Deep accurate thinking vs. jumping right to hope

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For those who really do want to benefit the world in some way, their contribution will be multiplied to be much greater if they employ "deep thinking in reality, with full facts, and full reasoning."  That will be a great gift to others for those who so choose it.

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We are so easily drawn into simplified thinking and hope - and then we become ardent believers, without having really looked deeply into the side effects and reality of our beliefs.  (Read, as one of the most useful books to read, The Believing Brain, by Michael Shermer.)

The appeal of "good things" like socialism is that it will provide fairness and plenty for all people.  Who could be against it - it's humanitarian, it's wonderful, greed will end forever, and we'll all be happy.

And who wants to be the grinch who stole hope?  

Those who advocate looking deeper, using facts and seeing what actually happens and how human incentives actually work, are doing what is right, yet they can be vilified as asking too many questions, not being nice enough to buy into the coolade and the hallelujah, and being cynical.  

The true hope for mankind lies in those who will stand for truth and for what works, for they will create a future where life is fulfilling and not absorbed into the easy way, into non-thinking, being more overweight, sucked into lethargy and technological traps, and a society that is entitled and going nowhere - that is the trend, yet few seem to see it, as it is clearly evident if we look deeper.

Here's a lesson in reality and the need for considering human motivation:

From Farnam Street blog:

Scale in Social Science

From there, Hardin goes on to point out that while physical science integrated scale long ago, social science has been quick to ignore its dictates.
What works at a small scale (say, a Utopian community), loses its effectiveness as it scales. Everything has a breakpoint. 

The reason communism or utopianism can work at small scale is because of the tight knit nature of a small group. Think of your family dinner table: Do you need to trade chits to decide who gets to eat how much, or do you need some grand overseer to dole out the potatoes? No. You all simply take what you need for the meal, and make sure everyone has enough. Think of the shameful admonitions if you over-eat and leave another family member hungry.

The problem is that the concept doesn’t scale. Let’s run an example.

‘Lost’ as an Economics Lesson

Four people in a small boat land on a deserted island, and decide to split the labor and duties needed to survive. Bill does the hunting, Mary builds the shelter, Steve cleans the clothes, and Susan takes care of the fire. They all share in each other’s labors: Mary gets to eat what Bill killed and Bill gets to sleep in the shelter built by Mary. By and large, this is a workable system. To each according to his need, from each according to his ability – a concept we recognize as Marxism.

If Bill does not go hunting one afternoon, all four of them go hungry. Not only that, but Mary, Susan and Steve won’t be happy about that outcome. The hunger and shame placed on Bill will, generally, get him back on task the following day. And what if Susan decides to eat more than her fair share one night? The other three would not look kindly upon that, and Susan is likely to have to pull back on her eating.

There is no need for a management consultant to use motivational tactics to push Bill or punish Susan – the community works fine without it. And the four of them don’t need to use any sophisticated methods of trade either: Bill doesn’t need to sell his food to Susan in exchange for a night beside the fire. Such a system would be extremely inefficient among four people bound by tragedy and circumstance. And so the islanders live in relative peace.

After a few months, a cruise liner crashes nearby and four hundred people swarm on to the island. The original four, remembering how well their system worked, start assigning tasks: 40 people on hunting duty, 30 people tending to 8 different fires, 10 people on laundry crew, and so on. Assuming things will be the same, they set up the same “shared economy” system – take what you need, give what you can. We’re all good folk here.

Within a few weeks, the islanders notice that food is short and the clothes are taking weeks to get cleaned. One by one, the new cruise-liner folks are not holding their own, and they aren’t following the rules. The logic of the cheater is simple: If we’ve got enough food for 400, what’s the problem if I take a little extra? I’m really hungry today, and tomorrow I’ll eat a little less. Besides, Steve could stand to lose a few pounds and I’m malnourished. My need is greater. (Steve might not agree.)
Seeing one bad apple take more food than he or she deserves, the other islanders get a little jealous. If he’s going to take extra, why shouldn’t I? It’s only fair, after all. In no time, in-fighting begins and the island begins to schism.

The islanders decided to solve the problem with organization and oversight. The original four islanders form a Board of Overseers, doling out the food and the work duties with strong oversight and punishment as needed. As time goes on, the laundry folks decide they are working a lot harder than anyone else, and decide they won’t clean another pair of underwear for free. They being to trade their services for an equivalent amount of food, shelter, and fire. In turn, the hunters, the fire-builders, and the architects follow their lead.

What Happened?
By necessity, a utopian communist system is replaced by a combination of socialism and market-based capitalism. The problem is that the system of communist distribution which worked for a tight-knit group of 4 people did not scale to 400. Each person, less visible to the group and less caring about others they rarely interacted with, decided in turn to cheat the system just a bit, and only when “needed.” Their cheating had a small individual effect initially, so it went unnoticed. But the follow-on effect to individual cheating is group cheating, and the utopian goal of To each according to his need, from each according to his ability had the effect of expanding everyone’s needs and shrinking their ability, aided by envy and reciprocation effects. Human nature at work.
The problem with ignoring scale in social science, in Hardin’s view, is that it doesn’t work.

In an uncrowded world like the one our ancestors enjoyed in Pioneer America, a communistic arrangement may be satisfactory. Fruit taken from common-property trees present in excess, or game animals harvested from vast wild herds, do not demonstrably diminish the resources available next year. Communizing a cost of zero hurts no one. Similarly, wastes may be thrown away into vast areas without harming other people, so long as the metabolic powers of uncrowded nature are more than sufficient to recycle the elements.
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But the political-economic system that works well on the frontier breaks down miserably in a world as crowded as ours. Unfortunately, long after the reality has vanished, the dream of an uncrowded world endures, often romantically glorified.
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In a trivially abstract sense, would-be modern cowboys may have a good idea, but the scale is wrong. The judgment of “good” must be tied to scale