Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

Multiheaded

Politics Discussion Thread September 2012 — LessWrong

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Is politicization of the personal inevitable? My model is that there are groups of people with common personal-life interests, such as raising the status of one sub-group or another. Those who can band together to exert coordinated social pressure, win. So unless there is some friction to group formation, politicization seems inevitable.

Note that the nature of the groups that are politically relevant may change (ie the relevant group may be an extended family, an occupation, a religious sect, a social class, etc.)

buybuydandavis14y30

Those who can band together to exert coordinated social pressure, win. So unless there is some friction to group formation, politicization seems inevitable.

Much like mugging is inevitable unless people in general band together against it.

In the war of all against all, people might wish to declare a truce to end the war, but they better be prepared to retaliate against those who break the truce, or they should expect to see it broken more and more, until even those who would prefer a truce feel it's not a realistic option and the truce ceases to exist.

3[anonymous]14y

There is no reason to expect different stable coalitions of such groups require equally large footprints of politicized subjects. Let alone that all such subjects are equally important for the common good! I'm saying that ceteris paribus the less politicized the result of a such a collation is the better off society as a whole will be. Perhaps stable coalitions requiring small footprints have other remarkably negative externalities that nearly always outweigh the gains in areas of life free from politicization. But considering just what a horrible cancer on action and the greater good politicking seems to be, I'm somewhat dubious this is commonly the case. People adopting a general stance of opposing "the personal is the political" subsidize smaller footprint coalitions. Naturally such subsidizing has very small if not tiny effect, it still probably beats out the effect from voting also I would claim that under current circumstances it serves as a useful filter to finding interesting people.

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