Evolution has wired our brains for it, unfortunately.
The chief problem, he suggested, is that many people are beguiled by “romantic socialism”—that is, they imagine what their personal lives would be like if everyone shared and treated one another like family. We evolved in small bands that were an individual’s only protection from starvation, victimization, and inter-group aggression. People feel vulnerable if their band does not exist. Such sentiments are more or less appropriate when people lived in small groups of hunter-gatherers composed mostly of kin, but they fail spectacularly when navigating a world of strangers cooperating in global markets.
Tooby also argued that markets make intellectuals irrelevant. Consequently, academics have a huge bias against spontaneous order and the basic goal of most social science is to critique the social institutions associated with market-based society.
More darkly, Tooby pointed out that political entrepreneurs know how to appeal to romantic socialist sentiments as a way to establish themselves in power. The evolved psychological propensity toward romantic socialism facilitates political coalitions that oppose free-market societies. Since such coalitions are organized around romantically appealing ideas, any heresy is treated as betrayal. If things are not going well (and they never are in full-blown socialist societies) and since the ideology cannot be wrong, evildoers are undermining progress and must be found and punished (think kulaks and the Gulag). Such coalitions tend to revert to primitive zero-sum thinking: If there is something you don’t get that means that someone took it from you. The result is, according to Tooby, that there really are those who are willing to make poor people worse off in order to make rich people worse off.
In terms of defining socialism, I don’t make a distinction between it and Marxism, which was simply a failed attempt to explain economics and human nature scientifically. Simply put, though it’s more complex, it is the belief that one person can know better than another what that other person “needs,” and should have the power to ensure that those “needs” are met.
I think it’s both much simpler and more complicated.
Much simpler because socialism is attractive for the exact same reason that crime is attractive. A person considers what they want to be more important than what others want.
More complicated because, as pointed out, socialism actually works in small groups, but that’s because trade is happening on a different level with more intangibles.
Lots of arguments fail due to scaling. Are businesses good or bad? They are both. The crossover point is when they dominate and reduce competition.
ken: scaling is what came immediately to my mind as well. Just because it works on a startup scale (families) or in a book (business plan) says almost nothing about if it will work at a regional or national scale.
Within a small group social reputation can function as a currency, freeloaders quickly running out and coming under pressure to contribute or get cut off. On a larger scale, dealing with strangers, this doesn’t usually work.
“socialism actually works in small groups”
Not sure he says ‘socialism’ as such works in small groups. However, I’d like to see where this is true as you put it.
My understanding of history is there’s always the chief, council of elders, etc. even in simpler societies now and in the past.
The families of these ‘leaders’ always seem better off and there’s always the ‘untouchables’ in these societies, some family that has wronged or slighted the tribe/village in the views of the elders.
Of course there are exceptions Andy. We’re dealing with humans here. All systems fail on the fringes when you deal with humans.
It’s not my observation, but it has been posited that the only place socialism works is within the tight confines of the nuclear family. Parents will work their fingers to the bone while someone else (their children or their spouse) gets all the benefit. They do this gladly for their family who they love. And we do this resentfully for people we don’t know from a hole in the ground, and who we suspect are ungrateful as all hell for what they get, wondering why they don’t get more. This goes a long way toward explaining why Marxists do whatever they can to break up the family structure; strong families don’t need socialism.
The turning point is somewhere around 3000 people. (There were studies that analyzed historical data for comparison to Israel’s formation/expansion of kibbutzim.)
When it is fewer than 3000 people, your ‘degrees of connection’ are high enough that you can both recognize the slackers and identify the legitimate needs.
I believe this is fundamentally “The Traveling Salesman Problem” as to why it scales so poorly.
Parents will work their fingers to the bone while someone else (their children or their spouse) gets all the benefit.
Except that those other family members are expected to engage in other activities that benefit the family. It is the fallacy of the unemployed housewife.
Yes. One might even say a healthy family operates on the principle of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
Strange. You know, I think I heard that aphorism somewhere before?
I wouldn’t put it like that.
Duties are not necessarily assigned according to a person’s abilities but rather what needs to get done. And output from a family’s production are not divvied up by individual need either. You could still make the case that is like socialism though.
The author makes some good points but is also a participant in the type of thinking he is critiquing.
But most of those voters actually rejected the idea of the government running businesses or owning the means of production; they tended to be safety-net redistributionists who want to tax the rich to pay for health care and college education. And this was, in fact, the platform Sanders was running on.
What the author fails to note is that single payer healthcare system is the government running and owning businesses. The same goes with “free” college. In both cases, it really isn’t single payer but single customer. The people aren’t the customers, the government is and the government controls the business selling the product too.
The speaker the author quotes relies on the noble savage fallacy and falls into cultural marxist lines of thought about groups. Socialism isn’t evolutionary. To the extent it is, it isn’t because of sharing but because lust for power and control over others is a trait some humans carry.
The only way a socialist leader would survive in a hunter/gatherer society is to be as brutally repressive as modern day socialists. Many tribal societies were meritocracies too, so not socialism.
These are not sharing economies. People specialize and engage in exchange. As Ken notes above, the exchange is often intangible. Its called reciprocity. Other exchanges were done through barter. It is an inefficient system because values are not always the same between goods and services traded.
This could be why the noble savage theory appeals to socialists, it allows them to take advantage of other people. When taking part in reciprocity events, they can steer more unearned goods into the hands of cronies. And they have to glorify an idealized and unreal hunter/gather lifestyle because the outcome of their policies is living one.
As you note, the one who pays IS the customer. Political re-labelling never changes reality.
Rather than just arguing with socialists, I have been trying to think of how to use persuasion. That one has had some success.
Another way to go is ask someone what they think about congress and then ask why they way to put five of those people in charge of making everyone’s health care decisions.
There isn’t any economic system called marxism .. that is like calling capitalism “smithism”
Marx defined economic systems and there evolution.
slavery>>feudalism>>merchantilism>>capitalism>>socialism>>communism
That is what he predicted would happen as moved through the various economic systems. As far as what the Soviets did, Marx said Russia would be one of the last countries to become communist because you have to go though the stages. Trotsky came up with the telescoping revolution to get around it.
Read Parkinson’s “Evolution of Political Thought” for a updated summary of what really happens. Socialism>>__, Communism>>__, etc. One of the best books I ever read.
I have read it .. I was talking about what marx thought when he penned das capital .. which was written almost 100 years before Parkinson’s.
There isn’t any economic system called marxism
But Marxists, Socialists, and Communists definitions of themselves are always in flux, often claiming differences but without any real distinction. Using Marxism as a broader economic term isn’t crazy and our friends to the left certainly can’t complain about linguistics.
There isn’t any economic system called marxism .. that is like calling capitalism “smithism”
Which is a thing we can do. I don’t see the point here. Marxism has a meaning, Smithism does not.
Marx defined economic systems and there evolution.
slavery>>feudalism>>merchantilism>>capitalism>>socialism>>communism
In other words, Marxism.
Related, 10 things Millennials should know about Socialism
Strangely enough, there is a whole generation out there being taught that Hitler wasn’t a socialist and that he was really a Republican. Its hideous scapegoating on par with Democrats saying Republicans were responsible for slavery and the KKK.
If history is written by the winners we have a unique position to see it happen. This is what makes history research so challenging and fascinating.
The reason socialism appeals to so many is that is is the ‘Fairy Tale’ way to run a country/population/world. Star Trek furthered this fantasy with their portrayal of the supposed “enlightened” worlds. It is very easy to do with movies/books/theoretical papers and teachings, but in the real world it never works. The reason is there is an unstated belief/concept that people don’t mind working very hard while others do little or nothing. This does NOT work in real life, so the only other way socialism works is through force (ie you do this work or get shipped off to Siberia/prison camps/shot). Not a real way to run a country.
Whodathunk the Ferrengi were the good guys?
The result is, according to Tooby, that there really are those who are willing to make poor people worse off in order to make rich people worse off.
Of course there are. This is a well established result in game theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
People would rather lose everything than accept an offer they consider too low. So why would you expect otherwise?