Perhaps, but I seriously doubt they would have erected such an intricate sets of laws, and kept changing them to best fit their everyday needs, even if we might not share with those needs, if they where just lazy.
All of the contrary, that would indicate you do prefer more over less, and hence will chose the free market way to further your wellbeing, precisely as Mises argues. What happens with tribes is that they just stop having preferences above the point of basic needs. Inaction can only be explained by that.
A welcome correction. So, let’s say I, tribesman have such an illustrative preference scale as below (more preferred on top):
Basic needs satisfied
I
I
I
Basic needs unsatisfied
And just that. Below “ basic needs unsatisfied” there’s death, hence no more choice. Above “basic need s satisfied” there’s….blank. As long as our instinct are satisfied, our genetic “program” ends, and almost no other needs surfaces. A few evolve beyond that, but as economists we need not care how preferences evolve over time. Could this be the true preference scale of primitive man?
I figured when I said this above, that I was stopping at basic needs. But that’s not called “inaction”. That’s called preferring to do something else with my time rather than stockpiling more food than I need.
You’re taking a possible materialist view of this. Preferences don’t begin and end with basic necessities of material well-being. There’s also time well spent with family, friends, and maybe skipping rocks across the lake.
I can’t say all of “primitive” (whatever that may mean) man. I don’t have the study readily with me, so, trust me on this or not. It doesn’t necessitate confirmation of our speculation on “primitive” man. Yet I read a study while in the university about an Australian aboriginal tribe, I believe in northwest part of the country, in which it was observed that an introduction of steel axes and then the subsequential displacement of stone axes didn’t change their behavior. They worked as long as they previously did, but since the steel axes could cut better, meaning, more trees with the same energy output/time (admittedly hard to measure but I think there is a speculative point here), since they could, then more trees were cut down thereafter and I believe what ended up happening was a change in their lifestyle overall as the people needed to search further and further beyond their usual range to find wood. They didn’t stop even when they were running out of trees to cut down close to their usual home range. I think that supports what you were saying in your original post. But I don’t know where to demarcate the line between “primitive” and “not primitive”. Acheulean tools were not as effective as the Cro-Magnon tools of Europe, but was one more primitive than the other, thereby making the Cro-Magnon not primitive anymore? But yet some people of Industrialized U.S. of A. would think Cro-Magnon is primitive. Heck some teenagers might think their parents or grand-parents are primitive.
edit: Also I think it would be presumptuous to lap every “primitive man” into a preference scale of one size fits all. Maybe there is an individual in the village that saves more milk than others. Or perhaps eats more cattle per helping at lunch. Or gathers more firewood to burn than others to make a hotter fire at times (not even necessarily all the time, maybe even only once), etc…, etc…
You mean just like rednecks.
I agree with the gist of what you’re getting at here, but I think you’re not being sufficiently analytical - we should think of a human’s lifetime as just another scarce resource which he or she allocates to minimize suffering (maximize pleasure). As Bastiat says it, all people naturally prefer leisure (pleasure) to labor (pain). We seek pleasure and avoid pain - and this should not be understood in a crude physicalist sense, either, since the ascetic in pursuing his life of spartan self-denial is still pursuing what pleases him even if that entails physical suffering.
So, the tradeoff you’ve identified is between leisure and labor. The whole purpose of laboring is to improve one’s leisure time. The voluntarily homeless man eschews labor and prefers to take his leisure time unimproved, that is, as he gets it in the state of nature, subsisting by scavenging and begging. Such a choice does not reflect “irrationality” or a failure to prefer better to worse. Rather, it reflects a different preference schedule over leisure and labor, where unimproved leisure time is still preferable to even a cursory amount of labor in the valuation of the individual.
I think this explains a great deal of the supposed laziness of tribal societies. I suspect you are right that part of the reason many people work is not out of a sense of duty or even a burning desire to improve their standard of living but out of the need not to be sunk past the level of absolute destitution by the unforgiving obligation of State tribute. Without the State, I suspect there would be a great deal more idleness in society as well as a great deal more productivity. In this sense, I think the State has an attenuating effect, tending to push the least productive members of society to produce even though they would rather not and punishing the most productive members of society by copiously plundering the proceeds of their industry. On both ends of the spectrum - the most and least productive - the State multiplies human misery by forcing individuals to act in ways they would rather not, forcing the productive to idleness and the idle to production.
Clayton -
You are talking about laziness like it is a bad thing.
Boy, you hit the nail on the head there, Clayton. It’s the only reason I have a job!
Now, I can easily discern four explanations here.
The first is what I ca make of Clayton’s, Wilderness’ and Marko’s posts.
Leisure time is very high on the preference scale of “primitive” humans (we’ll just use the term for the lack of a better one), or else any kind of labor is very disutile. Hence as soon as they achieve a minimum level of needs satisfaction, i.e. they can live, they proceed to use their leisure time instead.
This wouldn’t sit well with the example brought by Wilderness though. Should “primitives” be just lazy, why would they keep cutting many more trees than the need, only our of habit? Wouldn’t they work less?
Which brings me to the second objection, the one I mentioned earlier: why not trade than? Wilderness was correct in pointing out that the intra-family division of labor already exists. I also pointed out in my original example, that sporadic trade with the city is to be found.
So, if indeed one values leisure above all, and spurns labor above all, than why just not extend the specialization of labor whiting the village, and indeed among villages? With the very same amount of labor there would be much more produce for everyone or, in this case, the same product would be achieved by working far less. They already know trade, so why is the specialization of labor so lacking? I cannot explain that. Or again, why not save a year or two, and with the increase capital base work much less? They can save when they have two (some flood kills half of the herd). So why don’t they?
And than again, why do they even have customs? A very lazy guy would just say to himself “Yeah, what the hell, I’m just going to shoot everyone who shows up at my door. I need no laws and all that!” Still tribal legal norms are very complex. Why such a need?
The second: primitives are simply very averse to change.
Every change in their familiar society brings them much disutility, thus, stability is to be valued above all.
That would explain wilderness’ example. Still it would not explain, and this is a big defect, Albanian tribes’ continuously evolving law. If stability is so much valued, why do they bother to change the law? Or indeed why would law exist in the first place? If they are averse to change they wouldn’t need any, as everyone (or most) would stick to the grazing times they got and no conflict could arise.
Yet law exists. Finally, is change is so terrible, why don’t numerous families ban their sons, besides the very first one (or perhaps two, to insure against the death of one of them)? Tribal families are extended, and every newborn in seen as a blessing. Hardly a change-averse society than.
The Third: primitive have very high time preferences
They don’t save and don’t trade because they just cant defer satisfaction to any degree. They prefer what they can get now, now.
But how to amount for their keeping communal property. Children (normally of high time preferences) can’t hold anything in common, and would rather prefer to consume it or sell it outright. Why than, most property is not only held communally, but any kind of sale is strictly forbidden?
Or why doesn’t a “war of all against all” erupt, in order to steal the other’s property? Very high time preferences would indicate just that.
The Fourth: Their preferences “stop” when all their basic needs are satisfied.
Beyond that, they feel no more pleasure form more leisure time, material possessions, or indeed anything else.
That would explain all of what we se in tribal societies. It would seem normal and it would find a basic expression even today, in people such as Howard Hughes: after getting to a given point, nothing else please them. I suspect we all have such “breaking point”, what sets us apart from “less evolved” men is the height of such a point.
Now a guy that has achieved his ‘Breaking point” acts only to maintain it. He goes around in his routine, and sees no need to implement any changes if the status quo isn’t threatened. Basically imagine yourself on vacations all life: as long as you account is full, you do not worry about a thing.
This could explain Wilderness’s example: the natives where indifferent between cutting less trees and cutting the same number. And when preferences are the same, tradition steps in, assuring that they continue to act, out of custom, as they did in the past, cutting the same number of trees.
Now, if you can find fault with this fourth explanation, than we’ll need an other one. The problem though remains: we need to explain, in a praxeological manner, the anarchist societies that preceded the emergence of the State.
Granted. I’m not holding that the State is moral on that account. All I’m saying is that its emergence is inevitable, as long as most of those ruled do not resent it enough to overthrow it (or stop obeying). So, as long as breaking points are so diverging, as it happened prior to the industrial revolution, than a state will emerge. Only when breaking points begin to cluster, than states become unviable.
PS: my head hurts.
Time preference. They want their leisure time now. Not after 5 years of mind-numbing work to become a skilled carpenter or an exquisite hair stylist.
One thing I left out of that study that might be pertinent but was again speculative on the researchers behalf, though, it seems to make sense. He stated since they were doing this work relatively the same amount of time was spent on cutting these trees, the conclusion of the researcher was habit. And since the outcome was out of range of their usual thinking patterns or discernment, they continued to do what they always did yet the outcome was more trees chopped. Essentially they didn’t know what the outcome of this would be until it was too late as people woke up to the fact of their actions when their lifestyles eventually dramatically changed. It seems to be a hindsight discernment by the villagers, at least, that’s what the researcher concluded but the researcher didn’t state this was the end to the theorizing as to what happened. It was his conclusion at the time. There was more to why he came to this conclusion based on interviews with the villagers and such, but of course the ultimate why might be a bit difficult. I mean we know humans learn. Why didn’t they learn in time? But then again look at the state of affairs around us currently. Why don’t people learn in time and continue to do what they do, sometimes repeatedly with the same ill-result.
Surely wise people came along and added to their repository of sound customs. As events worked and their high regard for peaceful village life persisted, then why change anything? Maybe it’s taboo to change their current lifestyle as they prize what they have and find change to what has worked to be highly suspicious of. One thing about old cultures, such as these, is change in customs is not always valued, yet, when Europeans came to the Americas the people already here loved those new glass beads, and off it went. But then again what is exotic makes people curious, sometimes to their detriment, sometimes to their benefit. What people don’t know about might captivate their sensibilities and reason is abandoned but that’s only the inner entrepreneur guru inside speaking. Cultures may stay the same for a very long time, but sometimes they still end up picking up new cultural traits in time. Each culture doesn’t come up with their current customs right off the bat. There is a cultural evolution even if sometimes very small, maybe a thousand years go by without any substantial change, or maybe it only takes about ten seconds for an individual to adapt to a new lifestyle.
whoops. you started to say this already.[:P]
Tribes or primitive people around the world are not homogeneous in lifestyle. Look where the Albanians live, the geo-politics of the region. Maybe law evolved this way to adapt to what they perceived as detrimental outside forces and this was a way to sustain what they didn’t want to change. Cultural traits across the board in a culture don’t follow the same patterns. For instance, as you note here, the law changes, but changes to make sure the rest of the society doesn’t change.
I think you are describing the why’s here. Use the preference scale contextually, meaning, for each individual event you can apply it. For example, high preference time to not save. Yet low preference time for conflict. Not saving doesn’t mean absolutely there will be conflict. It’s societal scaled. What I mean is, no savings in an economic system that is embedded with production and higher order systems of productive growth need savings. Lots of people depend on those savings to sustain that particular kind of economic system. But those savings stretched out across the whole production system from raw material extraction to consumer good on the store shelf, those savings might be minimum. Maybe none at all, a lose, or maybe their is enough profit to do it all over again, or maybe even more than enough profit to expand into other production methods and/or products. The savings is meeting the demands of the product, but essentially the consumers wants for what the consumers currently thinks he or she can get. The market meets those demands that the consumer believes he or she can get because they saw it in an ad or something. Or an innovator came up with something that he or she believes people will accept and buy even though such a product has never been on the market. It’s a risk at that point for both consumer and producer, but in a market that can afford such risks thus the way it goes. Preference scales are not flat for each variable or event. They can change depending on what the individual(s) involved in each one of those variables.
That’s a good point. And the market’s status quo is breaking a lot now-a-days. The market is very dynamic, and the pressures of the state, as Clayton mentioned, skew the goals people have. People are more subservient to the state goals than their own. Thus why I want liberty and find the government to be slavish.
I think this is correct, except the variable involved. It wasn’t custom stepping in saying how many trees to cut. It was a time oriented culture in that they spent the same amount of time cutting the trees but with steel axes they could cut more trees in that given time. Custom was oriented to time, not the material gain or lose.
I agree that there seems to be something constructive and insightful about the “breaking-point” concept you have going Merlin. I like what Clayton said. I don’t think it’s deniable. I think what your saying helps explain the same thing yet in a different manner.
I take exception to the “primitives” conceptualization - I believe so-called “primitives” were much more savvy and intellectually sophisticated than modern scholars give them credit for (this a consequence of our so-called “empirical” anthropology which restricts itself to making the most guarded inferences from the few primitive artifacts we have managed to dig up), and that modern man is much more elemental and primitive than we like to think.
I reject the idea that once basic subsistence has been achieved, preference ends. This is patently false - people always prefer high social status to low social status (this is a simple function of the fact that we are not the descendants of men of such low social status they could not attract female mates) and this demand is unlimited. However well met my desires for food, shelter and clothing may be, I will always prefer a higher social status to a lower. Entailed in this is all the gadgetry and accessories of adornment - headdresses, jewelry, pets, servants, etc. Second, people always prefer variety to repetition (I vaguely recall reading a study by neurologists that there is actually an area of the brain that lights up with any novel situation). This is a simple consequence of our need to explore and exploit the varied natural resources in our environment. We are not the descendants of people who preferred to stay in place and starve to death, rather than branch out and explore the world in search of better prospects.
Also, I’ve noticed that you keep talking about the amount of leisure time… the issue is not only maximizing the amount of leisure time, but its quality. When I labor, I am forgoing leisure time that I could have enjoyed instead of laboring. This is the fundamental exchange that I am making. I have given up leisure time, traded it away, for the profits to be had from laboring. These profits are then used to increase the quality of my remaining leisure time. Granted, an increase in the division of labor will increase both the quality and quantity of leisure which can be had in exchange for a given amount of labor. But that is all beside the point to analyzing the issue from the point of view of the individual. The individual cannot change the division of labor in society, he can only choose whether to work or relax. If he chooses to work, he is forgoing relaxation, that is, he is settling for a lower quantity of relaxation time. If he chooses to relax, he is choosing to forgo the increased quality of relaxation which he might have had if he had worked for some time and then relaxed for the remaining time. We can think of it as a parametric curve in two dimensions expressed by the following equation:
u + v = T
… where u is some abstract measure of the quality of one’s leisure time, v is the quantity of one’s leisure time and T is the remaining time a person has left to live. If you give up all leisure time, you could have the maximum quality of it, that is, you would have the maximum amount of money to spend if you did take some leisure time. Conversely, if you give up all labor and spend your time taking your leisure, it will be of the lowest quality since you will have no money whatsoever to spend. This ignores the joy which people take in their labor but I think it gets the basic idea across. If you work, you get less leisure time but it’s of higher quality. If you don’t work, you get more leisure time but it’s of lower quality. On the one end of the spectrum is the workaholic who never takes any leisure time and just works all the time. He is maximizing for quality (presumably). On the other end of the spectrum is the voluntarily homeless man who never labors - he takes his leisure at all times. He is maximizing for quantity. Somewhere between these two extremes are 99.99% of people.
Clayton -
good point Marko.
good post Clayton.
Well, that would seem indeed true, as it did to Mises of course. But a closer look is revealing.
Going back to my original case study, no one seeks on those tribes to gains a higher social status in per se. Now of course if you’re a good problem-solver and negotiator, your advice will be seeked not only within your village, but far beyond. The very guy that ‘brought” the Kanuni law, Lek Dukagjini really existed (in the middle of the XV century) and was precisely such a guy: he didn’t seek to have social status, he was just naturally talented at solving disputes. After solving dispute all his life, he just passed down the ways he used, nowadays known as the Kanuni I Lek Dukagjinit.
My point is that no one seek social status, in this society, for its own sake. If it come along, fine, but if it doesn’t fine nonetheless. There are no jewels but those a woman owns for herself (guns are status indicator in men, but everyone is supposed to have one and one alone), servants are unknowns and even paid labor is rare. And I assume that, taking all the stereotypes any, every tribal society is rather egaliztarian in social status, with only age and exceptional achievement conferring some “surplus” status. It is certainly so in the Albanian tribes I read about.
It might seem granted for us nowadays, will almost every teen wanting to become a popstar, or every college student wanting to become president or something, that we seek status. But that is not inate, rather a peculiarity of our society, made up mostly of people who have a very high, if indeed any, breaking point. We need not assume that is applied to every human ever.
That’s a very important insight. Lets get back in time, to the original structure of breaking points, i.e. most people with a low one and a very with none at all. Who do you think will be advantaged in social evolution? Low breaking points females will be fine with both low breaking point and no breaking point partners. No breaking point females, on the other hand, will only prefer no breaking point mates.
So, in time, those with no breaking point, assuming that this is entirely a genetic train (not very realistic, but assuming this away would only help the analysis), multiply faster. Add than, they have bigger capital bases to withstand “shocks” (war, famine, flood), than we see that in time they will win. In the west that has already happened completely, in the east to some degree. Thus, you are right when you say that we are the descendants of people with no breaking points. What I cannot second, is only that you assume that they must have been the rule in primal societies.
I totally second that, very clear analysis indeed. What I must add, though, is that this cannot yet explain the absence of the division of labor.
Now, you hold that there is a trade of between the quantity and quality of leisure time, and that tribesmen just chose a given point in this tradeoff. What this cannot explain is why the division of labor doesn’t exist to a great degree? By simply specializing, by performing the very same “amount” of labor, one can increase productivity. So, divining labor would allow tribesmen to chose either more leisure time given the quality, of chasseing a more qualitative leisure time given the amount, or more or both. It’s Pareto-superior. Why than they strongly resist the division of labor (if they’re not starving)? I believe only seeing breaking points can explain that.
Great discussion, guys. Here I agree: it’s not social status per se, but rather mating and reproduction that are ever-present urges no matter how roundabout they may present themselves. This is often manifested through seeking higher social status, but not always.
That certainly also depends what “primitives” you are talking about. I’d also be skeptical about the notion of a gradual, progressive change from savages to Barbarians to civilized people like Lewis Morgan proposed:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/morgan-lewis/ancient-society/
It’s also a misconception that the stone age was necessarily “primitive”, there is some indication that the stone age societies in Europe were pretty advanced. Even having sophisticated (rock) building to cool and store food.
Anyone else trying to defend the competetiveness of individualistic anarchy over statelike societies?!
For Heaven’s sake man, when people hear Rothbard agreeing that Sicily has been “near anarchy” for hundreds of years we loose any shred of credibility in the eyes of the unitiated. What I would think if I where them: “Good Lord, I certainly prefer Hong Kong, which became a global city out of a village in less than 30 years, to Sicily. All hail minarchy!” Without a decent explanation of why anarchy has sucked so much (by our standards) until now, we’ll never get many people on board.
You have misread Mises. He said that people seek to replace a less desirable situation with a more desirable one. No where did he add that people prefer work over leisure, in fact, he said the opposite.
Why has this society not developed? You’ve given the answer yourself, it lacks concrete conception of individual property. These people do not possess a different nature than other. They operate under those institutions just as we would expect them to.
Why have these people not sought out better institutions? Its actually not unusual or hard to comprehend, poverty and despotism have been the norms of human existence since as far back as history reaches. Liberty and Progress have been the exception.
This is behind the “paradox of imperialism”, that nations with the most liberal domestic institutions take on the most aggressive foreign policies.It is these nations that are able to generate the wealth required to subjugate others. (The examples are endless, the USA of 70 years ago, 19th century Europe in general but especially England, Greek and Roman empires).
Says Mises (Human Action, 4rth ed., p.20, emphasis added):
“The very existence of ascetics and of men who renounce material
gains for the sake of clinging to their convictions and of preserving
their dignity and self-respect is evidence that the striving after more
tangible amenities is not inevitable but rather the result of a choice.
Of course, the immense majority prefer life to death and wealth
to poverty.”
From p.180:
“We may disregard the philosophy of adamant and consistent
asceticism because such a rigid asceticism must ultimately result in the
extinction of its supporters. All other ideologies, in approving of the search
for the necessities of life, are forced in some measure to take into account
the fact that division of labor is more productive than isolated work. They
thus admit the need for social cooperation.”
Mises made it clear throughout Human Action (or at least so it seemed to me) that he was assuming that people prefer more over less of whatever gives them utility, all the time. And following his premise it does follow that a market-economy is the best way to go. So if the market economy is not voluntarily chosen by a community for thousands of years, than perhaps the assumption is far too rigid to take at face value.
Now, it is true that one could explain tribal societies by the lack of market concepts in them, and even a resistance to their adoption. But I myself find these explanations unsatisfactory. That’s why I’m looking for a deeper cause.
A lack of entrepreneurship; caused by the lack of a precedent of cooperation. Trade takes two. No person is going to produce, the necessary precondition of trade, if they foresee no potential buyer.
You asked why don’t they grow their herds or clear more land. Well, what would they do with more food than they can eat? You’ve established that there is little distribution of labor among different families. Even if one family, in an entrepreneurial spirit, devoted themselves entirely to making cheese and abandoned farming, who would they sell the cheese to in exhange for grain? Everyone else already makes both their own cheese and grain.
Agreed. But than we could say so of in the XII century: everyone was making his own food, so why did cities arise? There is clearly something amis here.