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jltsirenyesterday at 8:34 PM1 replyview on HN

The society is built on informal expectations like that. People assume that things will go on as before, and they will start relying on it. They assume that for every thing they rely on, there is a bureaucrat somewhere responsible for making it happen. But unless you are that bureaucrat yourself, you probably don't need to be aware of the specifics.

Many things in the society depend on volunteer work. Open source software is unusual due to the scale of it. In other parts of the society, when many people depend on the work of a few, some corporate or government bureaucrat will usually assume responsibility. But in open source software, the few are often still volunteers without any formal responsibilities.


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Ferret7446yesterday at 9:48 PM

As a non Christian, I feel that Christianity and similar religions did much to counter such harmful innate human tendencies (promoting charity, forgiveness, humility, etc) and the reason why Western societies have been so successful. The trend toward secularism could also explain their recent decline.

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