The Evolution of Freedom: An Interview with Paul H. Rubin* |
Paul H. Rubin is a Research Fellow at The
Independent Institute, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics,
and Editor in Chief of Managerial and Decision Economics. He
received his B.A. from the University of Cincinnati in 1963 and his
Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1970. He is a Fellow of the Public
Choice Society, a Senior Fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation,
an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Georgia
Public Policy Foundation, and former Vice President of the Southern
Economics Association. Dr Rubin has been Senior Staff Economist at
President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, Chief Economist at the
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Director of Advertising
Economics at the Federal Trade Commission, and vice-president of
Glassman-Oliver Economic Consultants, Inc., a litigation-consulting firm
in Washington. He has taught economics at the University of Georgia,
City University of New York, VPI, and George Washington University Law
School. Dr Rubin has written or edited seven books, and published over
one hundred articles and chapters on economics, law, regulation, and
evolution in journals including the American Economic Review,
Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics,
Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Law and Economics,
the Yale Journal on Regulation, and Human Nature, and he
sometimes contributes to the Wall Street Journal and other
leading newspapers.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
How
would you sum up the main points of convergence and divergence between
dominance hierarchies (“pecking orders”) and productive hierarchies?
Paul H.
Rubin:
As to
convergence, both are hierarchies—some individuals have power over
others. Also, individuals voluntarily join both types of hierarchies,
although for different reasons. People join productive hierarchies
because they can be more productive and so earn more income in such a
hierarchy. People join dominance hierarchies because they receive
protection in such a hierarchy. Even low ranked members have a place,
and receive protection from other group members. Moreover, productive
hierarchies evolved from dominance hierarchies.
However, there is much divergence as well. In particular, a pure
dominance hierarchy mainly allocates a fixed amount of some good. That
is, the dominant will get more, the second ranked will get somewhat
less, and so on down the hierarchy. The amount to be distributed is
fixed. In a productive hierarchy, the hierarchy is actually able to
produce more, so that every individual gets more than he or she would
get in an individualistic regime. In primitive hierarchies, hierarchical
hunting parties enable each person to get more game than otherwise (part
of an antelope rather than a rabbit or two). In modern societies, the
great productivity of large corporations enables workers to produce more
than they could as individuals, and so everyone benefits.
Productive hierarchies evolved from dominance hierarchies. Many
mammalian and even non-mammalian species (“pecking order” refers to
chickens) have dominance hierarchies. Only humans have productive
hierarchies. Moreover, there was no “aha” moment when our ancestors
shifted to a productive hierarchy. Rather, the process would have been
gradual. Some dominant would have noticed that if he just changed things
a little, then the hunting party would have been more successful.
Moreover, there is no central direction needed. Rather, someone will
voluntarily join a productive hierarchy if his income will increase, and
each person will join that hierarchy which pays him or her the most,
which is the hierarchy in which he or she is most productive.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
How
would you personally situate the point in time when humans began using
hierarchies for production? In your opinion, how and for what motives
did they convert the mechanism of the dominance hierarchy into the
productive hierarchy?
Paul H.
Rubin:
Probably
the transition was gradual. In primitive hunting bands, the best hunter
might have taken charge. (“You go that way, you wait here.”)
Unfortunately, conflict has long been a part of human behaviour, and the
best warriors would have been in charge in times of conflict. Even
though violence seems destructive, for the victorious party it is
productive and so there are benefits to being better at violence, either
to win (offensive violence) or to avoid losing (defensive violence.)
Once our ancestors became stationary and began to farm, productive
hierarchies became much more important. Farming and a sedentary
existence created value for many complex activities (building houses and
storage facilities, constructing irrigation systems, establishing
boundaries, etc.) and these are best done in productive hierarchies.
Moreover, at this time, leaders became those who were best at organizing
productive hierarchies (although often productive in violence) rather
than those best a controlling others.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
Could
you give a brief account of what we know, in anthropology as well as in
evolutionary biology, of the causes of division of labour and its phases
of development in human societies?
Paul H.
Rubin:
In
sufficiently primitive societies (hunter-gathers, or foragers) there is
little division of labour. There is division of labour by gender. Men
hunt and fight, women gather and take care of the children. There is
also some division of labour by age. Old people provide training to the
young. Young males are the warriors. However, the division of labour is
limited. Adam Smith taught that “the division of labour is limited by
the extent of the market,” meaning that a small society cannot have much
division of labour. For example, a good stone axe maker cannot be
employed full time at making axes in a small band because a small
society would have no use for all the axes he could make. He would make
some axes, but also engage in hunting and other activities. He would
only be partially specialized.
Once our ancestors became sedentary, the scope for division of labour
greatly increased. This is for two reasons. First, there were simply
more things to do: farm various crops, build structures, police property
rights, and myriad other tasks. Second, societies and markets became
larger, and so there was more possibility of specialization, the flip
side of division of labour. This process has never stopped; as
transportation costs have been reduced, markets have continued to grow,
from national to international, and many of us now do such highly
specialized jobs that it is often difficult to understand what your
neighbour actually does for a living.
The converse is also true. From time to time, some group is split off
from a larger society. For example, the Tasmanians were separated from
the Australian aborigines by a rise in the ocean, and they lost many
skills that they had had because the society was now too small to
support as much division of labour.
|
“Marxism
views capitalists as ‘exploiting’ labour, and workers as being
controlled by capitalists. This might be the case in a dominance
hierarchy. However, in a market economy, workers are free to move and so
it is not possible for capitalists to exploit them. Workers can simply
take another job if they feel underpaid.” |
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
In your
2002 book, Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom,
you tried to investigate the genetic roots of the human desire for
freedom. Would you say retrospectively that some of your own political
values and prejudices were affected by your research work? Are you still
the same libertarian you used to be before starting your inquiry into
the evolutionary influences on political behaviour?
Paul H.
Rubin:
I now
understand some of the bases for anti-libertarian interventions, such as
drug prohibitions. However, I don’t think my own libertarian beliefs
have changed. Even though I am a libertarian in domestic affairs, I have
always been in favour of a strong national defence, a position that many
libertarians do not share. My study of the role of conflict in human
evolution has if anything made me more concerned with the necessity of
defence and the danger of international conflict.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
Evolutionary psychology suggests that most of our psychological traits
were imposed upon us by the so-called EEA (Environment of Evolutionary
Adaptedness), i.e., essentially the Pleistocene, the whole, long period
lasting from 1.6 million years ago up until the shift to the Holocene
with the invention of agriculture and large settlements 10,000 years
ago. The catalogue of our political preferences, you argue, was shaped
in prehistory, during the 80,000 hunter-gather generations that took us
from apes to humans. In particular, our desire for freedom is nothing
but an old Pleistocene adaptation pitted against extreme coercive
hierarchy. Could you come back on the deep meaning of this assertion?
Paul H.
Rubin:
Just as
humans have always desired freedom, so humans have also desired to be
dominants. This has not changed. What has changed is the ability of
dominants to hide their preference for domination. Thus, even the worst
dictatorships call themselves “People’s Republics,” implying that they
are seeking freedom and benefits for the populace, not domination. In
democracies, dominants are able to hide their goals, often by claiming
to “protect” consumers. For a recent U.S. example, the Federal
Communications Commission has recently taken over the Internet, claiming
to provide something called “net neutrality.” This is just one example
of successfully hiding coercion behind a label of protection. These
strategies often work. In democracies, citizens often vote for coercive
parties in part because of such obfuscation.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
One of
your main insights is that Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism attributes
features to productive hierarchies that are actually inherent to
dominance hierarchies. Moreover, you suggest that the way in which the
EEA has equipped us to understand simple barter and zero-sum trading has
also given us an immediate intuitive grasp of the Marxian labour theory
of value, i.e. the idea that the value of something is created by the
labour invested in it. The converse of this fact is that we do not
easily understand the productive use of capital and the payment of
interest it entails. This may explain why many religions forbid the
payment of interest. Could you elaborate on these different points?
Paul H.
Rubin:
Marxism
views capitalists as “exploiting” labour, and workers as being
controlled by capitalists. This might be the case in a dominance
hierarchy. However, in a market economy, workers are free to move and so
it is not possible for capitalists to exploit them. Workers can simply
take another job if they feel underpaid.
We have no intuition for the productivity of capital. As you say, that
is the basis for the Marxist “labour theory of value” and also for the
prohibition in many religions of interest. Most modern religions have
managed to eliminate this prohibition. Islam still prohibits interest,
and Islamic accountants and economists must go through complicated
financial contortions in order to do business without paying explicit
interest on loans or investments.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
According to a predominant view among defenders of the free market,
political ideologies promoting income redistribution are merely based on
feelings of envy and resentment. In the words of Thomas Sowell, “envy
plus rhetoric equals ‘social justice’.” According to you, is this
popular view scientifically corroborated by anthropology and
evolutionary psychology? If we are likely to support redistribution
programs, is it ultimately because human species evolved toward a
tendency to envy and feeling dispossessed or cheated by the mere fact
that others own what we do not own?
Paul H.
Rubin:
There is
an evolutionary basis for altruism separately from envy. Our ancestors
lived close to the Malthusian margin, and life was risky and uncertain.
For example, a hunter might have an unsuccessful hunt even if he tried
hard. In these circumstances, it paid to share—the hunter who was
successful today might share with the unsuccessful hunter, and the
positions might be reversed tomorrow. Someone might be injured, and it
would pay to feed him until he recovered because a larger band would be
more secure.
However, in the small group environment in which we evolved, individuals
could monitor others. I might claim to have a bad hunt, but I was really
sleeping by the river. Then others would observe this and refuse to
share with me. In our larger societies, it is more difficult to detect
shirking, but altruistic impulses still exist, so it is possible for
some to exploit these feelings. Moreover, recipients of transfers can
also vote, and they would want to vote themselves larger payments.
Envy evolved in a zero sum society, so that if I had more you probably
had less. In today’s non-zero sum environment, I might have more because
I am more productive, but you might view my wealth through the zero-sum
lens. Thus, there is probably too much envy today, and too many
decisions are based on envy.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
Anarcho-capitalism
is a political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in
favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and open markets.
Anarcho-capitalists believe that in the absence of statute, private
enterprise could provide law enforcement, and the marketplace could
resolve disagreements about what the law is and what the law means.
What is your view of anarcho-capitalism? Does it seem to you a desirable
and achievable ideal given what we know about the human species and its
cognitive and emotional predispositions?
Paul H.
Rubin:
I am not an anarcho-capitalist. I see no alternative to the state for
certain functions. The most important is defence against both internal
and external predators. For example, I see no way to prevent private
police from exploiting society, including the people that hire them.
Someone must also run the legal system and protect property rights.
Moreover, I do not see any way to finance national defence without some
sort of government financed by taxation.
Unfortunately, once a government has powers of taxation and weapons, I
see no way to restrain it. Fortunately in the U.S., we have had a
240-year run with no major exploitation by the government. We have less
freedom than would be optimal, but we still have a good deal of freedom.
Moreover, net the trend is probably toward more freedom.
African-Americans, women and homosexuals have gained significant amounts
of freedom in the last 50-75 years, and these gains outweigh any loss in
freedom from excessive government regulation. Even with respect to
government regulation, the trend is not so clear. For example, we have
deregulated the entire transportation industry, with tremendous gains to
the economy. We have also reduced tariffs and other barriers to
international trade, again with tremendous benefits.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
A
popular discourse is to accuse free-market ideas of denying the reality
of the common good, or at best reducing it to an economic optimum as
enabled by free competition and the law of supply and demand.
On the one hand, the common good is emptied of all social and cultural
content in favour of a strictly economic interpretation of the notion:
the point of optimal agreement between buyers and sellers, produced by
constant negotiations between these two market players.
On the other hand, the sovereign ceases at the same time to be the
guarantor of the common good: It is not within its jurisdiction to
intervene in the economy to correct market prices, make public
investments, protect social welfare, or to establish protectionist
barriers. Its role is limited to protecting property rights and to
leaving market players alone.
All this leads to the promotion of an atomized society, one made up
exclusively of individuals who pursue their commercial interests and
have lost any collective purpose, any kind of common ideal of which the
sovereign would be the custodian. How do you respond to this recurring
criticism?
Paul H.
Rubin:
I don’t
see it as a criticism. A society in which each individual is free to
pursue his or her own goals subject to a few constraints is an ideal
society in my mind. I do not understand any notion of the common good. A
free society is not inconsistent with giving the sovereign power to
correct market failures, such as the creation of public goods, the most
important of which is defence.
Grégoire
Canlorbe:
Thank
you for your time. Is there anything you would like to add?
Paul H.
Rubin:
Thank you for a very interesting and well-thought-out set of questions.
If you had asked these as I was writing the book, it would have been a
much better work.
*This interview was first published on March 10, 2015,
on the Institut Coppet Website.
|
|
From the same author |
▪
Entretien avec François-René Rideau sur la
concurrence et l'harmonie spontanée des intérêts – Troisième
partie
(no
329 – 15 février 2015)
▪
Entretien avec François-René Rideau sur l'État-providence,
Hans Hermann Hoppe, et les dictatures – Seconde partie
(no
328 – 15 janvier 2015)
▪
Entretien avec François-René Rideau sur l'État, les
monopoles et le profit – Première partie
(no
327 – 15 décembre 2014)
▪
Entretien avec Jacques de Guenin sur Bastiat, l'ATTAC,
l'assistance aux plus démunis, l'anarchisme libéral et La
Fayette
(no
325 - 15 octobre 2014)
▪
Entretien avec Jérémie T. A. Rostan sur Condillac et
la philosophie libérale, et la défense morale du marché
libre
(no
324 - 15 septembre 2014)
▪
More...
|
|
First written appearance of the
word 'liberty,' circa 2300 B.C. |
Le Québécois Libre
Promoting individual liberty, free markets and voluntary
cooperation since 1998.
|
|