Government as a Religion

[Angrboda]

Not to spoil a good bit of sarcasm, but there's good evidence that the rules of the road emerged independent of any forced uniformity, largely due to the mechanics of transport at the time, and when those mechanics changed, so did the consensus view on which side of the road to travel upon. Furthermore, I suggest that such a system would be meta-stable in the way that spin glass is in that even if there initially were a random distribution of conventions regarding which side of the road to drive upon, it would quickly converge on one or the other solution as a simple practical result of the higher cost of bucking the consensus. (Not to mention the fact that there are independent incentives to cooperation regardless of any higher authority. As a practical matter, it's unwise to assume that any simple system will not exhibit emergent self-order, independent of actual evidence.)

Not to pop your bubble, but even if such a convention were to arise and broadly apply to general populous, such a country would still have a much higher rate of traffic accidents and casualties if there isn't any higher authority to impose the convention. This is something I see happening in my own city everyday. If there is no traffic police in sight, a lot of drivers choose to drive against oncoming traffic rather than making a legal U-Turn down the road.

This is an example of the nirvana fallacy, among others (there's an implicit fallacy of the beard, for one). Locke's point was not that traffic accidents would be higher under such a system, but that such a system would be unworkable without an overarching authority and that it is the acts of that authority which makes vehicular traffic possible. This is not a valid objection, and it doesn't become more valid on account of your quibbles. Locke's objection was to the lack of an authority leading to disaster, not to it being different, and the historical examples still hold. (Not to mention your example does nothing to address the general case.)


I quote, bolding mine:

I would hate to drive in Koolaid's country.

Some people will decide to drive on the right, and some people will decide to drive on the left.
It will be this way since there can't be a single person or group above the individual, so no one will have any actual authority to tell people which side of the road they are allowed to drive on.
You "hope" people will agree to drive on one side or the other, but again, without authority above the drivers no one can ever enforce driving on one side.

Convention, habit, cooperation, and mutual self-interest apply in the absence of authority. Camel driving Bedouins were adopting rules of the road long before traffic regulations and there are still not enough police to enforce them.

And what about ship traffic? According to your theory, the lack of enforcement of shipping regulations is resulting in an epidemic of ships running into each other.


No bubbles were burst this day.