Libertarianism at Dawn
Apr. 9th, 2011 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupFor all its faults, Sex at Dawn has made rethink some things. Primarily, libertarianism. One of the reasons sexual and romantic fidelity isn't a big deal in tribal culture is that resources are not really controlled by individuals. Some people are better hunters than others, but no one is so good a hunter that they weren't guaranteed dry spells that could starve them (and their children, if they were the sole providers). So the culture develops an ethic of sharing- not just among adults, but from adults to children. Essentially, there's (at least) two equilibria: everyone strictly invests in their own children, or everyone invests equally in everyone's children. If resources are distributed fairly evenly, the first works out fine, and you save some effort assigning paternity. It's not until you get real differentials in resource holdings that it's worth the effort to control paternity. Add in that most people in the tribe are pretty heavily related to one another, and resource sharing isn't virtuous, it's just good planning.*
I think that a lot of progressives are going by an intuition developed for those earlier times. You don't need a really vicious criminal system when you know everyone and shame can do the job effectively. Ditto for monitoring people for good behavior before giving them welfare.** Notice that a lot of feminists are specifically trying to provide for children and mothers independent of paternity. I keep saying I support libertarianism because I don't think we're on the hook for one another's choices, but that is not a luxury primitive tribes could afford.
Which doesn't mean I'm wrong. First, that kind of shame based control is hard to implement in modern nations. You can do what Japan does, which is have an honest-to-god permanent record for every citizen that includes their relatives misdeeds, so that your uncle's divorce can keep you from getting into college. I'm assuming I don't need to explain why I'm against this.
Second, that kind of control imposed real costs even in primitive societies. Sex at Dawn talks about how jealousy was damaging in these tribes and the methods they used to prevent it, such as group sex rituals and mandatory sex between cross cousins. A society isn't a paradise just because it's a man hiding in a hut trying to avoid the female cousin he is culturally unable to refuse sex. Beyond that, I like that I can choose how much work I do, based on how much I value what the additional money will buy me.
*There's a well know, much repeated psych experiment where people are given a dollar, and told to divvy it up between them and a partner however they choose. The partner can choose to accept the distribution or reject it, in which case neither person gets any money. The game is anonymous and non-repeating, so the optimum thing to do is accept any distribution. But they've gotten amazingly consistent results that show people reject offers of less than ~40%, even when working in very poor countries where the exchange rate enables them to offer an awful lot of money, and that's about what people offer as well. The exception comes from small tribes that are highly related, where they will accept and offer much worse deals, as low as 10/90. Essentially, these people don't develop a sense of fairness because they're always dealing with close relatives, so it simultaneously doesn't matter if one person pulls one over on the other and they're vastly less likely to try. These tribes treat strangers terribly.
**The Mormon church has its own welfare system, and they do go over people's past spending before giving them help.
I think that a lot of progressives are going by an intuition developed for those earlier times. You don't need a really vicious criminal system when you know everyone and shame can do the job effectively. Ditto for monitoring people for good behavior before giving them welfare.** Notice that a lot of feminists are specifically trying to provide for children and mothers independent of paternity. I keep saying I support libertarianism because I don't think we're on the hook for one another's choices, but that is not a luxury primitive tribes could afford.
Which doesn't mean I'm wrong. First, that kind of shame based control is hard to implement in modern nations. You can do what Japan does, which is have an honest-to-god permanent record for every citizen that includes their relatives misdeeds, so that your uncle's divorce can keep you from getting into college. I'm assuming I don't need to explain why I'm against this.
Second, that kind of control imposed real costs even in primitive societies. Sex at Dawn talks about how jealousy was damaging in these tribes and the methods they used to prevent it, such as group sex rituals and mandatory sex between cross cousins. A society isn't a paradise just because it's a man hiding in a hut trying to avoid the female cousin he is culturally unable to refuse sex. Beyond that, I like that I can choose how much work I do, based on how much I value what the additional money will buy me.
*There's a well know, much repeated psych experiment where people are given a dollar, and told to divvy it up between them and a partner however they choose. The partner can choose to accept the distribution or reject it, in which case neither person gets any money. The game is anonymous and non-repeating, so the optimum thing to do is accept any distribution. But they've gotten amazingly consistent results that show people reject offers of less than ~40%, even when working in very poor countries where the exchange rate enables them to offer an awful lot of money, and that's about what people offer as well. The exception comes from small tribes that are highly related, where they will accept and offer much worse deals, as low as 10/90. Essentially, these people don't develop a sense of fairness because they're always dealing with close relatives, so it simultaneously doesn't matter if one person pulls one over on the other and they're vastly less likely to try. These tribes treat strangers terribly.
**The Mormon church has its own welfare system, and they do go over people's past spending before giving them help.
