Great write-up! And I just wondered... Assuming that we first learn to appreciate moral norms in pre-verbal form, are we doomed to fail to capture them in verbal form? It seems to me that the conflict brewing over the past couple of centuries that could be seen as coming to a head between Marxist and Capitalist ideologies is precisely around the question of how to put into a propositional form that is well reasoned and understandable (and shared) the notion of "fair play", such that in a naturally competitive environment, the value of applying meritocratic principles is upheld, while at the same time the value of then not assuming the best (or natural!) outcome is for the winner to take it all *all the time*, is also integrated into the propositional rules. We have seemingly settled on a very crummy and poorly functioning version of central government deciding to use taxation as the implementation of "30% of the time" rule, by which some part of the earnings of the more capable are given to the less capable; but by formalizing it this way, and leaving the decision to a bureaucratic apparatus rather than the people (or rats) "at play", it creates an unsavory incentive structure that, as we can observe now, fosters a victimhood ideology or cult, in which the person with the strongest claim of persistent oppression gets to extract concessions from the community, at the risk of damaging the social fabric. Would love to read more on this topic!!
Great write-up! And I just wondered... Assuming that we first learn to appreciate moral norms in pre-verbal form, are we doomed to fail to capture them in verbal form? It seems to me that the conflict brewing over the past couple of centuries that could be seen as coming to a head between Marxist and Capitalist ideologies is precisely around the question of how to put into a propositional form that is well reasoned and understandable (and shared) the notion of "fair play", such that in a naturally competitive environment, the value of applying meritocratic principles is upheld, while at the same time the value of then not assuming the best (or natural!) outcome is for the winner to take it all *all the time*, is also integrated into the propositional rules. We have seemingly settled on a very crummy and poorly functioning version of central government deciding to use taxation as the implementation of "30% of the time" rule, by which some part of the earnings of the more capable are given to the less capable; but by formalizing it this way, and leaving the decision to a bureaucratic apparatus rather than the people (or rats) "at play", it creates an unsavory incentive structure that, as we can observe now, fosters a victimhood ideology or cult, in which the person with the strongest claim of persistent oppression gets to extract concessions from the community, at the risk of damaging the social fabric. Would love to read more on this topic!!