TACIT COLLUSION

Many life events have led me to think a lot about collusion lately. Collusion is when two people or organizations come to a secret understanding or conspire. It is often seen as negative. We all collude on a normal basis without realizing. 

TACIT COLLUSION

Tacit Collusion is when two people or organizations come to an understanding without explicitly saying so. The difference between tacit and normal collusion is whether the two people are actually communicating. Think of a sidewalk. Why do people only walk on the right side? No one ever said that all pedestrians must walk on the right side of the sidewalk. We have a mutual understanding with the rest of humanity that if we all walk on the right, we will never have to worry about walking into each other.

The Declaration of Independence states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  We all retain a mutual agreement that liberty is a right. This right is "self-evident". No one needs to say that everyone deserves life, liberty and happiness. (However, I notice the irony in the fact that our founding fathers had to explicitly state that everyone is entitled to these rights.)

Let’s get spiritual.

There exist higher and lower laws. Evidence of such laws can be found using the Christ’s teachings and the Law of Moses. Under the Law of Moses were many commandments, even the Ten Commandments. When a lawyer posed the question “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?”, Jesus Responded with the following:

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

How can two commandments possibly trump all others? If we understand the importance of commandments and their purpose, silent commandments do not need to be declared to be lived. Tacit collusion. In a perfect society, each would abide by unspoken rules knowing that society is better off as everyone lives them. Murder, rape, and theft need not be spoken because it is self-evident that these are evil.

You can tell how untamed a society has become by the number of laws required to discipline it. We are more free with lesser laws while choosing to abide by principles of righteousness.

It takes one stupid action to change the rules for everyone else. For those interested in economics, we call this a grim trigger strategy. Sometimes we laugh at all the wacky laws adopted by certain states (example: It is illegal to sell your children in Florida), but have you ever thought, “Who was the guy who actually did it, forcing the government to create a law?” One idiot ruins it for the rest of us.

I have one last point.

We cannot force everyone else to tacitly collude with us. And communicating such collusion is essentially what law is. So if we can’t force others to obey with us, and you can’t reach tacit collusion by open communication, what can we do?

We live to be the best people we can be. We strive to look for ways that we can help other people and make society better. Many times this will require us to check our selfish interests at the door, but it is worth it. And maybe if we live in a noble manner, others will notice and tacitly collude with us.