Amerika

An insight into why human societies self-destruct:

The article reports that today the spam industry earns about $200 million each year, while $20 billion is spent trying to block spam.

A few people, in a misguided quest for wealth, create a huge cost that is borne by others, not just in wealth but in the number of hours they must spend at jobs and cleaning up the mess.

This is analogous to the people who smash in car windows to take under $50 of goods, or rob convenience stores with shotguns for a few hundred dollars. The benefit is small; the consequences are vast.

Modern societies try to avoid this by subsidizing bad behavior, but that is also a socialized cost, and “what you tolerate, you get more of,” which explains why they are awash in this kind of petty but expensive criminal behavior.

If instead of crusading against crime, we removed people of a criminal mindset, civilization could take a deep breath and relax, and people could spend more time on life and less on cleaning up after the sociopathic.

Tags: externalization, socialized cost, sociopathy