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It's interesting to wonder about why norms degrade at scale. Intuition tells me it's because stink-eye doesn't scale. Defectors in a small org pay a price exter

It's interesting to wonder about why norms degrade at scale. Intuition tells me it's because stink-eye doesn't scale. Defectors in a small org pay a price external to the game, aka "reputational damage". But members of large organizations rarely suffer this, because they are strangers, and because "they are just doing their job". A half-formed thought, but perhaps it's half-useful.

rawgabbit 1y ago
When you are the 900 pound gorilla, "reputational damage" is no longer an effective check against bad behavior. This is the exact motivation for the trust-busting movement in the early 20th century. Now the US has regressed and we are in another gilded age.
TFYS 1y ago
In the book "The Logic of Collective Action" that's recognized as one of the reasons for why large organizations are unable to produce public goods without setting up some separate, selective incentives for the individuals. When society is composed of mostly large organizations, nothing can be done without either forcing people to do it (government) or using money as an incentive (corporations). In small groups it's possible for the group to act in the best interest of everyone (produce public good) without having any other incentives for the individual, and a part of the reason is the effect on reputation for non-participants. Maybe this transition to large groups means that it's harder to produce public goods, since producing them now always requires setting up a separate system of incentives, which is hard and can be gamed.
AppleBananaPie 1y ago
I think this is what you're saying but in different words - larger scale makes people more anonymous which purely benefits selfish behavior (or specifically those who naturally employ it whenever possible). And by stink-eye people who did this a long time ago I'm sure were just gotten rid of because there are many types of people (though individually rare) the only way to deal with them is to not deal with them. My personal belief is society is far too naive of extreme selfish personalities and they have infested every aspect of modern society and are actively making others more selfish. Thank you for your half formed thought :)

rawgabbit 1y ago

When you are the 900 pound gorilla, "reputational damage" is no longer an effective check against bad behavior. This is the exact motivation for the trust-busting movement in the early 20th century. Now the US has regressed and we are in another gilded age.

TFYS 1y ago

In the book "The Logic of Collective Action" that's recognized as one of the reasons for why large organizations are unable to produce public goods without setting up some separate, selective incentives for the individuals. When society is composed of mostly large organizations, nothing can be done without either forcing people to do it (government) or using money as an incentive (corporations). In small groups it's possible for the group to act in the best interest of everyone (produce public good) without having any other incentives for the individual, and a part of the reason is the effect on reputation for non-participants. Maybe this transition to large groups means that it's harder to produce public goods, since producing them now always requires setting up a separate system of incentives, which is hard and can be gamed.

AppleBananaPie 1y ago

I think this is what you're saying but in different words - larger scale makes people more anonymous which purely benefits selfish behavior (or specifically those who naturally employ it whenever possible). And by stink-eye people who did this a long time ago I'm sure were just gotten rid of because there are many types of people (though individually rare) the only way to deal with them is to not deal with them. My personal belief is society is far too naive of extreme selfish personalities and they have infested every aspect of modern society and are actively making others more selfish. Thank you for your half formed thought :)