property is not neccicary for liberty. property facilitates liberty.
clayton said
I think that rational family structure is to be preferred to irrational family structure so I think that family patriarchs with libertarian values ought to adopt male primogeniture.
so me saying that i think a different system would be better seems relevent.
In an advanced, extremely wealthy libertopia, there’d be practically no need or incentive for family, as even the most basic of jobs, the kind a five year old could do, would pay more than the average wage now. Everybody’d be wealthy enough that they wouldn’t have to depend on anything for anything, and certainly wouldn’t want to if that gave the person they depended on the opportunity to boss them around (‘family socialism’). Also, note the problem with single parents is not necessarily just the fact that there’s one parent, but rather that the parent is often poor, or at least has to work many hours to support the child, leaving them with little time to actually properly raise and educate the kid. In a super-wealthy libertopia (with extremely high capital), one could make enough to comfortably support oneself on just a few hours work per week, and so it wouldn’t be difficult at all for a single parent to do a good job of raising a kid.
My suggestion is not based on preference, it’s based on a combination of theoretical and empirical arguments. The theoretical argument is the same as with any argument for single-decisionmaker ownership and contra collectivism: something which is owned by one individual is better cared for than something that is shared by multiple individuals. Dividing the inheritance has the effect of collectivizing it, thus diminishing the incentives for the inheritance to be maintained and increased. The empirical argument is based on the patterns of inheritance and house law practiced by the Elites themselves - with few deviations, they practice male primogeniture and when not male primogeniture, they practice primogeniture. One prominent exception is the papacy which has tended to pass from uncle to cousin (Creveld mentions this in The Rise and Decline of the State).
Now, how does it matter if the children care to maintain and increase the inheritance, after all, so long as their father is alive, they have no control over the inheritance. But, in fact, they do. They have control over it on the basis of their conformity to the patriarch’s house law (which he has presumably ordered to maintain and increase the inheritance), particularly their choice of spouse (most importantly in the case of women) and social connections (most importantly in the case of men).
Not only do I think this is actually the most efficient way to run a household, I think that the advantages are so great that in households where this system runs smoothly, even the male non-heirs will tend to consolidate their capital (which would ordinarily be independent of the patriarch’s, that is, they would be in a position to break away and form an independent household of their own) with the patriarchal household. You can see this pattern in the Rockefeller family, for example, where even the men tend to live under the umbrella of the patriarch even though they could choose to do otherwise.
Note that I’m against statists employing this system. I would rather see statists not employ this social technology and I would rather see anti-statists employ it. Unfortunately, I think that most states are controlled primarily by power interests who employ this social technology and one of the primary ends to which they employ the state apparatus is to disrupt the use of this social technology by other families who are less wealthy and powerful. I think it’s that big of a deal. I think its power is misunderstood and, thus, vastly underestimated.
Clayton -
One person may tend to care for it more, but businesses with many owners (e.g. stockholders) exist, and they can run for the benefit of many. An elite who submits to the patriarch chooses to do so only if he finds the patriarch’s rules to be worth living under. But it doesn’t matter to the patriarch. He keeps his wealth whether or not his brothers or sons submit to him or not.
I don’t see at all how this is an efficient way to run a household, nor do I see it as desireable. Pooling the capital for multiple heirs seems far more desireable. It keeps the family unit closer with less likelihood of contempt, and if there is a falling out, being able to split the assets or have your family buy you out seems a far better solution. It also means that if someone does decide to leave the family, he (or she) at least leaves with something.
If a father is so concerned with who his daughter might marry, then he can threaten to disinherit her. But passing it on to his son so that his son can tell his sister who to marry, that is just so fucked up. If it’s such an issue, leave it between the father and daughter.
And then the father’s wife can refuse sex as payback, because none of her husband’s wealth is her own.
the most competant person or family member makes more sense than the first son.
http://rethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/2012/02/primogeniture-or-concentrated.html
this article suggests the key is concentrated inheretence rather than primogeniture.
The key therefore is not inheritance by an eldest son, but the principle of concentrated inheritance regardless of who is chosen. In fact for many great families, kingdoms and empires throughout history, the ideal has been to choose the best candidate for inheritance, either from amongst immediate relatives, or by adoption into the family. (A point reinforced by the fact that the only direct primogeniture on the above list led to the dynastically disastrous Richard, who once claimed he would sell London if he could find a buyer.)
But the issue is decision-making. A stock-share corporation must still be helmed by a board of owners with a plurality of shares.
Well, I think you’re assessing the matter emotionally rather than rationally. In dispersed and/or “best qualified” inheritance, sibling rivalry leads to in-fighting. The more settled and unalterable the order of inheritance, the less reason there is for siblings to fight and argue (maybe the second-eldest son might occasionally try to slip poison in the eldest son’s drink… but that’s a separate matter). This brings peace to the household and enables all members of the household to focus on what really matters, pulling together under the guidance of the patriarch. The British royal family is a model example of this. You have three generations all pulling together under the guidance of the Queen.
Primogeniture isn’t just “the eldest son”, it’s a ranking of inheritance not unlike the order of succession to the throne. If the eldest is incompetent for some reason, the next-in-line can be nominated as the heir instead at the discretion of the patriarch.
Fucked up for you and I but not among the Elites. Go read history, it was (and doubtless still is) commonplace… not only interfering before but also after marriage. In fact, I think this is really the secret of the power of patriarchy; one of the patriarch’s primary jobs is to be the “eugenicist” of the family and to set the moral standard of acceptable behavior within the family. This is a crucial component of preparing for a smooth transition of the inheritance from generation - a family with high standards of discipline can manage the transition without the resentments you describe. Either that, or they will disintegrate like many do who can’t manage it, and be eaten alive by the families that keep it together.
Clayton -
I’m okay with a board of directors. I’d rather see a family council nominated than one person inherit everything.
You’re not assessing the situation rationally either. You are just defining an efficient household as one that acts under and follows the command of one person. And if that one person is a poor leader, well, that sucks for the rest of the family. They have no say whatsoever. All the property is in the patriarch’s name. He isn’t the one that suffers for poor decisions.
If the family divides property among the members, then they all have a say. If the family becomes large enough, they can have a family council. If they really want, they can name a leader to that too, and if that person loses the backing of the council or the family in general, then he needs to take into account the consequences of his decisions. If the family doesn’t respect his decisions, then he loses the backing of the family. If the family respects his decisions, then his opinions gain weight.
But if he just owns everything, he doesn’t have to care about the opinions of his family. He can make decisions that the family doesn’t respect, but they must follow him or lose out on whatever benefits he might provide. And in the case of most families, it’s not like he’s providing a lot.
Primogeniture is literally about the firstborn. If the father wants to nominate someone else, so be it. But either way, this places the power within a family all into one person. Even if that person isn’t incompetent, that doesn’t mean he won’t make decisions that do not deserve respect. And that’s if the patriarch can find a competent successor.
Yeah, they get eaten alive. There is no reason to put all the decision making of a family into one person. If it’s a middle class family, that $50,000 or $100,000 that they might inherit from their parents can be really helpful for solidifying their own financial well-being, or even for investments so that they may increase their assets. But if it all goes to one person, well, damn, that sucks for the others. He can increase his assets and let the others be damned. Even if their family is close-knit, the heir doesn’t have to give anything to them. And if it is a middle class family, it’s not like they have a mansion where all the family can live under one roof. The brothers and sisters don’t get to live in the house of the heir. They don’t get to drive a car provided by the heir.
Also, most inheritance in history was not primogeniture. Many societies would have a preference for the eldest male, but he would not inherit the entire estate - he would inherit more than the others but not all. Regarding monarchies and firstborn male heirs, well, they were inheriting a lot more than the family property, they were inheriting the right to rule over a given territory. There isn’t much point to dividing the inheritance if the firstborn is going to be ruling over the locals.
If your whole point is that the elites did this to maintain power over the rest of the population, then maybe primogeniture is the best method of maintaining that power. But not everyone can be king, and it doesn’t make sense for anyone who doesn’t intend to rule.
This brings peace to the household and enables all members of the household to focus on what really matters, pulling together under the guidance of the patriarch. The British royal family is a model example of this. You have three generations all pulling together under the guidance of the Queen.
so as part of my learning english,
the queen is a matriarch, not a patriarch
Why quote things out of context to troll cab21?
Also, in terms of a patriarch’s role as the family’s dispute solver, he is not sought for wisdom but because of his wealth. In a family without a patriarch, that role is filled by someone the family respects. If his decisions and opinions don’t help to resolve the disputes satisfactorily, then the family seeks someone else for advice. This cannot happen with a patriarch who owns all of the wealth.
Why quote things out of context to troll cab21?
in what context was he not suggesting patriarchy?
back to the preist that tells a women not to be a a drunk. the patriarch of a family would also tell a women not to be with a drunk. the familiy wellbeing and genetics is a matter of disapline afterall.
The first to tackle the issue of the relationship between government and religion was, of course, Robert Graves in his seminal The Golden Bough.
A usual example based on some of Graves’ ideas. You have your usual tribe of hunter-gatherers. The elders governing the tribe notice they need to do something to, say, control the youths. They cannot rely on strength and coercion alone: the youths are more numerous than them and physically stronger. In a pre-firearms society the physically stronger have a distinct military advantage, especially when wieding stone axes or cubs, not to mention when they have superior numbers. That’s where religion comes to the rescue. By building a complex sets of moral rules and rituals they can control the physically stronger but less experienced and usually deeply divided youths more easily and with many less risks than relying on coercion alone. Ever wondered why the most common cultural image of a priest/shaman is always an old man with white hair and a flowing beard? There lays your answer.
The relationship between government and religion has always been symbiotic: the priests have material advantages (for example tax exemption) while the rulers have somebody to morally back them at every turn and threatening eternal damnation and divine wrath. The apex of this arrangement could be found in the City-States of Mesopotomia, where the supreme ruler was often also the highest ranking priest.
Christianity is, however, a tad different. Apart from a few cases the Roman Empire had always been extremely tolerant on matters of religion. Recent historical research has proven the so called persecutions to have been not only blown out of proportions by Christian apologists but to have been a sophisticated propaganda exercise. Many Christian martyrs were actually “heretics” put to death not by the heathen Romans but by their own “mainstream” correligionists with the help of the secular authorities. These heretics (like the followers of Montanus) had two main bones with the mainstream Church: the first was usually of theological nature (varying according to their doctrines) while the second was usually common and being that Jesus himself had never told his followers to chum up with government officials to use force. In fact many argued that the episode when Jesus loudly forbade Peter to defend him during his arrest hinted at the fact a Christian should always refrain from using force even when his own life was at stake. Given the fact at this time Rome’s armies were already marching under the sign of the Cross you can understand what I mean. The Roman Church (not to be confused with the modern Roman Catholic Church) relied heavily on the Late Roman State, both to supply muscle and as a model for its own organization. It can be argued, at a moment when the Empire was falling apart, desperate Emperors turned to State religion to try and delay the inevitable. Yes, Rome had a State religion since the days of the Republic but even the Emperors themselves considered it a joke: throwing some incense in the holy fire once in a while was more of a civic festival than anything else. You could follow your own religion and do the occasional and mandated offering to the holy fire and that was considered more than enough. Hell, you could even do away with the offering if you felt it went against your tenets and made a convincing case (Jews were usually exempted on these grounds). Christianity as a State religion was a whole lot more serious. It’s suspected Asian influences had more than a little to do with how damn serious the forced conversion was. Ironically, at a moment when Roman soldiers were burning holy books and mobs of Christian zealots were stoning pagan priests and tearing down temples (State approved murder and destruction of private property), the Sasanid kings of Persia (Rome’s arch enemies) became much more tolerant on religious matters, to the point they offered safe haven to pagans fleeing the Roman empire.
I’d take care relying on Graves for valuable theories about any other civilization but Classical Greek. He was a poet, first of all, and secondly a classicist-and perfectly willing to make up what he did not know, as well.
My take on the history of religion and government is that monotheism is too handy a tool not to be used by the state. Because it teaches reliance on a single all-powerful authority REGARDLESS of whether or not that authority is actually providing a valuable service, it becomes a perfect analog for coercive governement to achieve the cooperation of the masses. They’ve been taught not to look for alternatives.
Polytheists have options. They don’t assume right and wrong have only one definition. They have the freedom to question authority.
My take on the origins of the state religion is simply that as with any other commodity, religion comes under state control when it becomes possible for the powerful to control the economy of a society. Paleolithic Near Eastern communities which were mobile seem to have had little in the way of economic disparity or political arrangement; they did, however, have religion as well as traditions that seem to have had religious reinforcement. For example, the periodic return to certain spots to re-bury some bones of the dead or to work on patently religious sites like Gobekli Tepe.
When those societies became sedentary, their economies could be managed by those who controlled trade and wealth; it seems likely based on the way those sites progressed in terms of religious practices that religion and politics became more elaborate and more connected with wealth as time went by. It’s in the sedentary communities that we see growing economic disparities as well as individuals who seem to be overtly religious authorities based on their grave goods, etc.
I think what this means in general is, as stated by others, religion gives the powerful a tool for manipulation. But that tool is imperfect in polytheistic societies. Even where state religions exist, like in the Classical Greek and Roman communities, persons are usually reasonably free to seek or create religions and cults in addition to the state-sponsored ones. Christianity itself took advantage of that relative freedom in its early phases.
I don’t think Christianity would have gone very far if Rome had not been in such chaos economically and politically. It seems to have been more or less a last-ditch effort to create unity, by discarding the idea of multiplicity in religion. It worked a little better in the East, initially, but eventually the new Western powers made effective use of the sole authority as well.
I think it’s important to remember too that the Pope didn’t derive his power mainly from MORAL authority. It was always quite temporal and political as well. His authority derived from the supposedly direct transmission of power (not just morals) from the original religious authority of Saint Peter, as established by the political authority of Constantine.
a) The patriarch doesn’t “own all of the family’s wealth” unless they choose to place their assets under his umbrella (my understanding is that this is how the Gypsies do it) - he simply inherits his fathers assets en toto which is his father’s choice, right?
b) Yes, the “disinheritance” club is not a tool of voluntary dispute-resolution. However, family members in a natural order society should not be going to law against one another in the first place. The patriarch’s power is still based on voluntary arrangements, however, let’s not forget point a) above.
c) Male members of the family can always break away from the patriarch and found their own family from scratch. True, they will be doing so without the advantage of a portion of their father’s inheritance but we still have to refer back to point a)… there’s nothing coercive about this.
d) Female members as a rule break away whenever they marry. The power of the patriarch only extends up to the point that they are or may be in the future dependents. A woman who “marries into another clan”, i.e. breaks contact with her family and puts herself at the mercy of her in-laws can completely escape a tyrannical patriarch.
e) It is an unfortunate fact that sons do not always have their father’s natural aptitudes. Nevertheless, I think this is focusing on the wrong issue because what makes the house law of the elite ruling families work is not the genetic excellence of the patriarchs but, rather, the moral order of the household itself. A well-ordered household is nearly self-governing and the conformity of all parties to the given expectations is virtually guaranteed. If a house falls, it is can be due to a moral failing of the patriarch to be sufficiently rigid and disciplinarian; in other words, it’s not necessarily due to the patriarch squandering the family nest egg on his own hedonistic pleasures.
I think you’re mistaken that the value of primogeniture is only to the royals - as I understand it, the nobility practiced it, as well. Also, I believe that in the more well-established houses, there are bylaws regarding the obligations of the patriarch (or head of household) to his dependents so that he cannot just arbitrarily cut the entitlements. And neither should he wish to except in the case of emergency… the whole value of the patriarchal system is the network of genetical and economical loyalty that permits a “division-of-labor” to occur within the household itself in order to protect its members as well as to enlarge the estate. The whole goal of this thing is not merely to build the biggest possible family nest egg but, rather, to situate the entire family as well as possible. When a family becomes overextended (too many people for the patriarch to efficiently manage), this order is liable to break down. When it becomes too concentrated (too few people fighting over control of the nest egg), the entire bloodline becomes imperiled. The wise patriarchy strikes a balance between these two extremes.
Clayton -
I mean he owns the inheritance. I know that it is the father’s right. I do not see how it is beneficial to the other members of the family.
Disputes between family members can still happen. Sure, ideally there wouldn’t be. But ideally there wouldn’t be any disputes in the general population either.
I know there is nothing coercive about this. That doesn’t make it a good thing. Sure it’s the father’s right (should he convince his wife) to pass his all his wealth to his eldest son (or whoever he finds to be most competent), but this doesn’t make it a good thing. If a middle class family owns a restaurant, why should he give it to his eldest son, his other sons and daughters be damned? How in the hell does this keep a family together and in order?
Sure, all the assets are controlled by one person. But so what? If the other sons and daughters want to continue to work in the family restaurant, then they must obey to the patriarch. If they don’t want to obey, they can always leave penniless. Sure it’s voluntary. But I don’t see how a loving father and mother could do that to their children.
If the parents really feel that only one of their children is competent enough to run the restaurant, then they can either give him a majority ownership, or they can give him the entire thing and give money to their other children, or some other form of their wealth.
But I see no reason to screw the others because the father wants “to keep his house in order”.
Again, I don’t see why it’s a good thing to put the women under the thumb of the patriarch. Even if he isn’t completely tyrannical, it’s absurd that a woman should be left in a situation where she must obey her brother or lose out on enjoying what had been her parents’ wealth. The same goes for her brothers.
I’m aware of dowries, and there is nothing forcing a brother to give his sister a dowry for when she marries. It all depends upon the pure hearted patriarch.
The reason the elite maintain power is because they have accumulated capital over the centuries, or if they are new blood, because they acquired the capital through the free market really quickly. The old elite gained their capital through aggression. They buy the state’s power and use it to maintain and increase their own wealth at the cost of everyone else. The new elite may or may not have attained their capital through aggression (by using the state), but they if they are among the PTB, then they certainly maintain and increase their wealth through aggression.
Separately, I don’t see why a house should succeed or fail based on one person. What a terrible system. This is wholly different from free market interactions basing the success or failure on one person. In that, the entrepreneur’s failure affects only himself and his wife and children. With primogeniture, the siblings are left hung out to dry. They never even get a chance at success with the family’s wealth.
No. The value of primogeniture is limited only to royals. It incentivises fighting for power among the family. Look at all the wars and assassinations throughout history. These royal families are vying for power. The system causes the strongest to rise to the top…of power. It has no place for the middle class family. Most middle class family businesses are not going to become major businesses in the manner of Walmart or something smaller like Costco. Passing on control of the family business to one person may be the best decision sometimes, but leaving everything to only one child at the expense of the rest is detrimental to them and their relationships. The middle class family shouldn’t be trying to breed the strongest alpha male to take control of the hardware store or restaurant or the tailoring business along with the family house, whatever cars are left over, the furnishings, etc.
If the parents love their children at all, they would want to make sure that all their children are provided for. If they want to give their eldest son the restaurant, then give the house to their daughter. If your goal is to amass enough wealth so as to become among the PTB, then there is a reason to keep all the wealth together. And if you leave it with your eldest son, then you know the wealth will stay together. But a loving father and mother shouldn’t be concerned with whether or not their great grandchildren will be able to become PTB. They should be concerned with the success and welfare of their children - hoping to see their descendants corrupted should not be a long term goal.
My bad, I jumbled things. The Golden Bough was actually written by Sir James Frazer. Don’t know how I got things mixed up so badly.
Ha ha, I should have wondered why that sounded funny. I’m familiar with both authors’ works.
Frazer was an armchair anthropologist, he only ever had access to second and third-hand information. He was writing at a time when the idea of comparative religion was very attractive. Theosophy had introduced the idea that among all the religions of the world, certain similarities could point the way to a sort of master religion, and while I think Frazer was a better scholar than that as a whole, he certainly fits into the prejudices of his time.
His work was a big influence on Graves, especially in The White Goddess, Graves’s pseudo-historical poetic mishmash.
