The socio-biological explanation for human's aversion to libertarianism

Economics Political Theory
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Actually, there was no paper that he refered to. The man who started this thread just asked what the sociobiological reason for humanity’s aversion to libertarianism was.

It seems like some of our friends are getting off topic. The question itself had a neurolinguistic twist, because everyone began responding upon the assumption that there was a sociobiological aversion. As you and others have said, there doesn’t seem to be. I’m reading some of the posts and some folks here don’t seem to understand the NeoDarwinist critique very well.

As I was the first one to point out that it wasn’t a fact that there was an aversion (yeah for me! I’m so totally awesome), I’ll try to reiterate some of my points.

Human’s seek individual power (control over themselves) for the sake of their selfish genes. We are individualist who have a collectivist instinct that has arisen from the fact that only the tribal mentality kept our ancestors alive in the past. That’s why man is a social animal. However, with the collectives we form there is a basic power structure. A Hiearchy, that allows on to rise from commoner to leader of the pack. That person is given rewards - most importantly has been the procreation reward. The selfish genes win. Now there are more of them.

Human relationships are a balance between emphasis on collectivism and individualism. We have the instinct toward one, than the other structures that. It’s almost a paradox. More like a cycle. Man wants individual freedom. He rises to the top of the pack. He has a big family. He favors the family (committing to collectivism) in decisions. This is how our ancestors handled their business. Between then and now the human brain has not evolved. It is designed for prehistoric times, and we are adapting. But with the same impulses of our ancestors.

Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, the evolutionary psychologist (also a libertarian!) calls this The Savannah Principle.

Dr. Howard Bloom explains the State (or a religion for that matter) as a Superorganism. A large entity with humans as the individual cells. I think looking at both of those authors might explain a lot to our friends of this thread.

There is no aversion to libertarianism. Rather, there is a primitive collective impulse that acts as a check and balance to individualism, which acts as a check and balance to the collectivism of genes, which acts as a check and balance to the individualist striving to procreate of competiing microscopic individuals (like sperm) and so on and so forth.

Some where in there people take one way of doing things to far, misinterpreting nature and you get religious superstition, communism, etc. The state is an invention, the purpose of which is to preserve the rights we are born with. But it might be used by someone to preserve only their rights (such as the right to property) at the expense of others (legal plunder).

We don’t have an aversion to libertarianism but we have an impulse toward collectivism at varying degrees. Different cultures seem to have less or more value placed upon this. We have the impulse to punch somebody if they step on our foot, but we don’t have an aversioni to peace. The key here is to become Individual Self Aware, as Jung called it. Or to help others become that way.

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is there a such thing as the ‘collectivist’ gene?

There is some social needs in people. There is also a stronger preference of collectivist ideas or their prerequistes with some people.

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http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=320940

This paper might be of interest

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Nonsense. A small child* is utterly unable to care for itself. In a primitive environment, without constant tending from a parent, a child would perish in a matter of hours, not days. All other mammals that I’m aware of exercise coercive force on their youngsters. I understand that the coercive family breaks the Non-Aggression Principle but that’s tough. When reality collides with your paradigm, it’s the paradigm that has to change. Reality is what it is. This is why I reject the NAP as a universal norm… it simply doesn’t work when thoroughly and consistently applied to human behavior.

Clayton -

*Note that “small child” does not mean anyone under 18 years of age.

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I vaguely remember that in a thread on Myers-Briggs personality analysis a while ago, a lot of members claimed to score somewhere along the lines of INTJ, INTP, INFJ and so on, meaning that they belonged to the introverted, analytical spectrum of the population: the scientists and system builders.

Isn`t Mayer Briggs pseudo science, it works alot like astrology. I remember I got INFJ, INTJ, ENFP. Depending on my mood.

Either way, I refuse to be labeled.

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Bingo! This hits the nail on the head. There are genes which are slightly negative in most contexts or highly negative in rare cases but are passed on anyway, because if strongly advantage-providing mutations occur mostly to other genes, then these other genes would select for individuals surviving without prejudice on whether they also have or have not the said negative genes.

But genes are probably not an answer. Though just about everyone had socialist thoughts as a child, many have other views as adults. Would that be a fair argument?

I’ve noticed this too. I, at least, fall into this category as well.

Ron Paul is basically, based on his speeches over the years, a modern day Frederic Bastiat. Which is a great thing. What Bastiat wrote, by the way, was so well written that even Japanese translations from the first days of the Meiji era exist!

Regrettably, the problem of why people are not receptive even despite this is similar to the problem of why some people are entreprenuers and other people are not, for instance, according to Israel Kirzner: “… It may be that, after costs of learning have been tallied (or, in extreme case when these costs are zero, because existence of two prices [for the same exact object] is plain to see) we have no explanation for the buyer who pays the higher price, and the seller who accepts the lower price other than that market participants have simply failed to notice what was staring them in the face.”

Basically, I suspect, its a question of reading. Because most people read few books, including most scientists, according to their preferences, there is short of having many public speakers like Paul (or Bastiat in his day) no way to convey anything that requires long strains of thought. Again, Kirzner would say, we must advertise products, because no demand curve for gloves exists if people do not even know what gloves are, and not knowing that they don’t know, don’t seek information on gloves.

And finally, as Schopenhauer said, because patience is scarce, if one speakers need much time to convey a theory, the opponent need only interrupt him with an insult to “win” the debate, even if he loses the point.

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I am no expert in evolutionary psychology, but it seems to me there is a lot to this, though it is more complex than a ‘collectivist gene’.

Humans, and their anscestors, arose in an environment of small groups (mainly familial) engaged in direct cooperation in order to harvest resources that were largely ‘given’. As we became more an more effective and socially integrated the relative importance of being personally effective declines and the relative importance of having a good reputation increases - our survival becomes more dependent on other humans and less on our personal ability.

Humans have a very well developed understanding of direct cooperation in small groups - I scratch your back, you scratch mine.However we are comparitively lacking in genetic ‘experience’ of indirect coordination between strangers, which is what social cooperation (in the Misesian sense) is. Thus we tend to overvalue direct cooperation and undervalue and even mistrust indirect coordination. Thus the enthusiasm for community centers and the mistrust of faceless corporate entities.

Likewise, human beings will tend to prefer to signal and operate with an aim towards gaining status and regard from other humans even at the expense of being wrong. No offense to the theistic here, but I think religion clearly demonstrates the existene of such a bias.

The ‘seen and the unseen’ is another factor, humans have to be well adapted to forming opinions in a derth of information which will tend to make people very opinionated on subjects they are relatively ignorant of, especially ones which concern group survival. The Dawkinsian ‘selfish-gene’ explanation for so-called ‘atruistic’ behavior to this, as our instincts are around preserving groups which we identify with and would have (in the past) represented our genetic survival, even if today they are an artificial construction like ‘country’.

These are all mutually enforcing, meaning that people will tend to be communtarian in their social theory, favoring direct cooperation with self-identified groups over indirect coordination with anonymous parteners; and will favor egalitarian resource allocation both from a sense of familial ‘fairness’ and risk spreading - for in the past it was much more likely for one of our genetic relatives to die randomly.

Then we have thousands of years of these mutually reinforcing genetic traits generating a cultural mileu which favors socialistic ideas.

James J. Martin’s view was that libertarians will always be a small subsection of the population for both our ethical and consequentialist arguments confront an inherent bias in the human being. Others, such as Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken, were similarly pessimistic about the population at large. It may well be the case that, in the near term, libertarianism and libertarian or quasi-libertarian structures are doomed by the basic inclinations of the population. Of course, that does not make us any less correct. It’s just that that is how the cookie crumbles.

One might ask, “then why are there libertarians at all?” Well, genetics and culture are both extraordinarily complex, and there are probably instances where self-regarding and self-efficacious norms, and social liberalism in general, are a benefit. But in our primate, pre-civilized past these were relatively weak compared to communitarian egaltiarianism. Thus we will have some ‘natural’ individualists, but even when they accept our views the ‘natural authoritarians’ tend to value the components differently and still wind up with collectivist notions of social order. One also must not discount the tendency of people to look to established ‘leaders’ and ‘experts’ for guidance, and it is in the genetic interest of these ‘experts’ to take advantage of them by predation - usually, I would say, without realising it. After all a liar is much more convincing if he believes his falsifications.

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RJMII: Bravo! I whole-heartedly agree with your analysis. The problem of social order is a whole lot more complex than many libertarians surmise. Just consistently applying the Non-Aggression Principle is not sufficient.

I wrote a blog post which covers some similar ideas to those you’ve mentioned here. In my view, the central puzzle of the social order is why do people tolerate being governed? There is no clear answer. I understand why people attempt to govern. But I don’t understand why society is, as it were, made to be governed. I’m fairly certain the explanation lies in our past and may be among the set of explanations you’ve put forward.

Clayton -

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The problem of social order is a whole lot more complex than many libertarians surmise. Just consistently applying the Non-Aggression Principle is not sufficient.

I don’t find the NAP to be conceptually useful. Under any legal system ‘non-aggression’ is tautological; the question is ‘what counts as aggression?’

One anti-libertarian tendency that I see as highly pronounced is the mistrust money and monetary exchanges; ranging across many political ideologies. Money is the non plus ultra of both indirect coordination and the ‘unseen’. Money’s particular usefulness is almost nil (aside from its non-montary functions) and it only comes into its own in exchange, thus making it seem as people are demanding and accumulating something which is on the face of it useless; that people are starving for want of a commodity that has no obvious function. Likewise money is the prime coordinator of the production processes, making capitalists and financial markets appearing to the layman nothing more than useless shuffling around of a useless commodity.

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a social-evolutionist’s view on the uniqueness of western culture, and why western liberalism (in the old sense of the word) is not likely to spread to all corners of the globe.

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I find MacDonald to vastly overstate his case and be eurocentric in his judgments of the nature and quality of Western cutlure. Western culture is, for the most part, as socialist and mystical as the Fiji Islander’s. Likewise it seems to me that modern Asia is more pro-commercial than any substantial group in the West.

The economist Gregory Clark argues in his book A Farewell to Alms that the rise of the industrial revolution may have something to do with the ‘survival of the most miserly’, to which Hans Hoppe would probably add a lower-time preferences and heightened intelligence.

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What do you mean by universal “norm”? It’s a moral principle. Whether or not it’s the “norm” of recorded human behaviour up to this point is irrelevant in terms of its validity as a universal moral principle. Statism, war, chattel slavery and genocide are all ‘normal’ human behaviours, Clayton.

Anyway, it must apply universally as a principle - regardless of whether anyone is currently paying attention to it - because otherwise you can’t justify it logically. You can’t justify actual aggression against dependent children in a family and then say that aggression against citizens by a state is fundamentally wrong in all cases. The fundamental justifications for the existence of the family and the state are the same. They always have been. Of course you have to understand what ‘aggression’ actually is - shoving a small child out of the way of an oncoming truck isn’t aggression, because that wouldn’t be aggression if you did it to anyone else in the same situation. Nor would batting a bottle of poison out of their hand if they were about to drink it. I don’t know what you’re envisioning exactly. We can accept the obvious premise that the young child’s faculties, wisdom and knowledge of the world are comparatively undeveloped relative to those of the average healthy adult without, by necessity, accepting that the NAP does not apply to children. What about people who are intoxicated, senile, mentally ill, neurologically or developmentally impaired? Does the NAP suddenly not apply to them either? What about people with lower IQ’s? What about people who aren’t ‘experts’ in a given field, annointed as such by society? Shouldn’t those who know better be allowed to override the wishes of simpler people to do what’s best for them?

The reality, of course, is that the vast majority of children are not raised under a system of ethics which respects the non-aggression principle towards them, so it’s really no surprise that they grow up with no respect for it as adults.

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Universalizability is a highly controversial topic in ethics and metaethics. I think you are far too cavalier with it here. Neither Aristotle nor Roderick Long consider universalizability necessary or sufficient for a moral theory. Indeed, it is questionable whether universalizabilty actually makes any sense. Why stop at humans? Why should not moral principles also be applicable to rocks? If there are relevant differences in humans the Aristotilian view would be that there can be relevant moral differences thereby; just as there are moral differences between men and rocks.

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movements have cachet when they get victories. everyone is anti-hitler because germany lost the war not because average folk value habeas corpus and individual rights. we need statism to loose too.

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Morality qualifies action, hence only that which acts can be subject to moral principles.

Moral principles do apply to rocks, by proxy, if they are someone’s property. :wink:

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Morality qualifies action, hence only that which acts can be subject to moral principles.

Your definitions seem arbitrary and hardly uncontroversial. Furthermore, you did not address the fact that universalizability is a Kantian notion; part of a system which is considered utterly exploded by almost every philosopher alive. Even the Neo-Kantians would not defend Kantian universalizability as a criterion, Kant himself pointed out that it led to absurd and ghastly conclusions.

I simply do not thin universalizability is either true or useful; if it is even coherent.

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You describe not only my definitions, sir, but my whole life.

I’m not a believer in the categorical imperative.

To clarify:

Kant thought that every single thing you ever did had to be justified ethically in terms of whether it could ‘rationally’ be willed to become universal law. You’d be obliged to tell a murderer where his victim was hiding, because lying is universally undesirable etc. Obviously it’s nonsense.

I’m simply saying that if the NAP - or any other proposed moral principle - is not universal in the sense that it applies to all actors under the same circumstances, then it’s obviously not a valid moral principle. If the reason you’re choosing to abandon the NAP for children is because they are less experienced, wizened and knowledgeable than adults, then you should abandon the NAP for all actors who are less experienced, wizened and knowledgeable than a given arbitrary standard. Government should be able to do what it likes because it knows best and we’re living under its roof. If we don’t like it, we should leave.

At the very least, libertarianism is reduced to hit-and-miss argument-from-effect tactics. And government ultimately stands as judge in its own case, just as parents do.

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I’m simply saying that if the NAP - or any other proposed moral principle - is not universal in the sense that it applies to all actors under the same circumstances, then it’s obviously not a valid moral principle.

This is not at all ‘obvious’. It also ignores internal circumstances - such as the values and aims of the actor in a given situation. And what circumstances count as ‘the same’? No two historical events are ever ‘the same circumstances’.

You have gained nothing by way of clarification, nor have you addressed the arbitrariness of universalizability as a criterion for moral rules.

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kant tried to be newtonian about it. i think he was on the right path. whats good for the goose…

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It’s not at all obvious that if there’s a moral rule proscribing a given action, it must apply to everyone?

Imagine that an ethical code alleged the definition of murder to be: “The voluntary killing of another moral actor by means of an initiation of force, unless the moral actor in question has red hair.”

It doesn’t matter how this ethical principle was derived, the fact of the matter is that people with red hair are not going to pay very much attention to it. This is an obvious praxeological truth. It cannot possibly be a valid moral system if an entire class of its putative moral actors have got absolutely no rational self-interest in abiding by its terms in the absence of someone forcing them to do so. A moral actor abiding by what he believes to be a valid ethical code behaves as he does because he expects others to abide by the same ethical principles vis-a-vis himself. He knows that if he murders, he cannot argue that he himself should not be murdered. Red-haired people would have no such incentive under this ethical system, and yet they are held to be moral actors in terms of it. It must be invalid.

Likewise, a hypothetical ethical system which accepts the non-aggression principle in terms of adults, but not in terms of children, is invalid in much the same way. Children are held to be moral actors as surely as adults are. They are punished and rewarded by their parents constantly in terms of what their parents tell them is morally appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. In fact, they are punished for minor infractions far more severely than the typical adult, punished for behaviour which would not be considered immoral by adults etc. They are punished if they are simply not aesthetically appealing to adults - if they don’t dress in a manner arbitrarily prescribed for them, or if they don’t speak in a subservient, self-deprecating fashion at all times, or if they express an opinion which is unpopular. The notion that parents exist, or should exist, as benevolent guardians who function to assist their children to become fully developed adults equipped to pursue their own destiny, and exercising authority over them exclusively in terms of what is in the child’s best interests, is an extremely recent one, historically. Its emergence is mirrored extremely closely by the emergence of governments which are justified as benevolent guiding influences necessary to regulate society in terms of its best interests, and provide for it inasmuch as it cannot provide for itself through non-coercive means.

For most of human history, children were produced by the vast majority of parents to function as labour devices and sex toys. Children existed primarily to benefit and serve their parents. They were slaves, which could be sold or exchanged like livestock. It’s not a pretty story, and it doesn’t deserve prettying up. During this time, there were no flowery justifications for the state in terms of it being a fundamentally benevolent institution gently guiding humanity along the right path. It was, of course, deemed to be essential to civilization as they knew it; but still there was no illusion that it existed as a benevolent guiding entity to serve the people’s needs. The people existed to serve the sovereign’s needs, and by his mercy they may be allowed to subsist on his table scraps.

The rhetorical character of the idealised state mirrors the rhetorical character of the idealised family. This is not just a coincidence. It happens because there is and always has been immense pressure on the young child to internalize and accept their parents’ ethical systems as valid. There’s immense pressure for the young child to accept everything the parent says about the world to be valid and true. There’s probably an underlying genetic component to this. I’m sure children with an inherent tendency to listen to their parents when told not to play with snakes etc were more survivable than those which weren’t - and of course parents would just kill or trade into slavery children they didn’t want.

The reason why so many people seem to have an emotional adverse reaction to libertarian-minded inquiry and argumentation - the fundamental stuff - is because they would have been punished - or at least conditioned against - that kind of thinking when they were very young children under the care of their parents. “As long as you live under my roof…” is exactly the same moral justification as “If you don’t like the rules in this country, you should leave”. To reject the latter and accept the former is to court cognitive dissonance. To accept both is to admit that your parents were, to some extent, evil, and that you might be evil to some extent yourself.

I’m sorry, folks, you’re not going to see a more libertarian society until you start seeing more libertarian families. Most people can’t handle the sort of contradictions that arise otherwise.