How Do We Know When A System Is Working?

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"Communism would never work." "Anarchism would never work." "Libertarianism would never work." We so often hear this common refrain. But how do we define "works"? Does our present day society work?

North Korea works very, very well for the Kim family. America does not work well at all for the 1% of its population in jails and prisons, nor for the homeless, nor for the tens of thousands of Americans who die every year from not having health insurance. The Islamic State worked well for Sunni extremist men. China isn't working for its Uyghur population living in concentration camps by the millions.

What works better? A society were 100% of the people have a mediocre standard of living, or a society where 90% of the people have a very high standard of living while the other 10% are crushed by destitution and slavery?

If we define "works" by a society not collapsing under its own weight, then the Roman Empire did not work. If a society must also be fit to resist external threats to be considered in working order, then none of the European countries conquered by Napoleon were working in the 19th century.

If you spent a month living on the streets and then got back on your feet, was your country working all along? What if you spent a decade living on the street?

As far as I can tell, the statement "x would not work" is pretty much universally made by people privileged enough to be content with their lives under the existing system.

If I had to define what it means for a state to work, I would define it as the state that has secured a high standard of living for its people that upholds human rights and preserves liberty as much as realistically possible. And by that definition, no state has ever worked. States don't work.

[Ethel mermania]

I think you can take this point in general. When can you say a state policy works, or even a business plan?


I would say if something works for 85% of the population it works. Nothing is perfect.


So to your arguement I would say western liberal democracies more or less do work for their people, where no communist state has ever worked .

Now tbf, by my definition there have been communist groups that have worked in the past.

[The Blaatschapen]

The system works when I benefit from it.

Now, I could probably benefit more from a different system, but getting people to agree with reforms is tricky.

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I would say if something works for 85% of the population it works. Nothing is perfect.

Is there any extent of possible harm to the other 15% in which you would no longer say the society works as a whole? What if the 15% were an ethnic minority interned in concentration camps with an average life expectancy of 30?

[The Free Joy State]

I would say if something works for 85% of the population it works. Nothing is perfect.

Is there any extent of possible harm to the other 15% in which you would no longer say the society works as a whole? What if the 15% were an ethnic minority interned in concentration camps with an average life expectancy of 30?

I think any system with concentration camps is no longer working; but there again any system with such camps (such as China and North Korea) is one that fails by most other metrics of working for much of its population anyway: such as being low in corruption and having basic human freedoms.

I think that liberal democracy isn't a perfect system, but I think it's as good a system as we have: one with good ideals of freedoms, and where -- in some nations (Denmark, Finland, New Zealand), corruption is almost at zero.

Incidentally, that's my metric for if society works: low corruption among government officials, good checks and balances to prevent the government getting out of control, and freedoms and rights protected for all citizens (I do not count the presence of jails as being a strike against society working; although I believe rehabilitation is the goal, I also believe some people can't safely be rehabilitated and protection has a role to play, too).

[Ethel mermania]

I would say if something works for 85% of the population it works. Nothing is perfect.

Is there any extent of possible harm to the other 15% in which you would no longer say the society works as a whole? What if the 15% were an ethnic minority interned in concentration camps with an average life expectancy of 30?

Thats fair. I would agree a system that enslaves 10% of the population is broken.

[Kerwa]

Is there any extent of possible harm to the other 15% in which you would no longer say the society works as a whole? What if the 15% were an ethnic minority interned in concentration camps with an average life expectancy of 30?

Thats fair. I would agree a system that enslaves 10% of the population is broken.

What if its slaves are non citizens located outside the territory?

[Ethel mermania]

Thats fair. I would agree a system that enslaves 10% of the population is broken.

What if its slaves are non citizens located outside the territory?

Do you mean in the sense of British owned sugar plantations in the Caribbean during the 19th century, or the abuses of contract labor on China within the current worldwide system?

[Kerwa]

What if its slaves are non citizens located outside the territory?

Do you mean in the sense of British owned sugar plantations in the Caribbean during the 19th century, or the abuses of contract labor on China within the current worldwide system?

If you want to make it concrete, then I suppose yes. But I was speaking hypothetically, not about specifics.

(And the British were pretty abusive at all times everywhere: see workhouses, child indentures, bondsmen and so forth; so it’s probably not a good example of what I was thinking of).

[Duvniask]

What people mean when they say "work" isn't some strictly definable thing, but a general idea of a society that can stand on its own feet and guarantee a high standard of living without too much corruption, crime, physical violence etc. (in terms of the existing means available).

To put it a different way, it's something that operates with some sense of smoothness and sustainability, but it mostly only makes sense to talk about if we have a juxtaposed notion of what it looks like when things "don't work". It is almost always an expression that implies the societies currently existing at any given time which have the highest standard of living, and the ones "not working" being at the opposite end of the spectrum of living standards, opportunities, crime, etc. etc.

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(I do not count the presence of jails as being a strike against society working; although I believe rehabilitation is the goal, I also believe some people can't safely be rehabilitated and protection has a role to play, too).

Sure, there are serial killers and terrorists and the like who are beyond rehabilitation and they do need to be restrained for the safety of everybody else, but there are few countries in the world that incarcerate only the most dangerous and in a truly humane way.

As far as prison systems go, I would give Norway a passing grade, though not an A.

[Haganham]

I would argue that a system works then it functions as it's advocates promised when implementing it. Systems like tools are working within the context of what they are implemented to achieve.

I would say if something works for 85% of the population it works. Nothing is perfect.

https://www.historyguy.com/civilwar/sta ... ation.html hmm

[Chan Island]

I think about this question a great deal, and you're right that there isn't any one way to easily define it. For my part, I reckon it comes as a bit of a vague checklist.

1) Does the society benefit its members? For me, I usually tend to be a more lax than most and reckon the society is working if 65% are actively benefitting from the system, be it economically or security or otherwise. Which shouldnt be a high bar, but its depressingly few times met. Mostly I hold 65% because its still a solid majority, way more than enough to keep the system going.

2) Is it stable? And for how long? Eventually, all systems stop working, and then they are subject to revolution, strife and civil war. My general goal is that any system that can't last beyond a long human lifetime is not worth pursuing. 130 years minimum before I think a historical system worked.

3) Can it coexist with others? This includes both with other countries (looking at you ISIS, declaring war on the whole world) and with minorities (concentration camps, pogroms and massacres are automatic disqualifications). Mostly because such intolerance leads to war.

4) Does the political system help the society reach civilisation? The hardest by far to define, and definitely the most subjective, but basically i think it's important that societies achieve things. Be they technological breakthroughs, innovations in the arts, rapid improvements in standard of living, construction that people in 1000 years will still marvel at- or even just robustly protecting your natural environment. If your best and brightest young people are leaving en masse, something is wrong.

5) Does it work as advertised? If your political system in practice works nothing like the orthodoxy, delivers none of the things the initial revolutionaries promised, then the system is hollow. It has no actual ideology to invest people in it, and without a percentage of true believers, the system collapses when the going gets tough.

6) Do people perceive it as working? One of the things that has stuck with me since my time in Nepal was just how damn hopeful people were. Total faith that while they were poor, corrupt and powerless now, that things can and were improving. And at the end of the day, if no members of the society appreciate the acts of the political system, then what's insuring its continually survival... or kind words in the history books?

Vague, I know, but my thoughts.

[Sordhau]

Depends on what the system is trying to accomplish. Capitalism 'works' in the sense that it brings wealth to a society, but just because a society is wealthy doesn't mean the people are wealthy, let alone prosperous. The US is a good example of this. Capitalists have an obnoxiously annoying tendency to presume that every system must therefor be judged on how rich it's society is, therefor they label the Left-leaning Cold War states as 'failures' because they coudn't match the wealth of the West. But the Left isn't about making society wealthy; it's about making society livable, and this is something Capitalists can't wrap their head around because they mind-numbingly associate wealth with livelihood - an association which is absolutely true in Capitalism, but not necessarily true in other systems. Capitalists thus say Socialism and Communism "don't work" because they don't bring wealth which is completely missing the point that they aren't meant to bring wealth in the first place.

[BEEstreetz]

It's pretty simple. For you - when this question isn't even on your mind. For others - when they do not respond to this questioning. Systems suffer from entropy, they're unsustainable for the most part. An exception would be a true "Leviathan" figure.