States, commercial institutions, NGOs, etc. are constantly locked in struggles over turf and power and the citizen is the beneficiary, the intended victim, or the collateral damage depending on her particular circumstances, often a matter of accident rather than plan.

Among the limbs, organs, tissues, and cells of society, which is the bigger brother or the lesser evil? There is no answer. The system is too dynamic and synergistic for that kind of analysis. But I think that no organization, institution, state, etc. is inherently evil in and of itself — but the aggregation of its people make it so.

So my question is: Which comes first — bad culture or bad people?

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Walt Kelly, Pogo

“The etiology is psychiatric.” — Helen Caldicott

“Physician, heal thyself.” — Luke 4:23

I don’t mean to be glib, but I suspect that one reason that thousands of years of political and economic theory, argument, and conflict have produced so little progress is that politics is no better substitute for science than religion was. I would trade the entire body of existing political and economic theory for what we have learned in the past few years of neuropsychology and game theory (e.g. behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, etc.). But science influences society only as much as it informs individual people and In most cases those people are elites with strong existing biases and agendas.

I think we argue about political and economic theories mostly because we don;t know what else to do. It is really a form of intellectual recreation or entertainment to which we falsely attribute a more serious or noble purpose. We think we are problem solving. Maybe. But I think real problem solving is more like starting a coop, collective, experimental community, or even an urban garden.