Oligopsony comments on A Kick in the Rationals: What hurts you in your LessWrong Parts? - Less Wrong

24 Post author: sixes_and_sevens 25 April 2012 12:12PM

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Comment author: Oligopsony 25 April 2012 10:50:12PM 2 points [-]

"Back in the day, in Hanson's farmer epoch, public morality was maintained in part by cultivating in people a sense of gratitude towards God/the universe/society/one's parents/the resident nepotist with a sword; that their existence entailed debts that in principle couldn't be repaid. Nowadays under liberalism we've in principle thrown that out but everybody's still linked in a web of very explicit debts, and the web doesn't in principle have a center."

(You might say that this is a massive oversimplification to the extent that it's true, and you'd be right, of course.)