In modelling I have seen, in
artificial life games
based on (but more sophisticated than) prisoner's dilemma, where
multiple individuals interact using different strategies, and successful
strategies survive and evolve, then
cooperative strategies work, based on initial generosity followed by
'tit for tat' followup, provided that the cooperative members manage
to reach a critical mass. However, there is never room to become
totally generous, because selfish behaviour re-emerges through
genetic varition and individuals can take advantage and become very
successful again.

In other words, we will never be free of social parasites, and
they will take advantage of the system to become relatively sucessful
individuals. I think this means that for a social system to be
successful, it needs to be constantly evolving and adapting to change.
If it becomes too static selfish elements will regain control and so
unbalance the system that it eventually collapses.

This is all a bit abstract, and really only states the blindingly obvious,
but it is an important consideration for those amongst us who seem
keen to redesign the social order from the ground up

This is interesting. I quite agree with the conclusion that you will never get rid of ?undesirable? elements and any future society plan needs to have a plan for dealing with such an element. It?s also why you will never reach a utopia. I wonder if anyone has done a study in this sort of phenomena in a real human society?

MacG wrote: How to handle them?

You don't "handle them". Instead you kill them.


This should be done in the dark as a assassination, but of course you should have a solid case against him based on objectivity, truth, reason, a consideration of group interests, and logic otherwise it's more likely that you're the psychopath. After you have done it, be on your alert and be ready to leave your group, if the group accept as they probably will, you stay, otherwise run as hell!

MacG wrote: This tiny minority has a tremendous influence on society since they brake just about any rules they can and provide just about any kind of excuse they can get away with. I think they are heavily overepresented in corporate boardrooms and in politics.

We, in the US, are having just such a problem with our national leadership. But no easy solutions.....

I would put such individuals to good use rather than shoot them out of hand.

Will the furture be free of organised crime and "no go" arears? No.

As DimitryO suggested, you need to hire some of the bad guys to fight against the other bad guys (else you have to do it yourself).

It's not just crime/violence where you need these slightly distasteful people.

There will be many dangerous and unpleasent jobs to be done (burying corpses, cleaing sewers etc), you are better shoving the nasty people into these roles so they do something that you would otherwise have to an ultimately make a valuable contribution back to the community.

If you had a strong summinity system (as discussed on other threads) and each community had to supply one person to do the worst most vile jobs and the community had to vote for that person, they would vote the selfish ruthless self-seaking guy into that role.

Many of todays social-outcast and crime problems are (imv) linked back to the lack of peer support/pressure accross a whole community - if you bring this back I think you can go a LONG way to handle all such disruptive elements.

For the genuine bad criminals, you want hard-labour prison where they work 12hrs day doing something of value for the country - not sat in cell watching TV.

There was a program on tv last night that caught my attention. They were looking at an area around Sussex and the history of it over the 2,500 years.

The interesting part was where humans had settled. The remains were quite often located at strategic points and had structural elements designed to protect it.

So not only do you have to worry about troublesome elements within the group, you also had to be prepared against attack from outsiders.

Currently we have a central government and a national police force (+ military too) to protect us. If this was broken up so that we lived in smaller self-sustained communities would we have to take on the role of protection ourselves?

Without central police/government protection those groups who may attack us will probably have less fear of reprisals leading them to take greater risks and therefore the battles could be quite ugly, as history has shown us!

Hence the need to form networks of communities

I think that some entities may be better served at a national level, Uk defence and policing may be one of these.

We should carry this on at http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=489, lest we end up with 2 threads talking about the same thing!

fishertrop wrote:I would put such individuals to good use rather than shoot them out of hand.

Will the furture be free of organised crime and "no go" arears? No.

As DimitryO suggested, you need to hire some of the bad guys to fight against the other bad guys (else you have to do it yourself).

It's not just crime/violence where you need these slightly distasteful people.

There will be many dangerous and unpleasent jobs to be done (burying corpses, cleaing sewers etc), you are better shoving the nasty people into these roles so they do something that you would otherwise have to an ultimately make a valuable contribution back to the community.

If you had a strong summinity system (as discussed on other threads) and each community had to supply one person to do the worst most vile jobs and the community had to vote for that person, they would vote the selfish ruthless self-seaking guy into that role.

Many of todays social-outcast and crime problems are (imv) linked back to the lack of peer support/pressure accross a whole community - if you bring this back I think you can go a LONG way to handle all such disruptive elements.

For the genuine bad criminals, you want hard-labour prison where they work 12hrs day doing something of value for the country - not sat in cell watching TV.

Mmmm... I think more about the Mephisto-types. Those who lie and cheat and exploit people while maintaining an image of respectability. Working in a big company I see it all the time. In fact, it is such an integral part of corporate life that nobody reflect over it any longer. Take this with lying for example. It is considered as completely normal to lie all the time. When reading press releases from the company I work for, I see nothing but lies and it is considered as completely normal.

desertbear2 wrote:We, in the US, are having just such a problem with our national leadership. But no easy solutions.....

That is exactly the kind of situation I think about.