Posted on 06/29/2006 4:40:30 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Yup! I would have made it too, had I not skimmed the article first.
In Before Toilet Paper? Right stuff for this stuff.
Here is one little article...
http://www.grange.org/history.htm
And one more article...
http://www.wa-grange.org/grange_different_fraternity.htm
Nice...I had not seen that before...
This model might have some bearing on reality if "altruism" ("cooperation") were a heritable trait. Alternatively, if there were some other mechanism that assured a high probablity of offspring of "cooperators" also being "cooperators" themselves, this might just make sense.
I don't know what kind of traits might be involved, so I'll speculate. One, a greater tendency for group bonding, and two, a lowered tendency for hair-trigger aggression. That might do it. But I'm just guessing.
What is this Freakonomics? First I see the reference to it on a baby name thread, now this¿
I'm sure if that factor was thrown in it would shift even more toward the cooperators.
But it's neat to see these results showing with the fewer criteria used.
bump
Thanks for the ping!
Its a book, written by an economist on some oddball kind of studies. One study said that people who cheat get ahead at work.
Another one claimed that abortion for the last 30 years lead to the drop in crime, for which Bill Bennett was attacked when he repeated it on his radio show.
It's a microwave-type oven using gamma rays to heat food. Originally, it was pronounced "G-range," but over the years it was simply shortened to "grange." Because of the inherent dangers, such devices were kept in separate buildings, or "grange halls."
</asshole dad mode>
A little clarification is in order. My father used to come up with stories like this to mess with his kids' heads. For instance, he had me believing The Wizard of Oz went from black and white to color after the first 16 minutes because the crew ran out of black and white film.
I basically do the same thing to my kids nowadays (the infamous "beach leach" comes to mind).
"They have no intellect."
Oh crap, let's hope that isn't a key evolutionary factor for the survival of the Democrat.
I am confused. Is the United Nations an example of people working cooperatively together for the common good or of a bunch of a parasites whose sole goal in life (other than picking up a taxpayer funded paycheck) is to prevent the fruits of liberty and capitalism from being spread throughout the world.
Below is a common model of cooperation brought into question its ends and means.
Proclaiming to save persons and society from running headlong to destruction politicians and bureaucrats create about 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. State government create their own barrage of laws and regs each year.
Yet, how is it that for more than a hundred years, without the "benefit" of the next year's new laws and the laws in subsequent years that persons and society increasingly prospered? How do we increasingly prosper to day with out the "benefit" of new laws and regulations yet to come next year, five years and fifteen years from now?
Also, with the increasing mountain of laws virtually every person breaks the law several times a year. How is it that with all that lawlessness that persons and society have not run headlong over the cliff-edge to destruction? Not to mention that if it were physically possible to apprehend every lawbreaker -- including judges, lawyers, police, prosecutors, bus drivers, grocery clerks etc. -- next week, society would come to a screeching halt -- driving it over the cliff-edge.
Capitalism and the workers that fuel it are the host. Politicians and bureaucrats are parasites living off the host. They leech just enough to gain unearned paychecks, prestige and power. Sure to not so encumber/drain the host where it reduces its production of goods and services beyond that which would leave the parasites to perish. For the parasitical elites cannot produce much needed, life sustaining necessities.
Politics is not the solution. Politics is the problem.
Calling it bizarre would be an understatement. It's lethal. It's the anti-civilization.
Rational and honest principle is strength -- an asset. Irrational and dishonest principle is weakness - a liability.
[“In our model, you can get groups of different sizes – and cooperators seem to flourish in smaller groups,” Flatt said]
If their claim is true that this property is applicable to human sociology, then this might explain why a communal or "communist" philosophy works fine when it's limited to a handful of people (like family groups) but fails when the numbers increase to more than a few dozen.
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