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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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We live in a world where you're designed to fail, and yet suicide is thought of as selfish, and wrong, and you're an asshole if you're comfortable with the idea of people doing it.
All so a very select few, who have in no way earned it, get to hoard all the worlds wealth. While modern day slavery not only exists, but is promoted within these circles. Just yesterday there was a post on Lemmy about how some CEO thinks that Gen Z should work long hours, doing anything their asked, all for free. So people on Lemmy make their jokes, and nothing is solved. That woman still fully believes she's entitled to slave labor. Other CEOs will use slave labor in other countries, because those countries don't have any kinds of protections in place to protect humans from that type of behavior. These people will fully use and abuse those under them, for FUN. They don't even need to get a financial benefit for it. Just the fact that they can treat people like dirt, and face no reprocussions, is enough to get their jollies off.
And it's not new. This has been happening for centures. It will keep happening for MORE centuries. And all this talk about "Vote for this guy, vote for that guy" ultimately doesn't do much since the politicians don't have any real power anyways. Good or bad, all these "plans" politicians talk about are just that....plans. Plans that never come to pass. I can remember Bill Clinton saying in 1991 that he would be open to reevaluating how marijuanna in this country is handled from a legal perspective. If he had made it legal, MILLIONS of citizens (and no, I'm not exaggerating) wouldn't have criminal records. Police in this country are trained to look for people who can't legally defend themselves, and create a problem that puts them in jail. Where you're legally a slave. Again, not exaggerating. It's literally how the 13th amendment is worded. Slavery is legal if you become a prisoner to the state.
And so with all of this happening in the world, your first thought is "Ok, so how do we change it?" and that's the part that no one is willing to admit. You DON'T change it. You have no power. You never did. You're voting on an election for a person who either way doesn't have power. It's the way this country, and every other country has been set up for longer than any of us have been alive. The world is, and always has been, designed around the profit of others suffering. So it will continue until long past your dying breath. This is the system working as intended. Nothing is wrong in the eyes of those who run things....other than they want more of what little you do have.
There have been many periods in history often referred to as a "Golden Era" which is location based, but generally only came to pass when people started doing something about their poor place in life.
I've never quite understood the prisoners dilemma. Millions vs a few, id definitely bet on the millions. It just sucks that we are all much to comfy to do anything about it (and half of that million would now happily fight for the few)
Its not comfort keeping us from doing anything, its that we're collectively too tired and stressed and wondering how we're going to keep making ends meet to organize and revolt. To perfectly illustrate the prisoner's dilemma: if the working class of the US banded together and did a general strike, we'd have what we want/need within a week due to what that would do to the economy and rich people's lines not going up. But too many of us would readily step into the spot that was just vacated by a striker because they're hungry and care more about survival than actions that would do more for them long term.
The way the Prisoner's Dilemma works is the idea that multiple players in a game choosing what is individually rational for them does not actually result in the best outcome for them as a group.
The whole point is that from the perspective of a single prisoner, ratting out the other guy is the best option, independent of what that other guy does.
So, with two prisoners unable to coordinate their strategies (isolated), they go with what is individually the most rational strategy, even though the is suboptimal, whereas if they were not isolated and could coordinate their moves, they would choose an absolutely optimal outcome for themselves as a group.
If one prisoner rats the other out, and the other does not, the rat gets a superficially better outcome, whereas the trusting one that was betrayed gets absolutely screwed.
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If you did a game theory version of a Revolution, this problem is worse by orders of magnitude.
Sure, yes, if millions of people actually overthrow a broken system and establish a more equitable one, almost every one (non billionaires) are better off.
But if only one person revolts, they are jailed or die.
Add to that that the planning and coordination of trying to organize a million 'prisoners' to all revolt is itself a crime, and it is no wonder that such things rarely happen.
The idea is basically that for an individual, expecting, assuming, hoping for cooperation from the other players is individually risky, likely to be costly, thus, it is less likely to occur.
If your plan only works if millions go along with you, and if millions don't, you end up dead or in jail, and you have no real way of knowing that millions will go along with you... then for most people the shitty status quo is preferable to death or jail.
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There are situations in real life and in game theory where styles of cooperation, or of testing loyalty in a repeated series of games that can lead to cooperation, do exist, but the studies on this are basically fancy math showing how difficult trust and cooperation are to achieve, and how easily trust is lost and never regained once betrayed.