DC to pay criminals $9,000 a year to not commit crimes:
In ancient times, it was known as “Tribute” – a city or town paying barbarians not to attack and destroy their homes. Sometimes it worked, and the barbarians went away. But more often than not, the barbarians happily took the tribute and then attacked and looted the city anyway.
The city government of Washington, D.C. is looking to revive the practice by paying criminals up to perhaps $9,000 a year not to commit any crimes.
Everyone has deeper understandings of how to maneuver around r/K, even if they don’t grasp the mechanism. Paying barbarians floods their brains with dopamine, quieting the amygdala, making them more r, and reducing the risk of conflict.
If resources were going to always be free, it might even be the right play. If your civilization is entirely rabbit, it can be, as you need to avoid that conflict. If your civilization is capable of K however and resources are limited, tribute merely hastens the civilization’s time to K, and thus you’d be better off saving the resources, embracing K early, and applying the resources to your victory.
In twenty years, we will regret having wasted all of this money on temporary security. Sadly, right now our civilizational amygdala just doesn’t have the right pathways installed to trigger the panic and aversion we should be feeling right now.
Apocalypse will change everything.
[…] When Resources Are Free – Paying Criminals […]
Hard to believe even a rabbit could be that stupid.
People will soon be channeling Berhard Goetz.
In the meantime, reading stories of David Ruenzel clones getting assaulted in places like the DC Metro provides excellent entertainment.
My guess is that eventually urban enclaves of decivilized orcs will be made into islands, “Escape From New York” style, and forays to surrounding lands in search of loot will be met with extermination.
Paying the barbarians can make sense even for the K, if what you are buying is the time you think you need to WHACK the crap out of them later.
Sorry to go all WW2 on this, but that is precisely what the 1935 London Naval treaty between England and Germany was perceived to be by the English, an attempt to buy time/leverage against the Germans. The reality was that it basically told the Germans “hey you can build subs now and we will permit it.”
The German-Russo non aggression pact of 1939 same thing, the Germans were buying peace as were the Russians. Stalin was reported to have said “If I’d had 12 more months to put in defenses, the Germans could have never gotten that far” – mostly he was putting in AA defenses which would have hampered the German ablity to provide air support and air transport….. I think this agreement worked better for both parties than not having it – at least in 1939.
But generally trying to buy of the Norsemen who are invading what is now Normandy with gold just convinced the Vikings to sack Paris a few years later. Mostly K don’t think to use the ‘buying time with tribute’ method, usually because that doesn’t work. If you are not strong enough now, will you really be later after you spend all that treasure?
Let’s be honest, this is the point of welfare anyway. Scott Adams pointed this out in a blog post a few years back.
You’ll want to watch all three videos in this series but this is a good 10 minute video that restates r/K in other terms:
https://youtu.be/k8rsb7qILgE
Why is this video unlisted from youtube?
I see Aeoli Pera beat me to it but yeah, that was my take on Welfare in general. You bribe people into not commiting crimes.