Forum Post: The need for "reality interpretation" in evaluating support for changes to competitive or ethical standards

http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/

Do you think it's a good thing that people can be manipulated by advertisements into buying things they don't need, or by the words of a politician into supporting a war that isn't necessary?

A fundamental tension has existed for most of human history between improvements to the framework of society that allow people to make accurate decisions in pursuit of their goals and the awareness of the limits of this framework. Periodically, major events happen that cause people to realize that the system in which they live does not eliminate mistakes, but this knowledge is not properly conveyed between generations and so history tends to repeat itself.

During the periods leading up to significant change, reliance on the system means that a majority of people are often wrong on things of varying degrees of importance or complexity. In these cases a simple democratic polling is not enough to determine reality. Some portion of the population will have enough experience to be confident in their relative ability and intelligent enough to understand the situation, but difficulty in proving this means that it is often more rewarding to focus on one's own goals instead of those of society, especially when either category includes goals that are time-sensitive.

With this general outline of the problem, it has been impossible for people to agree whether efforts to improve the accuracy of social standards are a moral requirement, or whether things like dishonesty are justified in the pursuit of legitimate goals.

The significant consequence is a distortion in feedback regarding proposed changes to social standards, such as the 'rightness' of patriotism and nationalism leading up to the first World War—and more recently the nearly unanimous decision of the United States Congress to invade Afghanistan—or the idea that hard work is the best way to help the economy during periods of high unemployment. Dissenting arguments are stifled by the wave of popular sentiment, while people who expect a bad outcome avoid speaking because they also tend to be aware of the nuances of the situation and unlikely to react to a current problem without an understanding of how to resolve the underlying historical trend towards inaccurate judgements.

In other words, people allow bad things to happen because of the possibility that society will learn from the experience and, perhaps, find a permanent solution.

However, this does not only affect ethical standards which involve physical harm to an individual. Our goals are often emotional or social, and measures of competitive success that allow these goals to be accomplished are subject to the same historical trend of systematic bias towards inaccuracy as time goes by, with inaction by those who could spend effort to prevent this drift having the same role. The difference is that the variety of competitive standards is much larger, so the concentration of the population which could prevent a decrease in accuracy can vary widely between different communities and over time.

For both competitive standards and purely ethical ones, a lack of awareness of the widespread extent of the problem of ensuring long-term accuracy can lead to an assumption that there is, in fact, no moral justification for ignoring any particular problem and that inaction by those who should have the ability to resolve an issue is due to selfish or even malicious intent. As a result, the number of social issues in a society tends to grow when an increasing degree of accuracy in the framework of society causes people to assume its general reliability, because the motive of ignoring current problems in hope of a permanent solution cannot be distinguished from actual selfish intent unless such a permanent solution is found.

Competitive standards, however, have an additional aspect: people are more clearly separated into winners and losers, instead of clear gain for all involved from cooperation. Altering the rules of scoring will cause gain for one person but loss for another. If economic success is seen as a competitive standard, and not an ethical matter of physical survival, this would explain much of the apathy that people have toward any change in the 'rules' by which economic success is achieved.

But any game is only accurate if everyone is trying to win. Just like Calvinball, real life is a game where we can change the rules and even the purpose of playing. And if this measure of success is to have any accuracy as a measure of ability the people who decide to play should be helping society, instead of right now where it's easy for some people to earn more than they could ever spend in a useful way.

Work conservation, where people are given the option to work less at a higher average compensation rate, would encourage more people to participate in the 'game' of financial success by causing the flow of money from purchases by the rich to be redirected to the working poor instead of circulating back to the rich through the purchase of brands. In doing so, it would also address the ethical problems of high unemployment and inequality and the social problems those cause. The fact that popular support for this policy option has been muted should not deter its adoption, when an analysis of the practical effects of the concept shows that it would have the intended result of fixing unemployment despite its changes to the game of economic success played by individuals as well as by the entire nation.