What is society? It sounds like an obvious question, but modern economics rarely answers it well.
Too often economics starts with the idea of isolated individuals making rational choices in markets, as if society somehow emerges afterwards. I argue that this has the relationship completely the wrong way round.
We are not born as independent individuals. We become who we are through our relationships with other people. Families, education, communities, trust, language and shared knowledge all come before markets. Society creates the conditions in which individuals can flourish, not the other way around. In other words, society does not emerge from independent individuals. Independent individuals emerge from society.
Much too Borg for my liking in fact.
It sounds entirely rational and a statement of the obvious. I can’t see anything objectionable.
Families (if you choose to remain in one), education, communities, trust, language* and shared knowledge are all a matter of choice. And choice is the market.
*The language you speak is entirely the result of market choice & competition. Why modern English replaced Norse, Saxon & Norman. And why I speak French & Spanish.
Spud can only see markets operating in shopping. Competition & choice underlie everything.
That’s because you know the motive behind the words. What the words say is quite sensible in a way Murphy doesn’t get. Modern free market based economics and individualism came out of our society (or our society’s ancestors, if you will) and not out of all the Shitholeistans.
Everything is downstream of culture.
Indeed. So-called ‘Universal Values’ beloved of Globalists evolved solely in NW Europe.
He’s misusing “rational” again. And I assume by “society” he means “communism”.
Exactly. It’s a euphemism, since he can no longer use the phrases like “the Marxist/Leninist way of life” or “a land built on the idea that we are all equal in the eyes of the Revolution”.
Equating this to “society” or the Borg collective is tame by comparison.
What is society? It sounds like an obvious question, but modern economics rarely answers it well.
Modern economics doesn’t need to answer the question it was definitively answered a few years ago:
We become who we are through our relationships with other people. Families, education, communities, trust, language and shared knowledge all come before markets.
Yes, society is an emergent feature of people interecting with each other, and markets are an emergent feature of people trading with each other. It’s not a “thing” in and of itself that is externally controlable. And yet in the very next sentence he completely loses it.
A perfect society would create interdependent individuals not independent individuals.
A truly independent individual can survive without society.
And lo, it has. That’s what a market economy is.
Spud could use the same argument to say the nervous system came before pain, the UN before countries existed and multicellular organisms before cellular. It’s bollocki of course
Have to disappoint you… the nervous system *did* come before pain..
In fact “pain” as a sensation requires at least a semblance of consciousness in the context we humans use the term.
And you need a nervous system to transmit the signals to begin with.
In general, you’ll only find the sensation of “pain” as we understand/experience it in higher vertebrates, notably the critters with a decent level of intelligence.
Doesn’t mean anything else, down to single-celled organisms, doesn’t notice feedback about injury or adverse things happening to their body, nor that they don’t react to such stimuli..
They just don’t *experience* “pain” in the way we do.
And have some very interesting ways to cope with it if it happens, some of which have led to some very effective medical treatments against chronic/acute pain in medicine.
Wished I’d edited that to religion came before morals tbf. Certainly, if there is pain in your body only felt by a local nervous system, because you don’t have a central one connected all the way through to your brain yet, then whether that is pain is arguable. You might ignore it and die though, which is a pain for the species with hypothetical unconnected local systems.
Now I feel like hitting a man when he’s down, but……
“Morals” evolved before “Religion”.
The group dynamics in social animals are “Mores”. Else the social group wouldn’t function.
Humans are unique ( afaik ) in having invented a thing like “Religion”.
But social animals…. a dime a dozen….
oh, the other one is “war”…
Our cousins, the chimps, *do* practice it. In many ways they’re more brutal than us **.
To a lesser extent other monkey species, especially the omnivorous ones, do pursue to extermination, but …. not that often, and only when pressed..
Other species… will kill in self-defense or straight-up competition for resources, but not out of principle. Too dangerous….
** Planet of the Apes is a Prophesy… Anyone trying to imbue true human-level intelligence in chimps should be hung, drawn, and quartered…
They are D.A.N.G.E.R.O.U.S. psychopaths…
Who are, as adults, adjusting for size… 5-8 times stronger than us, and could club us to death with our own arm after having ripped it of… not adjusting for size…
I’d rather raise a tiger cub ( who will eventually see you as Dinner…) than a chimp baby ( whose “play” after two years will leave you hospitalised, if not in a casket. And that’s *before* they hit actual Puberty at three years and… try to Adult… according to their Nature…)
O/T: OfCommunist being even stupider: Ofcom Wants American Police to Collect Its Speech Fine.
Good luck with that!
Honestly… 4Chan should countersue OfCommunist, in the US.
It’ll be a hoot.
Given its userbase crowdfunding it will be a Project X in and of itself, giving joy to many.
And as pointed out in the article, OfCommunist is on very dodgy legal ground, ignoring some basic realities about US law and sovereignty. Possibly even…criminal….
Some judge + jury will have some *tremendous* fun with this, possibly landing US-sized fines/compensation on OfCommunist.
Which, by their own logic applied here, they would be *required* to pay… Dodge it, and they’re shooting their own “legal” case in the foot. *And* reinforcing the reason for the fine…
Would make for a nice bonus for 4Chan and a pretty embarassing diplomatic incident.
I don’t think the pencil-pushers at OfCommunist have a clue about how *deep* the hole is they’ve dug themselves in.
4Chan is actually being *nice* with just replying with Hamsters…
Not just basic realities of US law, but basic realities of law in itself. The whole point – the DEFINING point – being a foreign country is that other people’s laws do not – CAN not – apply there. If other people’s laws applied, you wouldn’t be a foreign country.
Surely markets and other social institutions all come out of the same human impulse for voluntary interaction?
But I suppose someone who has fallen out with every group he has ever been involved with can’t understand that.
We are not born as independent individuals.
??? We are born with certain inalienable rights.
We become who we are through our relationships with other people.
A minor part. Nurture vs nature is just the foundation. WE MAKE OURSELVES.
Families, education, communities, trust, language and shared knowledge all come before markets.
So?
Society creates the conditions in which individuals can flourish, not the other way around. In other words, society does not emerge from independent individuals. Independent individuals emerge from society.
‘Society’ is a female invention.
Spud makes Obama’s “You didn’t build that” argument. Since government built the street in front of your business, government is entitled to your business.