I’m hoping someone can direct me to read the Austrian(s) or specific works that address this. I have searched the Mises forums and blogs, and have looked at Hoppe and Bastiat info, but haven’t found anything specific.
If we assume evolution as truth, how is survival of the fittest taken into consideration within the Austrian school considering a world before or without capitalism.
Two examples might best depict what I mean:
- An old, weak, unproductive man possesses food he will die without. A hungry, stronger, young man that can still reproduce, but with nothing to trade, needs the food immediately to survive. Assuming there are no other options, is it immoral for him to take it from the old man?
- A far superior alien species invades earth to take our resources for their own advancement. They need everything we have to survive and don’t have time waste. We can do nothing about it. Assuming there are no other options, are the aliens immoral?
If it is immoral, then how does the “fittest” survive and the best genes/species advance?
If it is moral, then where is the line for property rights within the Austrian school?
This may be a no brainer that I have missed, so I appreciate your patience with me.
Thanks!
“how does the “fittest” survive and the best genes/species advance?”
Why is this necessary?
The free market is not a zero sum game, and people don’t need to die off.
What you’re talking about is survival of the strongest. Fitness, in the darwinian sense, means exactly that; one “fits” in their environment. Now, being stronger can me you are more fit for your environment, but it is not necessarily true. Consider the demise of the saber toothed tiger, a much more powerful species than modern big cats.
Also, I don’t think AE deals with moral/immoral.
i agree, survival of the fittest is not what you described, that is survival of the strongest… survival od the fittest doesnt mean how strong one has to be, but how one is willing to adapt to their situations…
I don’t know if any Austrian scholars address this specifically, but I’d love to take a stab at them if I may:
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The old man has food. The young man has none. If the old man earned that food through his wages or directly through his labor, it is immoral for the young man to steal it, but it is moral for the young man to earn it pending a mutual agreement between the two. The beauty of trade is this - say the old man has food b/c the old man was a farmer. He teaches the young man how to farm, the young man gets his food, and the old man gets a cut for educating. If the old man could still do a little work, the economy, or pie, has grown and both are better off.
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If that’s the case, that just sucks. Still, assuming that all intelligent life has the right to life, liberty, and property, it is immoral for the aliens to wipe humanity out. However, going back to example 1, if the two species traded freely, there’s a good way both can get what they want while mutually benefiting.
Don’t look at it as “moral” or “immoral.” Look at it how the parties can benefit. When you resort to coercive forces, all parties involved are actually worse off, but when you cooperate and trade, everyone is better off.
Oh, and going to “survival of the fittest.” I think humanity is uniquely distinct from this principle b/c we have the unique ability to shape the environment to our desires, and we’re generally good at adapting w/in a very short span of time. Also, through voluntary cooperation, we are also uniquely suited to utilizing our various strengths for a mutual benefit. Most other animals are either well adapted to their environment or they aren’t. Thus, when conditions change, some thrive and some simply can’t. Humans are very different, and hence I don’t think the rules necessarily apply unless there are some major problems, like genetic abnormalities, severe sickness, etc.
I agree with your clarification of “survival of the fittest” in the Darwinian sense, but please let me adjust my two examples accordingly, as I think my questions still apply:
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Instead of an old, weak, unproductive man, let’s use an equally strong (or equally weak) man with a different genetic make-up that makes him less fit for the immediate, local environment (e.g. fatal allergies to most foods, inability to handle UV rays, etc use your imagination). The other equally strong man (but more genetically fit for the environment) finds a way to steal the food from the genetically inferior man - Either will die without all of the food.
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The human race on earth has not yet adapted to the immediate, local environment (i.e. space) to the level that the aforementioned aliens have, given that the aliens are able to easily utilize a much larger portion of the universe (e.g. by handling the lack of planetary atmospheres, handling the lack of gravity, etc) for travel and resource acquisition. They steal all of the earth’s resources which they would die without.
You mention that AE doesn’t deal with moral/immoral. It seems that Austrian political philosophy must deal with moral/immoral to some extent as inherent within its concepts is the right to owned property, which assumes it is wrong to forcefully take what another person owns.
Also, I appreciate Agamentus’ solutions, but I’d like to assume a scenario that leaves no time or ability for negotiation or trade. I understand I’m using extreme scenarios, but you could probably imagine a less extreme scenario and still be faced with the same problem.
My questions still stand - If immoral, how would the species survive and evolve? If moral, where does the Austrian school draw the line on property rights?
“Fitness” in the sense of Natural Selection is determined by the number of offspring a species’ offspring produces - in other words the ability to sustain reproduction.
“Fitness” does not refer to whether an individual is “physically fit” — bigger, faster or stronger — or “better” in any subjective sense. It refers to a difference in reproductive rate from one generation to the next. Source
It is an amoral concept.
The “survival of the fittest” line has also been misapplied and/or abused innumerable times.
Both of your examples are immoral in that their directly violate the NAP. You need go no further than Rothbard.
The moral action in your two examples would be voluntary trade. The all or nothing angle is absurdity.
It is really difficult to bring answers that’ll satisfy these types of questions where you already put in your own rules such as “One man will die without the food” or “One species will be completely eradicated without the food”- in actual situations I don’t think such a case is plausible when it comes to dealing with humanity, there is always an alternative option.
Why assume there are no other options but one man stealing from the other? Why can’t he just “ask” for some of the food, or tell the guy he’ll help him out in some way in exchange for the food?
Perhaps figure out a better way to ask the question?