adpmsm @ adpmsm @lemm.ee

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6 days ago

Ah so then the end goal of a totalitarian country would be the most good for a small group of insiders. I think this makes sense from a game theory perspective -- the reason people would support the defector (in the prisoner's dilemma) is because they think he has the capacity to succeed and they believe he'll bring his supporters along with him into the group of beneficiaries of inequality. I think in most of human history it might have worked. So there's some dysfunctional thing going on where the people support the party who is exploiting them in exchange for a hoped-for advantage over the other members of the exploited class. (Like the kapos in the Nazi concentration camps)

Edit: I think in Primo Levi's book Survival in Auschwitz he says something about how the Nazi concentration camp reflected the wider social reality that is the concentration camp of the world. I couldn't find the exact quote yet but it looks like his essay "The Grey Zone" in his book The Drowned and the Saved makes a similar argument (I found some good quotes here).

Nice! Reminds me of the argument of Thrasymachus in The Republic (338e-339c):

"And they declare what they have made -- what is to their own advantage -- to be just for their subjects, and they punish anyone who goes against this as lawless and unjust. This, then, is what I say justice is, the same in all cities, the advantage of the established rule... [A]nyone who reasons correctly will conclude that [justice] is the same everywhere, namely, the advantage of the stronger."