[jessaustin]

Alternatively, one could simply pay attention to how life is lived. Most things humans do are done out of habit. One might suspect that all our beneficial habits would break down if there weren't an almighty parental figure lying in wait to punish us, but that also contradicts lived experience: humans in more permissive societies habitually live in relative harmony even more than those in less permissive ones.

[RodericDay]

Any socialist etc. who studies history will point out that our permissive peaceful society exists with a lot of implied violence that is just made invisible or normalized.

American incarceration rates and health care tied to employer come to mind.

[snrplfth]

Not sure that "too many people in prisons for victimless crimes" and "tax law that makes employer-tied healthcare almost inevitable" are aspects of society's permissiveness.

[AimHere]

His point is that the society might be apparently permissive, at least to those who live in it, but there are parts that aren't (such as those two examples), and people don't generally recognize them as such.

[snrplfth]

But the comment he was responding to said "humans in more permissive societies habitually live in relative harmony even more than those in less permissive ones."

So the fact that, upon trivial examination, a society is revealed to not actually be that permissive, is not evidence against the assertion that permissive societies are harmonious. I mean, I don't think RodericDay was saying that those two examples were impermissiveness that actually increases harmony.

[RodericDay]

Parent post said:

> One might suspect that all our beneficial habits would break down if there weren't an almighty parental figure lying in wait to punish us

I interpreted this in the vein of a libertarian "we don't need a nanny state". And so I assumed that the person was thinking of the USA as a "permissive society in harmony" and of something like North Korea as an "less permissive society in disarray", as opposed to Sweden as a "less permissive society in harmony".

And so I wanted to challenge the notion that the USA is "permissive".

[jessaustin]

I'm at least as confused by your comment as you were by mine. b^) On a spectrum of permissiveness, I would have thought we could safely place USA between DPRK and Sweden? I'm happy to consider arguments against such an arrangement... Of course, the idea of a spectrum is also a bit flawed, since there's more than one axis to this.

But we were talking about coercion and authority: GP seemed unable to imagine taking decisions without them. I wanted to point out that most of us are already doing that, to some extent. I hope that in the rest of my life I'll see some progress: more decisions based on personal preferences rather than authority and coercion. To that end, I'm an anarchist. That is, I oppose arbitrary authority.

[snrplfth]

Okay, then I agree with that. And I would add that its non-permissiveness is a big contributor to its disharmonies.