You see this on a behavioral, individual level too: people running red lights, for instance, or refusing to back down from petty arguments, taking as much as possible as contraction sets in, regardless of the social cost.
You can also see it on the collective, market level: the scams built upon scams, or the scams that have taken hold of legacy services and public resources.
Collective deliberation is the sloshing to and fro of various factions and interest groups, opportunistic individuals cobbling the organization and power they can to take as much as they can, before coming up against groups organized to Do Something.
On the daily, it is hard to watch, and spiritually it is hard to countenance. But you do see people organize to help each other and make things better in the really hard times too, and I'm definitely seeing glimmers of that sort of thing.
