On Kampala Traffic and the Social Contract
On Kampala Traffic and the Social Contract
It's 4.50 pm and you look out the window of your office building and see the traffic mounting. You decided it's time to leave and you jet out to your car as fast as you can. Things seem to be moving pretty well until you reach the 8th circle of hell(That junction on Acacia avenue. The Kabojja school junction. GOD HELP US ALL). As things slow to a crawl, you notice something peculiar but all too common.
Drivers are pulling out of the lane and driving along the shoulders trying to creep up to the front of the line. You shake your head in disbelief hard enough to announce to anyone that might be looking that you disapprove of this action.
However you start to notice that , these people who are jumping out of the snail lane and then forcefully merging ahead , annoying as they might be, are actually getting ahead. If the goal is to get home in one piece as soon as possible, they're winning.
The police don't seem to be stopping them. A few honks and a few drivers trying desperately to jam them from merging yes, but all in all, they're accommodated..So dear reader, what would you do?
Do you pull out and go for it or stay and drive like a good boy or girl?
In his 1651 essay, English Philosopher and sometimes imaginary stuffed Tiger, Thomas Hobbes wrote that "Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" . Stemming from this view of human nature, Hobbes among others espoused a view of morality known as contrarianism or the Social contract theory of ethics.
This view holds that morality and social cohesion is brought about by a contract. an agreement between actors to cooperate because they will be better off in a state of cooperation in the long term than living in a land where the strong simply take what they want and the weak are left to forage. This benefits no one because no matter how strong you are, someone stronger will eventually show up. The weak will eventually gang up on the strong and take them down and the circle of life continues.
Hobbes proclaimed that morality then was an agreement between people on how they should cooperate and deal with the burden of freedom we're born into. Humans are naturally self interested and the most rational approach to living well is to cooperate . This is why we trade instead of steal, we set up rules for social interaction both formal and informal.
And for the most part it makes sense. Civilization is nothing if not a social contract that we have to curtail some of our freedoms because we believe we will be better off together than separate in the long term. We queue up, we respect property rights, we don't slap people that sip their tea loudly though they are philistines and need to be publicly caned.
The social contract led to the creation of government(Wait libertarians, don't leave!!) and the idea of collective benefits such as public social services and infrastructure but also collective costs that we have to pay for. The idea for socialism likely evolved out of this -To each according to their need, from each according to their ability. We're all therefore in implicit contracts we never signed up for-we pay taxes as a virtue of being a citizen of a country for example. But we also in theory should expect police protection against violence and health care.
However, critiques of this approach suggest that rational self interest might lead one to flout the rules and go for themselves instead. Is it really in one's best interest to cooperate. For this let's take a look at the prisoner's dilemma
In the prisoner's dilemma, two prisoners facing a possible 4 year sentence have been offered a deal each by the police concerning a crime they committed together. (The police have shaky evidence and a confession would seal the conviction). The prisoners are put in separate rooms and each given the following offer-Confess and you get a reduced sentence , stay silent and your partner might rat you out and then you get 4 years. If prisoner 1 rats out his partner, he gets 1 year instead of 4 years. Prisoner 1 therefore runs the risk of keeping silent and keeping the "no snitching rule" but suffer the consequences if his partner, prisoner 2 decides to rat him out.
Effectively, if they were in agreement with each other prior not to rat, they would both remain silent and suffer 2 years each. If however, each of them where to look out for their own self interest-each would suffer 3 years each.
The dilemma therefore is , the rational choice for either prisoner is to reduce his chances of suffering consequences by "Ratting".Benefit arises out of not cooperating with his partner in crime. That prisoner will either suffer 1 year if the other prisoner stays silent, or 3 years if the other prisoner rats. Compare this with staying silent which brings the consequences of 2 years if the other prisoner stays silent and 4 years if the other prisoner rats.
Looking at the second image and going back to traffic situation above-you're in car 1 and you see someone in car 2, not cooperating. If you all drove nicely, you'd be home in 20 minutes. If you all drove aggressively you'd get home perhaps in 30 minutes each-albeit with raised anxiety and stress levels. However , what we often observe is a mix of some people trying to "do the right thing" and others doing "the most expedient thing. The aggressive drivers receive our scorn and wrath but rarely suffer any other consequences and often get to where they're going sooner. And leaving the rest of us taking almost twice as long as it should to get to where we're going.
So again I ask, what will you do in traffic? Do you have faith in the social contract and that people will hold to it even when they would benefit more from going their on way on average?
And for the most part it makes sense. Civilization is nothing if not a social contract that we have to curtail some of our freedoms because we believe we will be better off together than separate in the long term. We queue up, we respect property rights, we don't slap people that sip their tea loudly though they are philistines and need to be publicly caned.
The social contract led to the creation of government(Wait libertarians, don't leave!!) and the idea of collective benefits such as public social services and infrastructure but also collective costs that we have to pay for. The idea for socialism likely evolved out of this -To each according to their need, from each according to their ability. We're all therefore in implicit contracts we never signed up for-we pay taxes as a virtue of being a citizen of a country for example. But we also in theory should expect police protection against violence and health care.
However, critiques of this approach suggest that rational self interest might lead one to flout the rules and go for themselves instead. Is it really in one's best interest to cooperate. For this let's take a look at the prisoner's dilemma
In the prisoner's dilemma, two prisoners facing a possible 4 year sentence have been offered a deal each by the police concerning a crime they committed together. (The police have shaky evidence and a confession would seal the conviction). The prisoners are put in separate rooms and each given the following offer-Confess and you get a reduced sentence , stay silent and your partner might rat you out and then you get 4 years. If prisoner 1 rats out his partner, he gets 1 year instead of 4 years. Prisoner 1 therefore runs the risk of keeping silent and keeping the "no snitching rule" but suffer the consequences if his partner, prisoner 2 decides to rat him out.
Effectively, if they were in agreement with each other prior not to rat, they would both remain silent and suffer 2 years each. If however, each of them where to look out for their own self interest-each would suffer 3 years each.
The dilemma therefore is , the rational choice for either prisoner is to reduce his chances of suffering consequences by "Ratting".Benefit arises out of not cooperating with his partner in crime. That prisoner will either suffer 1 year if the other prisoner stays silent, or 3 years if the other prisoner rats. Compare this with staying silent which brings the consequences of 2 years if the other prisoner stays silent and 4 years if the other prisoner rats.
Looking at the second image and going back to traffic situation above-you're in car 1 and you see someone in car 2, not cooperating. If you all drove nicely, you'd be home in 20 minutes. If you all drove aggressively you'd get home perhaps in 30 minutes each-albeit with raised anxiety and stress levels. However , what we often observe is a mix of some people trying to "do the right thing" and others doing "the most expedient thing. The aggressive drivers receive our scorn and wrath but rarely suffer any other consequences and often get to where they're going sooner. And leaving the rest of us taking almost twice as long as it should to get to where we're going.
So again I ask, what will you do in traffic? Do you have faith in the social contract and that people will hold to it even when they would benefit more from going their on way on average?
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