thinking about society rn

consider the following

many interactions in society are governed by implicit contracts, or explicit contracts with implicit implications ("incomplete contracts")

im not talking about Rousseau's garbage here; more along an explicitly economic line

see eg this (very dry) gem https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0521597137/ 

this came to mind because several minutes ago I poured some grease down the kitchen sink

nothing in my lease prevents me from doing this, and it is certainly more convenient to pour grease down the sink than to spend a minute finding a container for the grease and putting it in the trash sealed

it is however bad for the pipes

if I owned the building I would have taken a moment to dispose of the grease properly

I currently rent, but one month ago I still would have put it in the trash

unfortunately, in the ensuring period, my landlord violated an implicit element of our contract: "don't be a dick"

there are still elements of the building that I am incentivized to care about because they are protected by my deposit or by explicit terms of the lease, but because the landlord Defected this is the limit to which I am willing to big-c Cooperate

and this is bad for both of us, because the cost of replacing the pipes in the building is far greater than the $25 the landlord strong armed from me; and I was happy to pay epsilon seconds to not degrade the property in exchange for not being strongarmed https://twitter.com/_djpn/status/1387940764278149120?s=19

why would the landlord do this?

well frankly he has no idea who I am, no context for my rental history, and apparently no bandwidth to read his fucking emails

he's operating at scale and impersonally. for him this was Tuesday

anyway generalizing, it seems to me that scaled organizations necessarily have a difficult time adhering to implicit contractual terms when interacting with individuals

firms employ managers to facilitate this and the best managers keep firms and employees Cooperating

nonlocal governments however struggle here. most individuals mean nothing to them until they stop paying taxes or become Inconvenient, and their main mode of interfacing is rigid bureaucracy

do you enjoy calls from the FBI or the IRS?

so basically a major problem of government is cultivating a relationship with its citizens that is Cooperative to avoid these contracting problems

governments can do this by not imposing hateful terms, by keeping its operation as local as possible, by keeping the contract space predictable and limited, and by cultivating a sense of shared intetest and identity

noting all of this it seems like (i) representative governments probably have advantages over nonrepresentative, (ii) the US really has probably fucked up by nationalizing and bureaucratizing everything instead of keeping most operation small scale and devolved to localities

tldr today im mad about the twentieth century thanks for listening