Bucky answers Babble Challenge: 50 thoughts on stable, cooperative institutions

[Bucky]

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Root causes of cooperation

1. Desire for meaning

2. Desire for community

3. Desire for status

4. Cultural expectations

5. Strong leadership

6. Friendships

7. Local reputation

8. Financial incentives

9. Individuals fighting within the system to increase cooperation

10. Desire to help others

11. Warm fuzzies

12. National pride

13. Fear of consequences

14. Long term rewards

15. Individual cooperative units (whole institution not necessarily required)

16. People acting out the part of a model employee

17. Social pressures

18. Value creation and trading

19. Understanding that cooperation is needed for any large project to succeed

20. Punishment of defectors

21. Cooperative institutions select for cooperative people, cooperation abounds

Why past was (or looks) better

1. Low simulacra levels in population

2. Rose tinted glasses for the good old days

3. Only success stories lasting (selection bias)

4. All the old institutions which focussed on the short term are long dead

5. Becoming less cooperative is easy, becoming more so is hard

6. Old institutions have had a long time to go down the slippery slope

7. Comfortable life nowadays incentivizes less care about things

8. No recent experience of war to bring people together

9. Increased market competition

10. Moloch

11. Financial stresses are lower nowadays

12. Easier to find a new job so less requirement to optimise in your current one

13. Reputation is less important than it used to be

14. Cultural expectations are aimed more towards individual success

15. Capitalism has generally won over communism

16. People getting their feelings of self-esteem elsewhere

17. Internet allows easy escapism

18. General ease of entertainment means less focus on finding meaning in work

19. Reputations less linked to friends and neighbours – less social pressure

20. Non-conformism being an ideal

21. Families being less unified – less experience of cooperation

22. Different strengths of unions

23. Religious ties

24. Experience of cooperation from religious upbringing

25. Cooperation seen as a key virtue in the past

26. Culture was more implicit, less explicit – does implicit perform better?

27. More homogenous population

28. More people now in cities, less local knowledge of individuals

29. Increased partisanship

30. More anti-heroes in culture – ok to succeed by being bad?