Informal polling across seven 'scopes' (self, associates, community, nation, world, multiverse) finds people rank goals differently depending on the size of the unit: liberty peaks for nations, happiness/health for close circles, and insight/power for momentary self. Respect and pleasure rank lowest overall, suggesting stated ideals can diverge from private motives. If governments must adopt measurable objectives, those choices will vary predictably by jurisdiction size.
— It implies that performance metrics for cities, nations, and global bodies should not be one‑size‑fits‑all, reshaping debates on how we design and legitimate institutions.
Robin Hanson
2026.04.25
88% relevant
The article argues that most human coordination, norms, and conscious attention concentrate at mid-level goals, but that for‑profit firms and large organizations can impose modular, measurable high‑level goals (via money, metrics, and incentives); this directly matches and supplies a behavioral/cultural mechanism for the existing idea that governance scale changes which goals are prioritized and how they are enforced.
Isegoria
2026.03.09
80% relevant
The article argues that successful strategy differs qualitatively from operational art and requires coordination across industry, diplomacy, politics, and economics — the same claim captured by 'Goals Shift With Governance Scale.' It uses Lincoln and Louis XIV as examples of political leaders who micro-managed operations because their generals lacked perspective on non‑military constraints.
κρῠπτός
2026.03.06
80% relevant
The article argues that institutions have an internal telos (technocratic, social‑engineering orientation) that persists regardless of which party occupies them — this connects to the existing idea that the aims and functioning of governance change with institutional scale and become self‑reinforcing, making simple ideological takeovers ineffective.
Robin Hanson
2025.10.07
100% relevant
Hanson’s charted poll results showing liberty far outranking other goals at the nation scope while other goals peak at narrower scopes.