A Joneser's rants and riffs, ideas and trends, musings and innovations - all for your perusal and reuse. Steal it. Use it. Tell others.

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

The weakness if the crowd: Part 2

I wrote these two posts completely independent of one another, only to realize there is a common thread connecting them - just as there is a common thread connecting the two articles below.

 Something's going on here. 


1.http://www.salon.com/2014/08/31/why_uber_must_be_stopped/

2.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/opinion/david-brooks-the-revolt-of-the-weak.html?emc=edit_th_20140902&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=48794199&_r=0&referrer=

Here we see the weak working to tear down the rules and institutions that society has erected, leading to disorder, chaos, entropy.

In Uber's case it is the Wildwest mentality of unfettered and unregulated competition. A business model emerged so quickly that legislative powers had no time to implement a regulatory environment for it to operate within. And since ethics are a function of cultural relativism - which is to say there is no commonly shared set of them available to operate from - the competitive landscape is reduced to a bare-knuckle brawl.

Now take a look at Putin, Syria, Somalia, and other "medium-sized" conflicts playing out on the world stage in the New York Times article. The underlying dynamic is eerily similar. With no Imperial body to stop them nationstates, or tribes within them more to the point, are behaving just as they please, with complete disregard for any rational, ethical limitations. In other words they're behaving in an unfettered, Wild-west, no-holds-barred fashion -- just like Uber.

I do not believe this is a coincidence. People who feel disenfranchised, with very little or no access to the system that leads to great success, feel as if they're left with no choice but to co-opt the system.

No comments: