Stable Society

A set of equations by Nash shows that by modelling people as self centred, distrusting and self serving, you can make a stable society.
The equations do not allow for corruption, as everything is based on the certainty of maths and the figure reporting is assumed certain. Whilst it might be easy to use that to pick holes in the argument, our society, systems based on Nash's equations is stable.
How far do you believe we can go with liberty, in whatever way you want, and still keep society stable. Or put another way, what do you believe makes society unstable? Or even, what is the minimum set of things (rules, systems) we need to make society stable?

So should this be in another section, or does no one care about the way our societal theorists think? Please be unafraid of honesty........ I may be barking about this to the wrong people.

Why is the focus on stability?

Many totalitarian regimes are "stable".

Funny that, the main fear stems from the French Revolution, stability went and everybody was chopping everybody up, especially the nobles. Now the nobles made the rules and wanted to feel safe in the face of vast inequalities of proper opportunity and went for the belief that society had to be stable. This assumption has pervaded history.
Totalitarian, yes the fascists infiltrated American societal thinking emmigrating after the fall of Reich III, and they managed to show that if we're all inward looking imbecilic bastards, then society would be stable. They have pusuaded politicians to try to encourage us to be like this through policy at least.
I suppose my question is: What else can you allow us to be (allow us to care for) without endangering stability, ie the oligarchal parts of the establishment.

[edit on 22-8-2008 by redled]