[cyberjunkie]

I strongly believe the nature of a society is best visualized through its traffic sense. Whether it's showing empathy, collaborating, cooperating, patience, discipline, following rules, the anything-will-do attitude, etc.

I'm expecting the sabotaging nature will have a ton of people consciously going out of the way to screw up everyone else.

[raz32dust]

That's not what I found at all. Traffic is chaotic, but people in general are very cooperative. The cooperation just happens in an ad-hoc way rather than by traffic rules. Yes, there is a lack of discipline, but I don't think any society will behave differently if you put that many people in that small of a space.

[spectramax]

> Traffic is chaotic, but people in general are very cooperative

That's self-contradicting. If Traffic is chaotic, then people are either not cooperative or the rules are set but no one is following. If the rules are well architected, enforced and obeyed, then the traffic wouldn't be chaotic.

What GP is saying makes sense to me - traffic sense tells a lot about the society. It exemplifies that developing nations have tough conditions, out of control population, limited resources and stiff competition; if you're a nice guy, you'll lose. I am sure many people in Mumbai would like to cooperate, but they are held back because of the aforementioned trap.

[raz32dust]

It is not contradicting, Like you yourself said, people being cooperative is not in itself enough for traffic to be not chaotic. You still need well architected rules and enforcement. It is also a function of desperation. If there's enough resources for everyone, it's easier to be nice. When there isn't enough for everyone, or when people feel that there isn't enough, things start to go south pretty quickly.

[Izkata]

There's still the concept of "organized chaos" on top of that.

[spectramax]

Definitely, I agree.

[dotancohen]

GP is talking about society, you are talking about individual people.

Individually people can be cooperative, yet as a whole society can be chaotic. Mob mentality and game theory define how a society behaves far more than the observation of individuals would suggest.

[redditmigrant]

Umm, Both Japan and HK have a lot of people in a small space and have 1/100th of the absolute utter mindless chaos that prevails on the roads in Delhi/Mumbai.

[robjan]

I live in Hong Kong and in the more built up areas, people honk their horn as soon as the traffic stops moving. It's not uncommon for me to be woken up by someone holding their horn while a minibus unloads it's passengers which is sometimes a few minutes.

People are often quite apologetic when you call them out but the automatic instinct is definitely to use the horn rather than the brake.

[raz32dust]

Agree with that, and that is interesting. Replied below to a similar comment. You also have to consider that infrastructure is far less developed in Mumbai, though.

[sumedh]

> You also have to consider that infrastructure is far less developed in Mumbai

That is not true atleast in Mumbai, the traffic signals work but lot of drivers dont follow the signal because no one is going to catch them, if they dont obey the lights, if they see a traffic cop most drivers will obey the lights.

[Jamwinner]

Does enforcement count as infrastructure? As discussed, laws/signs without enforcement do little. Is seeing police that rare that everyone would risk it? Accountibility is foremost before progress.

[jariel]

"but I don't think any society will behave differently if you put that many people in that small of a space."

Just the opposite; some cultures have rigid social organisation and deal with such problems, some cultures have little to no social organisation. In the former traffic flows, in the later it does not.

[raz32dust]

That is an interesting point. Though Mumbai has a much higher population density that HK/Tokyo, those number can be misleading. May be India's diversity also plays a role here. Because I checked the list of cities by pop density, and the once that I think have good traffic flow are the ones that are more uniform. Diverse societies have a harder time making people follow rules. Not sure about traffic, but it sure makes sense in general.

[jariel]

Population density, and growth, are also functions of social organisation :)

Obviously some things are much more difficult to manage than others (i.e. controlling reproduction is probably harder to tweak than traffic flows), but nevertheless - the prevailing conditions are usually an outcome of some collective choice or lack thereof.

Consider the paradox of the 'dirty city': most cities with garbage laying about, also have very high unemployment. We might think 'oh, they have no money to clean it up', but this is upside down, a city with high unemployment has more slack in the labour force than elsewhere. In clean (usually rich) cities, it's often hard to determine where value can be created but in a dirty city, it's obvious - everyone wins if they just clean up, it's an obvious investment, and the labour should be cheap. (Money is a social contract, its fungible, intelligent administrators should be able to find some kind of distribution that works.) So why are they dirty? With so many people not doing a whole lot?

Even by this 'they have no money' logic, poor cities with slack/cheap labour should be much cleaner than rich cities, wherein it soaring wages etc. should make it more difficult to clean up. Rich cities might be dirty as the cost of cleaning with high wages etc. should be way, way more.

But it's the other wary around: high degrees of social organisation create wealth. Many 'resources' (waterworks, social services, cars) are functions of that social order, except natural resources of course, which are obviously important.

Obviously, it's nary impossible to fix 'one social problem' (i.e. garbage or traffic) without really well established social conditioning on a basic level, and of course, some very powerful external forces can prohibit such development (i.e. constantly flooding plains ruin agricultural industry every decade, never allowing it to develop as an economic base, there was a war, famine etc.), but even then - it does not take 'resources' to have safe/clean/moral/lawful organisation (though it can certainly help), nor does it require wealth - in fact, wealth is created by such organisation.

I don't blame the Mumbai police or any single citizen, but collectively they make their own bed on traffic - and most other things.

Yes, it's going to be 'tight' and yes, they are a little 'natural resource poor' but they can get along and make it work if they really want to. And when they get better at that, there's a 100% chance they'll be getting better at everything else as well, and subsequently, a lot richer.

The same applies to the rest of us.

[sanmon3186]

I "partially" disagree. In my view, civic sense has also a lot to do with resources per capita available. Whether it is Black Friday sales in the US or driving on crazy roads in India, people tend to save time and money by resorting to unruly behavior.

[dsfyu404ed]

This does not line up with my experience.

Where I live the government and the rules it hands down occupies basically the same spot in people's minds that god would occupy in a devout catholic of the middle ages. You would expect based on how everyone lives their lives that we would follow traffic rules to the letter.

We don't. In traffic people (discounting the outliers, after all we're using broad brushes here) think for themselves, are generally assertive and more or less ignore rules and do what they see fit. Stops that would be yields if they had different lanes for left/right are treated like yields when going right. The 50-65 limits on divided highways are more or less ignored and people drive at whatever speeds they deem reasonable. Sometimes that's 65, sometimes that's 85. I'm sure this description is making some people clutch their pearls but for the most part things work great.

So based on my anecdotal experience I'm firmly in the "no correlation" camp.

[risyachka]

100% agree If people don't follow the rules, honk, etc they show they don't respect others, not only on the roads.

[ultrarunner]

How people respond to situations when they cannot communicate says a lot. I’m inclined to agree with you.

[cyberjunkie]

Also, how people choose to behave knowing their identities are concealed.