Sep
12th
2018
Wholesome Rage: Power Through the People · 5:53pm Sep 12th, 2018
New article up that I"m especially proud of
This one's a kind of explanation on how and why large groups of people form. What do the Yakuza, the Crips, the Black Panthers and #MeToo all have in common, and why do so many people do things that they know are so bad for everyone else?
Also, this is one of the articles where I actually do a reading of it with the new microphone. Help me write off a business expense, and see what my voice actually sounds like if you haven't heard it before.
I'd like to discuss a few things in there, if I may, Numbers.
This isn't QUITE accurate. The problem isn't so much with overprescription; it is, paradoxically, with under-use, and that changes the dynamic.
What happens is that people are prescribed a full course of antibiotics, they take three-quarters of it, they feel great, they stop. Because they're better, right?
Well, they FEEL better, but the thing they were taking antibiotics to stop isn't dead yet. In fact, the bits that are left are the toughest, deadliest bacterial motherfuckers in their body, the ones that survived the initial system flush and grimly held on.
And those guys survive, because the patient didn't take the full course. And they reproduce. And they spread. And they out-compete.
This isn't something caused by the overprescription of antibiotics. It is actually perfectly okay to issue someone antibiotics "just to be safe" as long as they take the entire course. If they weren't ill, no harm is done. If they were, they get better.
This isn't a collective action problem from the doctors side, it's one from the patient side.
Having said all that, there IS a problematic vector for overuse of antibiotics, and that's in livestock. It is totally okay to flush a livestock animals system with antibiotics just to be safe. What isn't okay is to deliberately keep livestock in conditions such that they're going to be constantly infected and sick, and keep them alive by constantly keeping them filled to the brim with antibiotics in a kind of ghoulish equilibrium. That's going to produce resistant strains... and more to the point, the dregs of those antibiotics are going to make it into the people who consume that livestock. If they had a low-grade infection at the time, unbeknownst to them, those dregs are gonna teach that infection how to adapt.
Debatable depending on your metrics and timeline, and the models of the dictatorship and the democracy in question. A number of incredibly autocratic societal models persisted for hundreds of years and produced broadly shared prosperity, growth, and security; a number of democratic (or otherwise communitarian) societal models imploded due to heinous dysfunction almost instantly after they were created.
The primary practical benefit that democracy provides over autocracy (as opposed to the moral and ethical benefits) is that it provides a mechanism for the government to fall and be replaced by another without the gutters running red with blood. In an autocratic system this is REALLY hard to manage, because there isn't actually a framework for "what is your option if the leader is mad, ill, incompetent, or all of the above?" In a divine-right monarchy, the only lawful answer is "wait for the monarch to die, hope the next one is better." In an oligarchy you have to wait for a whole BUNCH of people to die or at least be politically outmaneuvered. This heavily incentivizes pursuing... extralegal... methods of toppling the government and forming a new one.
A democracy presents stakeholders in the polity with an option for toppling the government on a periodic basis and replacing it with one more to their liking WITHOUT requiring them to launch a dangerous, deadly, coup d'etat. They channel their energy into that rather than knife-sharpening.
You meant PVP, right?
I can't speak to the Yakuza or the Triads. But as someone of Sicilian descent with relatives who were in the actual-factual mob (and in fact with relatives who were in the IRISH mob on the distaff side of my ancestry) I can tell you that this... not the case when it comes to the Italian Mafia.
Oh, there was an element of it here in the United States. My people really were a despised ethnic minority and the Mafia really did provide protection for them (to an extent) that the state wasn't.
But.
The Italian mob in this country was largely an export of the mob back in Sicily. (The old-school Mafia was a Sicily and Napoli phenomenon. Most Italian-Americans are Sicilian or Neapolitan.) And those Italian crime syndicates absolutely and completely did not have their genesis in the form of despises minorities coming together to provide community policing. Their genesis was formed by local elites, in the liminal period between the collapse of feudalism and the rise of the modern industrial state, forming gangs of thugs and hoodlums, reminiscent in some ways of the Condottieri of old, to enforce their will; to commit crimes on their behalf and to exact vengeance when it came to others committing crimes against THEM. They did provide a measure of order and stability... but almost never genuine protection, except to the wealthy elite.
Eventually, the Italian state got a grip on things when it came to basic order-keeping... but by that point a group of hardened thugs with immense connections and power hard already formed, and they were loathe to give up their livelihoods.
When Sicilians and Neapolitans (basically, southern Italians) began emigrating to the United States in large numbers, these organized crime syndicates came with them. They took on a different flavor here, at least at first; much more communitarian, much less brutal. (The Sicilian Mafia is IMMENSELY brutal and the Cammora are worse.) The stuff you've seen in The Godfather isn't entirely off the mark; Puzo sourced his materiel well. But make no mistake; this syndicates were outgrowths of the syndicates from the old country, and their first priority was moneymaking. The decision to adopt a kinder, gentler outlook in the New World was almost entirely a political one. Among other reasons, operating as they had back in Italy would have attracted the attention of white authorities and a brutal crackdown, and that's bad for business.
4936471
Hey thanks for the response:
1) I was under the impression for the antibiotics situation that both aspects were the case. Overprescription and people wanting to save their course for later if they get sick again. But the latter wasn't as relevant.
2) I thought player versus everyone was the more hardcore PvP variant fuck
3) I think the actual benefit of democracy isn't that, though it is a big one. It's how many people's support you need to gain and maintain power. In theory the more people you need to form a power coalition, the less capable you are of maintaining it with corruption and bribes and other direct payoff tactics.
I say "In theory," because capital and party systems are obviously heavily undermining that
4) Yeah I meant mafia in the US more so for that one. Sicilies mercenary history is a bit more complicated and interesting. It's why I was more leaning to the Tong for that segment, as opposed to the Triad, as well for very similar reasons.
Arguably the minority not being being protected though a legitimate state were "the wealthy". That's a dangerous one.
PVE means Player versus Enemy, as in the programmed enemies of the game. PVP, is player versus player.