1) Preamble:
Not all cultures are equal.
Not all models for running civilization are equal.
There is a recipe for creating a society that is peaceful and prosperous: -fill it with high IQ people -have free market capitalism to build wealth -have mechanisms in place to keep economic inequality down -ban polygamy
The rest of this piece will be explaining why each of these things is critical for the building and maintenance of civilization.
2) IQ, Maximize It:
If you fill a place with high IQ people, it will be peaceful and prosperous.
If you fill a place with low IQ people, it will be poor and violent.
Why?
Because high IQ people are capable of creating wealth (largely by doing rigorous engineering work), whereas low IQ people are not.
Low IQ people can serve as menial labor, but the economic productivity a high IQ person can contribute is far greater than the economic productivity a low IQ person can contribute. GDP per capita will be higher in a place filled with high IQ people rather than a place filled with low IQ people.
Places filled with high IQ people are less violent than places filled with low IQ people, because high IQ men are far more hesitant to engage in violence than low IQ men.
Why high IQ men are more hesitant to engage in violence is open for debate, but it does stand to reason that they are deterred from combat because they can more readily foresee the potential negative consequences than their low IQ counterparts. ‘Negative consequences’ would include the risk of injury or death in combat, as well as jail time or other legal punishment.
How does one maximize the average IQ of people in their society?
Optimizing the environment for young children is critical. Eliminating early childhood malnutrition is a good start.
Immigration policies should select on the basis of IQ; make it easy for high IQ people to gain entry to the country, and difficult or impossible for low IQ people to gain entry to the country.
Dysgenic breeding must be prevented.
In America from 1960 – 2020, it seems to have been the case that low IQ people were outbreeding high IQ people, and since IQ is heavily determined by genetics, this is a catastrophe.
The movie ‘Idiocracy’ is a parody of the phenomenon that is dysgenic breeding, but it is a very real problem.
More specifically, it seems to be the case that high IQ women have fewer babies than low IQ women, and with high IQ women mostly sleeping with high IQ men and low IQ women mostly sleeping with low IQ men…dumb people are
outbreeding smart people.
There are many postulations as to why high IQ women have fewer babies than low IQ women. The most likely explanation is that high IQ women are more competent in the use of contraception than low IQ women.
3) Wealth Creation, Free Market Capitalism:
As of now the only mechanism the human race has ever discovered for dramatically increasing the total amount of wealth in a society is free market capitalism.
Use the free market for as many things as possible.
Do keep in mind that there are some things that are better handled by the government rather than the free market; some things are better handled by the public sector rather than the private sector. Such things would include infrastructure (roads and bridges), as well as medical care.
Rightwing Libertarians will tell you the private sector should do everything and the public sector should do nothing, but they are wrong. There are some categories of technology the free market cannot handle well, for various reasons.
The free market cannot handle life saving medical care because it is the only category of product for which the demand is infinity; free market medical care leads to medical care being sold for extortionate prices (see America from 1990 – 2020). Many poor people will die because they cannot afford extortionate prices.
Infrastructure (roads and bridges, electrical systems) is something that free markets cannot handle well since privatizing them (selling services to some of the population, but not others in the population) is logistically impossible or at least very difficult.
During the 20th century, the American Government did an excellent job of handling its nation’s infrastructure.
4) Inequality, Minimize It:
The great thing about free market capitalism is that it can make everyone richer on an absolute basis. The unfortunate thing is that as more wealth is created, it gets distributed inequitably. The societal price of more wealth being created is that inequality rises.
Intense levels of wealth inequality have many pernicious effects, including lower social trust, higher homicide rates, and a higher probability of violent revolution. Inequality is a destabilizing force; it makes civilization less stable.
The more unequal you allow your society to become, the more violent it will be. Greater economic inequality means a higher homicide rate.
Mechanisms must be put in place to ensure the wealth inequality in your society does not become too intense, lest you wake up to a revolution.
Progressive tax rates with both income taxes and capital gains taxes are wise; the rich should pay a higher tax rate than the poor.
Money the government collects via taxes can be used to provide universalized healthcare and infrastructure. This alleviates inequality to a significant degree; everyone pays taxes to fund government services (but disproportionately it is the rich who pay taxes), and everyone can access these government services, but disproportionately it is the poor who benefit from them, since they are the one’s who could not afford to buy healthcare or access to infrastructure if they were privatized.
The ‘Gini Coefficient’ is a decent way of measuring inequality. Any time the Gini Coefficient of your society hits 40%+, you have intense levels of inequality; it would be wise to raise taxes on the rich immediately.
5) Polygamy, Ban It:
So far as the maintenance of civilization is concerned, monogamy is good and polygamy is bad.
In polygamous societies a minority of men marry a majority of the women, and a significant percentage of men (perhaps a majority) are single for their entire lives; they are INCELs (involuntarily celibate).
INCELs tend to become frustrated and angry due to their romantic failure, and from an evolutionary perspective such men have nothing to lose; they are ontrack to die having captured zero reproductive opportunities.
Such men often become violent.
If your society is polygamous, it will certainly be violent, because a significant percentage of the men in your society will be INCELs, and a significant percentage of them will turn to violence.
If your society is monogamous (filled with marriages that have 1 man and 1 woman), then perhaps it will be peaceful, and perhaps it will be violent. Banning polygamy and encouraging monogamy is necessary but not sufficient for keeping the homicide rate down to a reasonable level.
Just as intense levels of wealth inequality drive violence, intense levels of romantic inequality between men (as is seen in polygamous societies) also drive violence.
How does one go about banning polygamy? Laws. Make polygamy illegal.
How does one go about encouraging monogamy? Propaganda. Disney movies do an excellent job of this; show children entertainment that emphasizes monogamous heterosexual couples.