The Great Recess (a fictional tale)
Post #663
One hundred people were stranded on the island of "Nowun" in the year, 2149. Two out of the 100 were tyrants. The two tyrants worked hard to avoid signalling their tyrannical proclivities to the others, because they were interested in ruling over the others for their own personal gain (subjecting the others to slavery).
Five people were elected into "the government."
The 2 tyrants worked to invent layers of cloaking, so that, even if the 95-98 others wanted to search out who the suspected tyrants were, it'd be nearly impossible to discover their identities.
They nudged the 100-person society more and more into a situation where there was information asymmetry, so that the 5 people of the government could know more and more about the 95 citizens through surveillance — but the 95 citizens could not find out about what goes on under the table in the smoky boardroom of the government.
The Reason for their Behavior
The reason that the two tyrants had to invent layers of cloaking and information asymmetry and engage in surveillance is because they had read about the findings of Game Theory research, where real people are intentionally pitted with, or against, each other, in order to reveal the key aspects of human nature and interaction.
They had learned through repeated studies of group dynamics that it is not possible to rule over a society when 25% of that society is staunchly (resolutely) opposed to being ruled over.
So, to keep 25 of the people from building a coalition against government tyranny, the two tyrants used surveillance and covert harassment and non-lethal persecution on those who were staunchly (resolutely) opposed to tyranny.
The 2 tyrants weren't wise but they were cunning, and because they had more personal incentive than anyone else on the island, they worked their way into the top positions of government.
The Great Recess
They created a new public policy called The Great Recess, where resources were intentionally kept idle for months at a time -- in order to combat "island warming." For those months, government ran a soup kitchen, allowing citizens to eat once a day.
The people were divided as to whether to go along with the plan, but the 2 tyrants had worked hard on propaganda -- so the plan went forward. Regular people started to become more poor as the Great Recess got underway, but curiously, those in government got rich.
As it turns out, the information asymmetry allowed government to spy on citizens and take advantage of them during months when citizens remained idle, and even during the startup phase where citizens were allowed to be productive again.
The government held onto the resources during the months when production was idle -- to make sure that people went along with the plan -- but the people couldn't see what the government did with the resources during idle time.
After the idle months, the people had to "buy back" formerly-owned items from the government in order to be able to produce and feed their families again. When you think about it, they were actually renting these things, but doing so under the false impression that they owned them (at least until the next Great Recess).
They owned nothing.
A Fire
One day, one of the tyrants left a fire going in his straw hut when he went out fishing, and the straw caught fire. Citizens noticed and rushed to put the fire out, but in the process, two Game Theory research articles had been blown out of the hut by the wind and the commotion.
Those responding to the fire read the two papers about human interaction.
They starting putting things together and began to understand why the government had implemented "social distancing" policies which had kept group size down below 25.
They made several copies of the papers and hid them inside of hollowed-out coconuts to create a dead-man's switch in case the government "took them out" as they began to tell people about the tyranny.
As suspected, the government did have undercover spies mixed-in with the people. One out of every 9 people (11% of society) had been secretly working for the government as an "informant" -- just as had been true of the society of Communist East Germany, back in 1949, two centuries ago.
Counter-Insurgency
After being intimidated for sharing truthful information with others, they didn't back down. They had discovered that 20 of the people (20% of society) were already "on board" -- they were already staunchly (resolutely) against the Great Recess.
But, by reading the Game Theory research articles, they knew that they needed 5 more to stop the tyrants.
Out of the first 20 other people they approached with the truthful information, 6 of them were willing to remain staunchly (resolutely) opposed to tyranny -- once they were presented with truthful information showing how tyranny is bad, and how it can be beaten by a committed minority of citizens.
Final Attempt
The government tried to push society into the next Great Recess, but these 26 individuals refused to go along. Not only that, while remaining cordial and peaceful, these 26 individuals refused to materially support other individuals who would not side with them against the government tyranny.
By refusing to materially support the well-being of some others, they were labelled "mean."
But they did not back down. They remained resolute in their convictions.
They told those in need that they would willingly help, if those in need would join them in opposing government tyranny. Because of the science of human interactions found in the Game Theory articles, their choice to remain resolute "worked" -- and the opposition to tyranny grew.
The Nowunnites made a declaration of independence from tyranny, and they prospered for the rest of their lives.
The End
End Notes
Cates Plot (tool for showing health outcomes) which happens to represent the situation on Nowun — where 20 people in the bottom two rows were already resolutely unhappy with tyranny, and 6 people in the third row from bottom would become willing to be opposed to tyranny after exposure to the facts of the matter:
Once society reaches this point, and the 26 people remain resolute and maintain solidarity, then tyrannies get overthrown. It is a safe bet that tyrants already know about all of this (because this type of thing is all that they care about in life), but it is important for most everyone to know this.
Source: https://www.nntonline.net/topics/visual-rx-examples/
Reference
[when a critical mass of 25% of people fully commit to a change, then institutionalized behavior of the rest of society cracks under the pressure of repeated exposure to the 25% holdouts] — Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention. March 2021. https://www.asc.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/2021-03/Experimental%20evidence%20for%20tipping%20points%20in%20social%20convention.pdf
[when a critical mass of 23% of people become willing to incur personal costs to punish wrongdoing, then justice and prosperity grow, society-wide] — Boyd R, Gintis H, Bowles S. Coordinated punishment of defectors sustains cooperation and can proliferate when rare. Science. 2010 Apr 30;328(5978):617-20. doi: 10.1126/science.1183665. PMID: 20431013. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20431013/
[at least 1 in every 9 people in Communist East Germany was a government informant] — The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World. Oxford University Press. 1993. Edited by Joel Krieger. German Democratic Republic. Page 349-51.
[at least 2 in every 100 people are inherently tyrannical (they will take, but not give — even if giving a little gets them more rich)] — Brañas-Garza P, Espín AM, Exadaktylos F, Herrmann B. Fair and unfair punishers coexist in the Ultimatum Game. Sci Rep. 2014 Aug 12;4:6025. doi: 10.1038/srep06025. PMID: 25113502; PMCID: PMC4129421. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4129421/
[see Figure 1 where in the Lab group at right (non-anonymous), 30% of the 59 offering 0% (18 of the 59 who offered 0%) also rejected Ultimatum offers of < 50% -- i.e., for the greedy, getting ahead is more important than being a jerk, but for these 18 (2.9%) out of 623 people, being a jerk is more important than even getting ahead in life]
