[Normille]

  > Hey, it puts food on the table, and my kids are hungry. And it keeps the debt collector at bay.

So does shovelling Jews into gas ovens and pulling out people's fingernails. I guess it just depends on where your internal "Do Not Cross" moral line lies.

[wegs]

I think you've made my point for me. If moral lines are easy enough to move that people will "shovel Jews into gas ovens and pull out people's fingernails," it's not hard to find people more than glad to cross class lines to enforce laws, whether those laws are just or corrupt (and most laws are in the middle).

At the core, there are few or no internal "Do Not Cross" moral lines. Moral lines are first culturally-situated, and second, individually-situated.

Incentive structures set by the ruling class drive a huge part of culture. Media does too. There are a lot of tools to manipulate culture, and they're actively (and increasingly scientifically) used. At the end of a Roman Triumph -- a big celebration -- captured war prisoners would be strangled in front of an audience. In that culture, that was okay.

From there, you need to find just a few people, either divided, disgruntled, or of low moral character. If I want to keep poor Southern whites in-line in 1870, I can find blacks who hate them. If I want to keep poor Southern blacks in-line, I find poor Southern whites. There, we had a nice 50/50 split, but there will always be a few.

The expectation that "it's the turncoats fault" isn't a productive one. You need to fix systems, not individuals (with incentive structures around individuals are part of systems, of course).

[_y5hn]

You need to fix people as "systems" are just people. The neglect has the opposite effect.

[wegs]

No. Systems are not just people. I know many organizations which have really good people, but completely toxic cultures due to systems.

Systems are things like checks-and-balances, incentive structures, power structures, organizational design, and conflict resolution structures.

The US didn't work better than Soviet Russia because it had better people, much as Americans would like to believe themselves superior. It worked better because it had better institutions, starting with a very well-drafted Constitution.

Given a 2020 context, those structures are starting to function less well. You won't fix them by asking politicians to behave better; you need to address the structural issues.

[_y5hn]

People make systems. Look to the people at the top to understand the foundation of culture and people-systems. People made principles as foundations for better systems.

[wegs]

People at the top are beholden to other people at the top. It's a cycle. If a CEO does not appease shareholders, board members, and executives, there will be a new CEO. That's structures.

And people at the top rarely understand implications of their actions. Organizational systems are HARD.

[_y5hn]

Which his how demons can capture false expectations of humanity.

[InitialLastName]

> I guess it just depends on where your internal "Do Not Cross" moral line lies.

As we've so often seen, at scale it's easy to move that line for enough people to enable any atrocity.