Galt's Gulch

The Resistance Movement that Matters - Resist Tribalism

Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago to Culture
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Trial and error, reason applied to reality, families and households participating in markets, each participant with their own values and goals.
SOURCE URL: https://www.centerforindividualism.org/the-mirage-of-social-justice-part-6-the-concept-of-social-justice-is-the-trojan-horse-through-which-totalitarianism-has-entered/

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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 5 years, 5 months ago
    "That people can live together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common goals was the greatest discovery mankind ever made. Capitalism is its economic expression."
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    • Posted by dukem 5 years, 5 months ago
      I am very interested in the source of this deceptively simple truth, so that I may quote it.
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      • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
        Pure Hayek, with the slightest condensing.

        Law, Legislation and Liberty, Chapter 11

        The possibility of men living together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common concrete aims, and bound only by abstract rules of conduct, was perhaps the greatest discovery mankind ever made. The capitalist system ... grew out of this discovery.
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    • Posted by $ jdg 5 years, 4 months ago
      This is a good statement of classical liberalism. And I agree with it up to a point, but we have passed that point. There is no "live and let live" accommodation possible with those who are willing to use force against our efforts to enjoy and improve our own lives. One can only fight them or surrender to them.
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    • Posted by DrZarkov99 5 years, 5 months ago
      Is this an Ayn Rand quote?
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      • Posted by $ jdg 5 years, 4 months ago
        ROFL! Rand's statement rejecting cooperation with libertarians flies directly in the face of it. More likely one of the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers was the source.
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      • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
        Pure Hayek, with the slightest condensing.

        Law, Legislation and Liberty, Chapter 11

        The possibility of men living together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common concrete aims, and bound only by abstract rules of conduct, was perhaps the greatest discovery mankind ever made. The capitalist system ... grew out of this discovery.
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      • Posted by Solver 5 years, 5 months ago
        Here is an interesting Ayn Rand quote,

        “What are the nature and the causes of modern tribalism? Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. It is a logical consequence of modern philosophy. If men accept the notion that reason is not valid, what is to guide them and how are they to live?

        Obviously, they will seek to join some group—any group—which claims the ability to lead them and to provide some sort of knowledge acquired by some sort of unspecified means. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing, but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group—they will be pulled obediently to join a group. But which group? Well, if you believe that you have no mind and no moral value, you cannot have the confidence to make choices—so the only thing for you to do is to join an unchosen group, the group into which you were born, the group to which you were predestined to belong by the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient power of your body chemistry.

        This, of course, is racism. But if your group is small enough, it will not be called “racism”: it will be called “ethnicity.”
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    • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
      Yes, I thought that was a powerful endorsement, and perhaps add that this greatest discovery is related to the invention of money.
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  • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
    Large hierarchies such as corporations and governments are selling unity. We are being conditioned to be members of tribes with a common purpose.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 5 years, 5 months ago
      "Large hierarchies [..] are selling unity."
      Selling labor to a business is having a job. (It's an often under-rated arrangement b/c the person selling the labor takes no risk.)
      If you do the work for yourself, you own your job.
      If you hire a great team, you own a practice.

      To expand from there, to help more customers, you need to systematize it or develop something that can be sold to a systematized organization. This means having a mission statement, org chart, job description, processes/procedures, and other things that I used to think were just meaningless red tape before I tried to build a business. Now I completely understand the need for those things. My great team and I are not scalable, or "saleable". The team needs to be a structure into which you can add capital + team members acting with autonomy but within the framework of that structure. It's the Good to Great thing: Get the right people on bus and let them go.

      I struggled mightily with this, and I could not scale it up, which is why I have a job working for someone who could.

      I don't think there anything nefarious about this unity. They need a system, not just a great manager, that kicks the wrong people off the bus, for everyone's benefit.

      "members of tribes"
      I'm a fan of Seth Godin's Tribe. None of this is a creepy passive-voice "being conditioned" or being sold on unity. It's just the way to go from a sandwich shop to Subway.

      All of this is great for business,it's a nightmare to build a society this way. You can't kick people off the bus. As the article says, society needs not to be a system, just a minimal framework for people to interact in mutual trades.

      As the Oingo Boingo son says, you need a lobotomy to want to live in a society that's a system: https://youtu.be/HLKfKhGyRKs
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      • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
        Very good observations, and scaled up businesses are a great human achievement. The problem is one of skin in the game. The more vertical the hierarchy, the less accountability there is for decisions of upper management. I was recently downsized by a large bank. My ideas for serving clients, creating efficiencies, and differentiating our brand were totally ignored because they weren't the ideas of the senior leaders. And they were spending gobs of money strategizing and publishing, none of which was creating value. Of course there's eventually a price to be paid for that. But in the mean time I was expected to input data on new business opportunities and successes to the point of being granular and none of it was considered when the personnel decision was made. I agree that for joining a large organization can be a great thing. But it tends to become a safe haven for the senior team, and to keep their cash flow, they bow down to the PC culture and force employees to submit to tribal tests of diversity and multiculturalism.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 5 years, 5 months ago
          There's a book called Necessary Endings about business relationships that aren't working and need to end. It's hard to quit a job and even harder to fire people, but it's usually a good thing. I got fired 15 years ago after helping to train my Chinese replacement. He was so excited to have the job. I was actually happy it pushed me to try something new, which turned out to be much much better for me. And it worked out for the company too that successfully navigated the transition to a more commoditized business with lower margins. It was kind of painful in some ways, but it's infinitely better than imaging me back in that desk doing the same thing, never having had all the new experiences that came after.

          Regarding multiculturalism and diversity, that's a necessary thing. But my opinion doesn't matter. Whatever they're doing rubbed you the wrong way, so it's time to look for something new.

          My dad was a banker, and he spent decades in the 80s through 00s going through all the series of consolidations and staying ahead of layoffs. I told him in 2000 it wouldn't bother me b/c all I know is tech, where job jumping is a fact of life. He said I can't say it wouldn't bother me for sure b/c I hadn't lived through the banking industry consolidation. He was right about that and most other things.
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          • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
            Thanks for taking the time to reply, and I knew my job was being commoditized, and actually I think its better for the clients in the sense they get a lower cost product. I never pretended to try to outperform the market as all of my colleagues do. But that's what the bank claims to do so I was no longer a good fit. And yes, I've already begun something much more interesting.
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            • Posted by CircuitGuy 5 years, 5 months ago
              I guessed you were onto something better. There's a constant cycle, described in The Innovators Dilemma, of one thing being commoditized while something else is decommoditized.
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  • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
    Pure Hayek, with the slightest condensing.

    Law, Legislation and Liberty, Chapter 11

    The possibility of men living together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common concrete aims, and bound only by abstract rules of conduct, was perhaps the greatest discovery mankind ever made. The capitalist system ... grew out of this discovery.
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  • Posted by $ puzzlelady 5 years, 5 months ago
    Tough nut when the national motto is "E pluribus unum"! Incidentally, "living together in peace to mutual advantage" IS the common goal. Having to suppress predatory urges some see as being deprived of their values and goals. Some individuals not wanting to exercise voluntary self-restraint give rise to rules, laws, regulations and the ultimate police state. "In unity there is strength" leads to group or mob formation, from clan to tribe to ever increasing communal adherence and hierarchy. Nature goes from singularity to complexity, from an ovum to a conglomeration of trillions of cells forming a single person. Retaining a sense of individual self while collaborating with others is the highest stage of evolution and enlightenment.
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    • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
      Great point about the motto. My only response is that we should be united in one thing - Life, liberty, and property. Government's morally justifiable role is to protect those natural rights of the individual. The only things that ensures living together to mutual advantage is capitalism.
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  • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 5 months ago
    Pure Hayek, with the slightest condensing.

    Law, Legislation and Liberty, Chapter 11

    The possibility of men living together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common concrete aims, and bound only by abstract rules of conduct, was perhaps the greatest discovery mankind ever made. The capitalist system ... grew out of this discovery.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 5 years, 5 months ago
    Well, "tribal loyalty" is a great "obstacle", but, on a deeper level, envy, or irrationality made be a greater obstacle. But still, tribalism is a great evil. The article is well-reasoned, but I am not highly optimistic about its convincing people who do not accept the idea of individual rights in the first place. That's what we have to promote first.
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  • Posted by Solver 5 years, 5 months ago
    Ayn Rand said that only individual rights and objective law were needed to prevent the spread of tribalism in America.

    Notice how these two values are under constant attack now.
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  • Posted by term2 5 years, 5 months ago
    I think it is easiest to live together if all the members subscribe to rationality. Objectivist principles would be best.

    In the absence of that, if the members just subscribe to the old fashioned 10 commandments, things would probably work out reasonably.

    In the absence of that, if the members just subscribe to "do unto others what you want others to do unto you", we would be better off than we are now.

    currently we have adopted to mob rule, where jus the hint of believing something that somehow offends another's feelings causes violence to erupt.
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