Hermits have it right apparently. Given those logical extremes, the third option of simply having no groups and becoming hyper-independent is THE way to go.

the solution is sunshine laws, careful admittance and a requirement to participate in education and governance by all members

aka just look at all the things project 2025 is attacking and do the opposite

Tumblr people don't seem to know how friend groups work

The solution is sunshine laws

For anyone dumb like me: sunshine laws and sun down laws are very different. Sunshine for transparent governance, sun down for racist bullshit.

It's not like there's an objective definition of "asshole". The distinction is one of degree more than of category - someone does something bad enough and they're an asshole rather than just annoying.

haha didnt even think about how close those two are

What if the problem is the assumption that problems can be solved with rigid rules, universally applied without consideration of context? What if the problem is the assumption that rules make something objective?

There's no universal definition of "asshole". That's okay; you can still have "Don't be an asshole" as a rule, because the interpretation of rules is inherently a subjective act. You can either subjectively interpret this rule, or you can subjectively interpret a convoluted system of rules designed to exclude assholes in an "objective" way, and fail at both excluding assholes AND being objective.

It's why true anarchy and communism are pipe dreams. They all hinge on the assumption that assholes who lust for power over all else stop existing, as well as the idiots they charm with their charisma.

Those people are like a glioblastoma (unsurvivable brain tumor). Sure, you can get rid of the bulk of the tumor, but it's little tendrils remain and it'll come back eventually

Unfortunately the assholes seem to come to the same conclusion.

As long as they keep themselves apart from the decent people, I consider that a win-win

this is inherant in all human systems, not like capitalism is immune either

Didn't make it to paragraph 2, or just didn't understand it?

The difference between an asshole and someone who is simply disliked is typically one one of perspective.

There’s no universal definition of “asshole”

For me it's like porn, satire, good jazz, dark magic and espionage.

You know it when you see it.

Secret third option: you don't understand MY second paragraph. If you have a specific question, I'm happy to answer it.

Ano vs año in Spanish

At the risk of opening a can of worms: this is a paradox well-known to Christianity. Jesus teaches us to include the marginalized, to love our “neighbor” without limits. But then Jesus also gives instructions about when to remove people from the community and, of course, expected people to stop being assholes if they truly want to follow Him (Jesus called this “repentance” and “sinning no more”). The assholes made use of the the inclusiveness bit and managed to overrun the Church while also pushing the marginalized out.

Assholes don't care if everyone ends up miserable, including themselves. They will go out of their way to ignore, frustrate or undermine any rules set. This includes creating edge cases as well as pretend compliance.

Tolerance of intolerance, etc

I think the theory is that capitalism pits the unbearable assholes' psychotic ambitions against one another and allows the normal people to reap the benefits of their relentless competition, while a functional democracy regulates the economy to prevent any one particular asshole from gaining too much power and enforces regulations to handle the externalities, and that in a functional democracy nobody who is too much of an asshole can ever get too powerful.

Of course, all of that presumes a functional democracy and... well... [gestures around broadly]

What's to stop you from excluding assholes from shared spaces in anarchy and communism? They're free to have their own asshole patch, ofc, but in a society...

100, and exactly why you need the first mechanism from the OP. You need a librarian type who can explain something like "while sighing may not be against any rules they need to be more considerate or they need to leave; and then sigh to their heart's content "

One could say that we have an antagonism that unfolds into evolving outcomes over time. I wonder if there's like a name for that, or something!

I mean yeah it requires maintenance. That's what they did in the US and are trying to do everywhere else in the world now too -- "just go make money don't worry about anything else!". And now our society is falling apart because everyone is just trying to make more money and nobody cares about their community anymore.

This is Late Stage Capitalism to a T!

We have to make more money because everything is so fucking expensive and our quality of life has declined so hard... Fucking sucks

May I propose The Great Pacific Asshole Patch?

The problem is that they're never satisfied with just their little patch. They want everything.

Well they're going to have a bad time relearning the same lesson over and over then.

They have a great time until the very end. It's the rest of the world that has a bad time.

it also assumes none of the unbearable assholes get together and worm their way into the government so they can dismantle it from the inside
[gestures around broadly]

it's great until you run into a bear