I read a fascinating book a few months ago titled, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Kanazawa and Miller. The book is a survey of evolutionary psychology. One of the criteria they give for looking for an evolutionary explanation for social phenomena is cultural universality - if we observe a particular phenomenon in every culture, then it must have an explanation that is independent of culture. In other words, for cultural universally phenomena, the nurture vs. nature debate is a settled question - it is to nature, not nurture, that we must look for an explanation.
I have always been uneasy with the explanations for the existence of government that I have read from Austrian authors. It seems that the Austrian view is that government is a synthetic or “unnatural” entity which exists largely by virtue of propaganda, disinformation, and indoctrination. (I still have a large Austrian-standard-library reading deficit, so please correct me if my impression is mistaken). While this may be true, it cannot be an explanation for why government exists since government is culturally universal (there is government of some kind in every culture. the statists always use this fact to make the case that government is inevitable or necessary).
So, this leads me to inquire what are the conditions under which government evolved? Why is there government? What reproductive advantage is conferred by the institution of voluntary servitude?
I think David Friedman has (incidentally) hit on an answer in an article discussing the evolutionary psychology of just prices:
"Assume an environment sufficiently stable so that, for some transactions, there are “usual prices.” Those prices must be within the bargaining ranges of both buyer and seller, since otherwise the transactions would not occur. The environment is not, however, perfectly stable. Sometimes the circumstances of one party or another shift his bargaining range—the range of terms for which the transaction is in his interest.
You are a buyer whose current circumstances make the good much more valuable to you than usual, widening the bargaining range. If you could somehow commit yourself not to pay more than the usual price, you, rather than the seller, would get the increased benefit from this transaction. One way to do so is to be emotionally programmed to resent any increase above the usual price—resent it enough so that the humiliation of being ‘cheated’ will outweigh the gain from the transaction.
…
We now have a possible solution to the set of puzzles described above. Human beings have a functional module in their minds that deals with exchanges with other human beings. One feature of that module, hard-wired in by evolution, is that human beings regard the usual terms of exchange as right and any deviation from those terms that makes them worse off as a presumptively wicked act by the other party. This feature resulted in human beings that possessed it getting better terms in bilateral monopoly bargains in the environment in which we evolved, so having more resources and achieving greater reproductive success.
The belief in just prices and the associated commitment strategy continue to benefit those who hold it under some circumstances—markets with the features I have described. They injure those who hold it in the anonymous mass-market settings in which most modern economic transactions occur. And the fact that other people have that characteristic makes me worse off, both because it leads to inefficient policies by firms (long lines) and governments (price control) and because it leads to those others getting better terms from me when we happen to be in a bilateral monopoly transaction."
Friedman applies this concept of an evolved resentment of deviations from the terms of past transactions to price controls. I think it can be extended to the definition of property itself and account for the toleration of taxation.
Property law is complex (it was complex even before the omnipotent state began monopolizing it), which is evidence that defining what belongs to who is often not simple. Disputes over what belongs to who (e.g. property line disputes) are not unlike the “shift in bargaining range” Friedman describes above - each party stands to benefit from having the dispute resolved in his favor. Individuals with a strong resentment of property dispute decisions in the favor of the other party, and with a strong desire for property dispute decisions in their own favor would acquire more property, achieve greater reproductive success, and so on. So, we are the descendants of people who fought tenaciously for property disputes to be resolved in their own favor (regardless of what is just or efficient because nature is indifferent to our notions of justice or economic efficiency).
Outright theft is the furthest extreme of this, but thieves also have a tendency to eventually get caught and punished (thereby reducing their overall reproductive success). However, basically all people are de facto thieves in that, given the chance to steal without chance of repercussion, we will. Candid Camera has extensively documented this human trait.
One last puzzle piece is necessary: the radical change that has occurred in the last dozen or so millenia from what evolutionary psychologists term the “ancestral environment” to the modern environment. The human brain did not spend the majority of its evolutionary history in an environment with plows, chariots, swords, guns, printing presses, airplanes and WiFi internet. This has important explanatory consequences. For example, Kanazawa and Miller discuss why pornography is so arousing to men. They explain that, in the ancestral environment, seeing a naked woman meant intercourse. The primitve part of the brain does not comprehend color printing, DVDs, flat screens and 1080i versus 1080p - a naked woman is a naked woman and an erection and sexual arousal is the natural, biological preparation for imminent intercourse.
But courts deciding property disputes and organized, armed states also did not exist in the ancestral environment. It does not matter to the part of the brain that is hardwired to fight for property disputes to be decided in one’s own favor that, in fact, the state violates one’s own property. The state only needs to offer each individual the illusion that it increases their bargaining power respecting property disputes with all other individuals. As long as a majority of individuals overestimate the benefits in terms of strengthening their bargaining position in property disputes and understimate the cost to themselves of submitting to voluntary servitude, the state can and will exist.
This explains the appeal of progressive taxation despite the fact that acquiescing to taxation is itself is a failure to decide the property dispute over taxation itself in one’s favor. A majority of people (irrationally) believe that progressive taxation strengthens their position respecting the definition of who owns the income and property of people wealthier than themselves. That is, progressive taxation makes an illusory promise that the state will shift the definition of property in favor of those who are in the majority (the non-wealthy).
Since the power to tax is what makes the state unique from every other organization, I believe it is only necessary to explain what makes people tolerate taxation (voluntary servitude) - all else follows from this. I feel that this explanation - if sound - offers a more satisfactory explanation for why governments exist in all cultures. Culture alone cannot be sufficient to explain the existence of government, there must be some underlying natural cause. I think Friedman’s explanation of the origin of just price may also be applicable to property disputes, and the ultimate explanation for why a majority of people assent to taxation on the irrational condition that the state tax others even more heavily. This view lends support to the statist argument that the state is inevitable. While it may be inevitable, we should understand it to be inevitable in the same sense that rape or murder is inevitable.
Clayton -