I see. I have a hard time with morality. I'm amoral but I agree with the need for terms and conditions for communities to endure. I like the idea you mention, "personal/individual responsibility/accountability", but at the same time I'm reluctant to accept rules that will restrict my good-faith actions, so I tend to visit laxer places rather than stricter ones (top reason I like crypto). That having been said, and as was said before, if the goal is to create a promising community, the characteristics and mechanics one wants for this would have to be established (something I'd rather do functionally, based on user satisfaction, instead of a pre-existing moral system), and then to create the rules.
One of the main problems I see with "free" communities is that not only are there no rules, but sometimes there are also no means for people to effect change. One of the main arguments for free market and laissez-faire politics is that people will incentivise what they want to happen, and they'll disincentivize what they don't. When interactive tools and possibilities are low, communities can't incentivize or disincentivize as much as they would like, and the supposed freedom fails because these systems favour breakers of sub-community rules, who will go unpunished. In this case, one good solution is to simply give more tools for people to interact with their environment, therefore allowing communities to establish their will and sovereignty under the desired scope. (Basically, increased interactivity => higher control => higher satisfaction => higher endurance)
All of this is to say that by starting from a moral system (such as JP insinuates with his comment about the superiority of the Abrahamic moral system), the leader of the community assumes the role of the community. Instead of allowing for interaction and self-regulation to occur, those roles are taken away from the individual by the ruling organization, and therefore, while control is enforced, it's not the same kind of control. One is control of the environment by the individual, and the other is control of the environment and the individual. Both models can give people satisfaction (it's not like people in China and in England live miserably and can't find anything joyful to do with their lives under overreaching states) and can bring economic prosperity to a community.
However, those systems also work differently. One (mechanically designed laissez faire without a priori morality) is "mechanism design"/"reverse game theory" as you described it, where tools are given to a community to enact change on their environment, all based on the principle of individual responsibility, and the other is a priori system design and management (imposition of a moral system) that switches individual responsibility from path-making to path-following.
In summary, I don't think that what you call the basic tenet regarding individual responsibility can be considered to be "morality", but the void of it, which will be filled, carried and utilised by each community and individual according to their own beliefs, needs, preferences, etc. And I like this more than the alternative (traditionally monocultural governments). :)
Very interesting debate, thank you for the highly elaborated responses. I could write a book about this fascinating topics but here I'll try to keep it short and telegraphic:
So here we are: for the benefit of the community, we need to minimize the time and energy spent in disputing the criteria and the system for choosing the best persons to occupy a position in the various organizations which benefit the community.
Now I invite you to temporarily set aside whatever definition you assume for the term "moral".
Set it aside and consider the following:
"the moral of individual responsibility", in this context, means "pledging to honor a system for selecting people for roles in society, and keeping one's pledge even when the outcome of the selection adversely impacts one"
This is what the "moral of individual responsibility" is.
It is "good" to keep your word and abide by your (freely chosen) prior commitments. It is "bad" to say today something and then say the opposite the next day if you see that it doesn't suit you ...
If that would be moral, would you still say that you are "amoral" ?
Well, I am self-interested. Imagining that's a contract, I wouldn't agree with it in the first place because I always do whatever I want. So yes, in that context I am amoral too. However, I would agree to create such a system, even if I am unlikely to honour it, because it seems like something interesting to explore. And who knows, maybe the secondary or tertiary activities that I'm assigned do please me!
Is what you described a minimalized description of the monetary system, where the "selection" process is the free market? In that sense, it is impossible to leave the market, and therefore it is impossible to go against the moral rules because morality would be embedded in causality (kind of like cryptographically enforced rules in blockchain if they were impossible to break with sufficient power). Manipulating market participants would simply alter the selectability, the way people do when they lower or raise prices or create new services and products.
I don't know if I'm misinterpreting what you say haha!
Actually you have, perhaps unintentionally, pinpointed the problem.
The problem with the monetary system and the market. These are "moral-less" or amoral - they function as they are intended to, there is no need for "good" and "bad". As you correctly note, if the rules of the market are called "moral rules" (which I don't, but let's pretend for the sake of the argument), then it is impossible to go against the "moral rules"
So no. The main message that many people are trying to reformulate in various shapes: a (market + monetary system) is necessary but not sufficient to sustain a prosperous society. You need an additional "anchor point".
This is for instance a thing both Zizek and Peterson agree upon when discussing religion. Human societies need some kind of external "anchor point" to be stable over a longer period. External in the sense of "in addition to a free market and a monetary system"
Now that external anchor point, referential, commonly agreed "transcendental authority" has traditionally been the religion but it needs not be. For instance in France it is now "La République". "la République" does not literally mean "the republic"; it is, for the French "body politic", a transcendental abstraction - it means "the essence of what holds us together, a shared set of values"
This is what U.W Chohan observes in his paper: a community like "Steemit" is unstable and unsustainable and "eats itself out" if there is no external, transcendental authority to which the members of the community all bow and refer to. If there is no set of rules, values, principles that the members agree to honor and enforce.
In that environment, you can still be self interested. And you can still do whatever you want. But if by doing something you want to do you happen to breach the commonly agreed rules, values, principles of the community, then its members should try to punish you or even bane you.
The very existence of the community depends on that.
The idea of having to find something to "bow down to" seems dystopic and oppressive to me. It leaves a bad aftertaste. Since I don't follow rules unconditionally anyway, I like to think of the goal as creating the tools for self-regulation. I've been reading a lot about statistical incentives and think something could come from there that would trump centralised authorities.
The idea behind statistical incentives is that there are behaviours (I mean this psychologically) that can be encouraged through active and passive measures (examples I took from a quick google: 1 & 2). These techniques are already being used every day by companies, urbanisation planners, AI developers from Facebook, Youtube, etc.; I'm sure you've read about this already. You will also find that people have different attitudes after certain events.
Look then at Steem where downvote pools were made available, and certain blockchain changes were made (the 50/50 that you mentioned) that created enormous change in people's activities. These are small code alterations that can be said to have practically changed the life experience of thousands of people. It wasn't a total success but we're just starting.
Imagine planning the internet the way architects plan urbanisation. Just as Steem had goals that were easily met with code, and it massively changed community interaction, other tools such as Steem can be created that have goals, something interesting to pull users, and structures that encourage specific behaviours quantitatively.
I think there's something beautiful to encouraging both critical thinking and positive behaviour in parallel. When there's a choice between ideological imposition and structural incentive, I see no reason to go for the former. For me, it's the same as Catholicism did to me when I was young. There were two things I could have been told:
I was pressured for most of my youth to join this homogenous idea both in mind and body. I was mentally tortured by the idea of either belonging or being a failure. Once I broke from my belief of God, I rejected many ideas of morality, all of those things I did only to please Him. I was never taught the value of morality, only that I had to bow down to it or I would be incomplete and lose God's approval. It took me years of being a violent mess, of believing in the remnants that Christianity left in me, of defending justice by insulting and mocking people, because I somehow felt superior. The absoluteness of morality was the most harmful thing to my conduct, to the point where I missed many, many opportunities in life, and lost many things that I valued.
It was only when I gained the ability to critically evaluate ideas that I understood that "morality" as a handbook for behaviour in specific communities has enormous value, not due to "humaneness" or "completeness" but because it's a tool to have fulfilling human relations. I feel cheated and am disillusioned by my community's efforts to lead me astray from my own desires. I still follow many general moral rules, and I don't do much that may make people unhappy because I feel good when I do it. So while I say that I am amoral, I act morally in general, and I consider myself to be a much more apt member of society than when I was pushed inexorably down by the endless lies, shame and misconceptions.
I guess my point is that if we can avoid creating a lie-and-imposition system to accomplish the goal of general prosperity, then there is little reason to still go for it. Especially when that time could very well be dedicated to doing the opposite and promoting education about individual choices, and the creation of behavioural encouragement systems that move communities toward prosperous attitudes without removing the person from the equation.
edit: I should also mention that since there are plenty of different moral systems, imposing one or another would be like playing crusader or jihadi. If we want to create a prosperous system while allowing all beautiful cultures to stay alive without changing everything that makes them unique (relevant article I wrote), then the solution, more than central morality, is well-researched goal-oriented encouragements for focalized environments (worldwide lens allowed).
Well ... the fact that "the idea of having to find something to "bow down to" seems dystopic and oppressive" to you elicits two thoughts:
So now, if we leave mathematical endeavors aside for a moment and think of anthropology and history, does it seem "dystopic and oppressive" to you to bow down to your parents ? Because that is precisely what I meant by "bow down to" - take the attitude you'd have toward your parents.
You then write:
"When there's a choice between ideological imposition and structural incentive, I see no reason to go for the former."
What I'm arguing is that these two are not mutually exclusive, there is no need to make a choice. I am all in favor of structural incentives. I believe they are necessary. However I argue they are not sufficient. In addition to structural incentives, stable and sustainable human "societies" / organizations also need some kind of "God-like" figure, an ideology. Contrary to what you seem to assume, it does not need to be "imposed". There are and there will be several societies, one can choose to which "God-like" figure to "bow down to".
Beautifully crafted organizations which are based exclusively on "structural incentives" are not sustainable in the long run. The better the incentives, the faster people learn how to exploit the system in order to obtain an unfair share of those incentives. For long-term sustainability, such groups also need some kind of external, transcendental authority, not necessarily explicitly religious - as I said about the French, it can be called "La République" (the Republic).
So to come back to steem / hive with the 50/50 and the downvotes, I believe your optimism is misplaced: even if by "we are just starting" you imply that "it will get better as time passes", I am telling you "look at the noble ideal of communism!" It wasn't perfect in the beginning but ... "they were just starting", right ? Well, guess what, it did not get any better, quite the contrary, it got tremendously worse ...
So to sum it up: