Thread by @DellAnnaLuca

ON BORDERS

Abstractly, borders & boundaries delimit an area where a set of values apply.

(Value = criteria for admissible behavior, including “for the sake of whom”)

Breaking one of those values (or threatening its substitution) is seen as a trespassing, as an invasion.

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2/ People have different values, including different people they care for. Therefore, abstract boundaries exist, regardless of their physical manifestation

Abolishing a physical boundary doesn’t remove the feeling of an abstract boundary being trespassed when values are violated

3/Physical boundaries can be porose in the measure that abstract ones overlap.If values are similar and/or pledged to be respected, abstract boundaries overlap & passage is allowed

If values clash, so do abstract boundaries, regardless of physical ones. Trespassing is inevitable

4/ The phenomenon described above explains why “fences make good neighbors”.

It also predicts that if the removal of physical boundaries is enforced, then a clash of abstract ones is inevitable.

5/ When people are unable to exercise their values or see them trampled, conflicts take place.

Such conflicts can be internal or released externally (protests, fights, wars, …)

People with opposing values in the same territory is ”potential conflict energy” about to explode.

6/ Borders/boundaries maintain configurations (of people) such that potential conflict energy is minimized

They do so by:
- grouping together people with similar values/incentives
- limiting the area to which one feels his values should apply (eg my room / my house / my country)

7/ Borders have another purpose: assigning ownership. Both in the meaning of “rights” and of “accountability”.

The more fractal the borders, the more fractal the ownership, the more each asset is specifically owned, the more owners are incentivized for its long-term maintenance.

8/ A monolitic entity, containing many people but few or no borders, has (bw many others) 2 problems:
- conflicting values expected by different people in the same territory, i.e. large “potential conflict energy”
- multiple ownership of assets and thus a “problem of the commons”

8B/ Other problems of monolithic entities:
- they increase possible maximum social distance within a border, thus limiting the effectiveness of “peer policing” & “social punishment”
- one bad apple can incentivize many more rather than being kicked in the ass
- scale matters

8C/ Taleb wrote a paper on multiscale localism identifying the scale-dependent phenomena relevant here: academia.edu/38433249/Multi…

(In this thread, I instead focus on values & how borders, both physical & abstract, emerge)

9/ Fractal borders allow the specification of ownership and therefore allow the propagation of productive incentives.

Absence of borders diffuses incentives to consume.