Will Smith slapped Chris Rock during the 2022 Academy Awards Ceremony. What likely shall, or should, be the aftermath of this incident of public assault and battery? First of all, let it be said, this was not a school yard incident between six-year-old children. Mr. Smith is a mature adult. Second, although subjectivity is always relevant in matters of humor, it can fairly be said that Mr. Rock’s joke would be considered by most people to be in very poor taste. But is physical violence the proper response to offensive verbal statements? It is hard to maintain that it ever is, at least not in a civilized society. If anyone deserved a slap for what he did, it was Smith, not Rock. What should Mr. Smith have done after this joke went awry? He should have limited himself to a verbal response. Can anyone imagine Pope Francis or Thomas Sowell or Woody Allen or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Albert Einstein or Justice Clarence Thomas or Congressman Ron Paul or the Dali Lama acting like this in such a context? Of course not: these are all civilized people. None of them would get caught dead slapping anyone upside the head in response to a bad joke. How should the forces of law and order react to this act of initiatory violence? In one view, crimes concern only victims. There is no such thing as a crime against “society.” Under such a legal code, the reaction would all be up to Chris Rock. He could ignore this outrage, he could sue Will Smith for financial damages for this bodily injury, he could demand physical punishment (a jail sentence) for the aggressor. As it happens, he has declined to press charges. But we do not live under that law. Offenses such as Smith’s, to be sure, are interpreted as a violation of the rights of the victim. But they are also seen as an invasion of “society.” For this purpose, we have attorneys general. They are able to bring charges against criminals even if the victim is willing to forgive the perpetrator, as has now occurred. From the perspective of the logic of this system, how should the attorney general now act? Clearly, he should bring charges against Mr. Will Smith for assault and battery. Why? For one thing, this was a public slap. Millions of people watched these goings on at the Academy Award Ceremonies, including impressionable youngsters. If no repercussions are visited on Will Smith, the implication taken away by them will likely be that such behavior is justified, acceptable; is, even, to be applauded. The next time someone says something thought to be objectionable, instead of a verbal reply or even a “cancellation,” physical violence will have been rendered more likely. Is that really the direction in which people of good will would wish our country to move? For another, there is a simple matter of justice. The attorney general is put into place to promote that end. If people may slap each other around without negative consequences ordinary fairness will have been denigrated and disrespected. Then there is the economics of the matter (that is not a typographical error). A basic premise of this discipline is that demand curves slope downward. The desire to engage in criminal behavior is no exception to this primordial insight. If the “price” is high, we will tend to have less of any given item or behavior; if the price is low or non-existent, then more. What is the price of crime? It is punishment. Will Smith deserves a term in prison for his criminal act. Mr. Smith will be seen by many as a hero for this unwarranted and despicable behavior of his. After all, he attempted to defend the honor of his wife. That is not the result enlightened people would like to see as the conclusion of this sorry event.   Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and is co-author of An Austro-Libertarian Critique of Public Choice (with Thomas DiLorenzo). (0 COMMENTS)

Two British (non-permanent) judges at Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal have resigned. Many think this will damage the reputation of the court. Others believe that the two judges should have done so earlier, and that their British colleagues should follow suit. (“Hong Kong’s Reputation as a Financial Centre Hit as UK Judges Quit Top Court,” Financial Times, April 3, 2022.) Friedrich Hayek had something relevant to say about that sort of circumstance in his Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Edited by Jeremy Shearmur, University of Chicago Press, 2022): But although the judge is not committed to upholding a particular status quo, he is committed to upholding the principles on which the existing order is based. His task is indeed one which has meaning only within a spontaneous and abstract order of actions such as the market produces. He must thus be conservative in the sense only that he cannot serve any order that is determined not by rules of individual conduct but by the particular ends of authority. A judge cannot be concerned with the needs of particular persons or groups, or with ‘reasons of state’ or ‘the will of government’, or with any particular purposes which an order of actions may be expected to serve. Within any organization in which the individual actions must be judged by their serviceability to the particular ends at which it aims, there is no room for the judge. In an order like that of socialism in which whatever rules may govern individual actions are not independent of particular results, such rules will not be ‘justiciable’ because they will require a balancing of the particular interests affected in the light of their importance. Socialism is indeed largely a revolt against the impartial justice which considers only the conformity of individual actions to end-independent rules and which is not concerned with the effects of their application in particular instances. Thus a socialist judge would really be a contradiction in terms; for his persuasion must prevent him from applying only those general principles which underlie a spontaneous order of actions, and lead him to take into account considerations which have nothing to do with the justice of individual conduct. In my review of the book, I commented: I would add that this crucial point would also apply to a fascist judge, and Hayek would certainly agree. A person close to the Chinese Leviathan suggested that the resignation of British judges, mainly concerned with commercial law, was “a chance for Hong Kong to develop a judicial system with national security as a priority.” Q.E.D.   (0 COMMENTS)

Ira Stoll, writing at Reason’s web site, states: It’s ironic to hear the complaints from Republicans about politically active corporations, because for most of the past decade-plus, those complaining the loudest about corporate participation in politics have been Democrats, or Democrat-leaning independent socialists, complaining about gun manufacturers, oil companies, and health insurance companies. See Ira Stoll, “Republicans Taking Aim at Disney Is a Reminder That Both Parties Are Hostile to Free Speech,” Reason, April 4, 2022. In the article he discusses Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s hostility to Disney Corporation’s speaking out against a Florida law that makes it illegal for schools to conduct classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through grade 3. Specifically, Lines 97-101 of House Bill 1557 state: Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. I couldn’t find on line whether this law applies only to government schools or to all schools, including private ones. It matters, although not for the point I’m making here. Stoll goes on to tell about how various Democratic government officials have opposed Supreme Court decisions that allow corporate contributions to political campaigns and have actually proposed legislation to weaken the First Amendment. If these officials had their way, governments could threaten violators with fines or, possibly, prison sentences. So I thought, given his setup, that he would outline how DeSantis has proposed fines, prison sentences, or, at least, tax increases for Disney. It’s possible that DeSantis will propose getting rid of special tax treatment for Disney and other large corporations in retaliation for Disney’s outspokenness. But so far he hasn’t. It’s important to distinguish between politicians speaking against corporations’ messages and politicians advocating coercion of those corporations. Sometimes it’s, admittedly, difficult. Politicians have so much power over our lives that DeSantis might be threatening them with legal or regulatory sanctions in some of the areas where the state government regulates. But the case that that is what is happening needs to be made, not just assumed. DeSantis can be faulted for dictating how businesses deal with customers and employees who don’t get vaccinated. A year ago, I criticized him on this. And maybe Ira Stoll or others can find evidence that DeSantis has threatened to use coercion abasing Disney. But then they should report that and not implicitly equate hostile criticism and coercion.   (0 COMMENTS)

Physician and careful reader Richard Gunderman of Indiana University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how Adam Smith and Leo Tolstoy looked at greed. Drawing on Tolstoy’s short story, “Master and Man,” and adding some Thomas Hobbes along the way, Gunderman argues that a life well-lived requires us to rise above our lower desires. […] The post Richard Gunderman on Greed, Adam Smith, and Leo Tolstoy appeared first on Econlib.

I’ve told people over the years that Mick Jagger, who was an economics major at the London School of Economics, stated that his favorite economist was Friedrich Hayek. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember where I had heard or read that and couldn’t find it on line. But a person named David Lindbergh sent me a link to an episode of Saturday Night Live from February 6, 1993 in which he makes a comment about Hayek that would lead one to believe that his favorite economist is indeed Hayek. The episode is here and he makes the statement about Hayek at about the 3:30 point. (0 COMMENTS)

. . . isn’t gold. But why not?  Why shouldn’t any durable object that glitters be just as valuable as gold? Larry White directed me to an amusing headline from The Onion: U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion. Is that also true of gold? What would happen if people woke up tomorrow and realized that there was nothing particularly special about gold?  Might its value also fall to a far lower level? All of the gold held by central banks and private investors is based on the “shared illusion” of value.  Jewelry is the largest industrial use, but why is gold so valuable in jewelry?  Because it’s rare?  If silver were much scarcer than gold, I suspect that silver would be the more valuable metal.  And even if the beauty of gold exceeds that of other metals, beauty is only “skin deep”, i.e. gold leaf deep.  A gold plated necklace is just as pretty a solid gold necklace.  By weight, almost all of a solid gold necklace is simply an investment; the inside of the necklace is much like a bar of gold in your safe that no one ever sees.  And gold is less and less often used to fill cavities. To be sure, a small portion of gold is used in areas such as electronics, which would assure that the metal has some value even without any “shared illusion”. I suspect that on pure “utilitarian” grounds (I use scare quotes as I mean practical, not philosophically utilitarian), gold would have a far lower value.  Its value comes primarily from the fact that other people think it’s valuable.  This is sort of like Bitcoin, which does have a modest practical use as a way of transferring wealth without attracting the attention of authorities, but is mostly used as an investment vehicle.  BTW, fiat currency is mostly used to hide wealth, not to make purchases. Gold differs from fiat currency in one sense; the “shared illusion” is global.  If an asteroid destroyed New Zealand tomorrow, then New Zealand dollars held outside the country might lose all value, just as confederate money became worthless after the U.S. Civil War.   And again, gold does have a few practical uses that would give it some value without any shared illusion, without its mystique. PS.  Over the past decade, gold has not done well as an investment (especially relative to stocks, crypto and real estate).  Is the younger generation shifting its “shared illusion” from gold to crypto and GameStop?  Is gold becoming seen as an old fashioned shared illusion, held mostly by boring boomers like me?  Perhaps, but it is a long lasting shared illusion, as the chain below is from Ur, 2500 BCE. (0 COMMENTS)

Econ 101 has been getting bad rap the last few years. The time when Freakonomics was the book to be seen reading if you wanted to look smart is long past, and nowadays the principles taught in Econ 101 are often derided as simplistic, abstract theorizing, “zombie economics” removed from the complexities of the real world. Even worse, in books like Economism by James Kwak, they are condemned as nothing but rationalizations for particular economic policies. Perhaps it was such arguments that convinced the leaders of St. Paul, Minnesota, that they could ignore the lessons taught in Econ 101. In any intro economics class, students will learn about the effects of price floors and price ceilings. A price floor – a legally set minimum price which can be charged for a good or service – will, if set above the market price for the good or service in question, lead to a lower quantity demanded and greater quantity supplied than would otherwise be the case, leading to an excess of supply over demand. Price ceilings work in reverse. If set below the market price for the good or service in question, they will lead to a higher quantity demanded and lower quantity supplied than would otherwise be the case, resulting in an excess of demand over supply, or shortages. In 2018, the Saint Paul City Council passed a minimum wage ordinance which, from January 2020, would raise the city’s minimum wage by stages to $15 an hour for all firms by 2028. A minimum wage is a price floor, setting a price below which it is illegal to buy or sell labor. And, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, even just the anticipation of the minimum wage hike appears to have driven declines in jobs, hours, and overall earnings for restaurant workers in St. Paul, just as Econ 101 would predict. In elections on November 6, St. Paulites voted to enact one of the strictest rent control measures in the United States, capping annual rent increases at 3% with no allowance for inflation or exemption for new built properties. A rent control law is a price ceiling, setting a price above which it is illegal to rent accommodation. Econ 101 would, then, tell us to expect a higher quantity of housing demanded and lower quantity supplied than would be the case at the market rate, leading to shortages, exactly the problem the measure was intended to fix in the first place. And that is, again, exactly what is happening. Data compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development shows that, since the measure was passed, the number of building permits issued in St. Paul is down over 80% compared to the same period during the previous year. The city’s mayor, Melvin Carter, who supported the ordinance, is now desperately trying to get it amended to exclude new builds. To be sure, Econ 101 simplifies the real world. That is what models do. They abstract from reality to isolate underlying factors. That is why there is a good sized body of empirical literature, supporting the theory, on the harmful effects of both minimum wage laws and rent controls. Hopefully the city’s leaders will learn and others will learn from their example. As a proud former resident, I want to the city to be famous for Grumpy Old Men, not bad public policy.   John Phelan is an Economist at Center of the American Experiment. (0 COMMENTS)

A Book Review of The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind, by Jan Lucassen.1 As the subtitle suggests, Jan Lucassen’s massive work of scholarship is ambitious in scope and scale. The entire sweep of human history and the whole of the planet are its canvas and the story it tells and the analysis it sets out are in a very real sense universal. If this is a world history or a history of the human species since the dawn of agriculture, it is also an account built around one single aspect of the human experience-work. In the Bible, work is a central part of the state and condition of humanity after the Fall, along with other inevitabilities such as death. There is something of that in Lucassen’s account at least as far as the centrality of work to human life is concerned. The result is a work of great length and enormous richness. This is a book to be both read closely and systematically and dipped into and consumed in smaller pieces, as there is much to be gained from both the many smaller and more focussed accounts it contains and the larger narratives and analysis that run through the entire work from start to finish. “Because work usually produces things of value and transforms the physical world in ways that make human life better by various measures (and in the final analysis make basic survival possible—without organised and purposeful productive action, i.e., work, that would not be possible for most people in most times and places) it is at the base of economic order.” Work as defined in this book is one of the universal elements of human life, something found in all societies since the advent of agriculture other than the surviving hunter-gatherer ones. As an activity it is a dominant aspect of the lives of the great majority, even if there are a small minority who do not participate. Because work usually produces things of value and transforms the physical world in ways that make human life better by various measures (and in the final analysis make basic survival possible—without organised and purposeful productive action, i.e., work, that would not be possible for most people in most times and places) it is at the base of economic order. It is also one of the foundations of political and social order, because the form it takes structures the human use of time and space and hence social life, and because the way work is organised can take different forms, which in turn shape the way governance and politics are structured. A central argument of the book is that what most people think of as ‘work’ today, paid employment or jobs (as in ‘she doesn’t work, hasn’t got a job’ or the equation of joblessness and worklessness) is only one of the forms that work can take, a way of organising it that is historically specific and not the most widespread historically, and a way of understanding work and its place in life that leaves out most of the work done today. One point, well made, is that to identify the general category of work with only that work that is done for remuneration is to miss the enormous amount of unpaid work that has always taken place and which by most estimates contributes over half of the value of all work done even now (in the past this figure was higher). Because this kind of work is unmonetized and not part of the exchange economy it does not show up in GDP and is largely ignored by economists. It is also predominantly performed by women, particularly in the modern world (less so than in the past), another reason for the lack of attention. The heart of Lucassen’s narrative and analysis is an exploration of what we may call the political economies of work. That is, an account of the various ways in which this aspect of human life and experience is organised. These in turn, as he demonstrates, mean several different kinds of social and political order. There is therefore a typology of human society and political order that is determined by how work is organised. These can be further divided by the criterion of how the tools or means of production that are required for work are used and allocated. A very important point is that there are many such systems. A common argument today is that there are essentially two, those involving payment for work and those that do not. This argument, originally associated with radicals and classical liberals, is simply wrong—the reality is far more complex. Many of these systems of work do not involve cash payment, they are ones in which the bulk of labour is not part of a money economy, because the labour itself and often its products as well are not traded. One example is slavery and slave based social and political orders in which work is primarily done by slaves who are not paid for their work. In some slave systems the slaves own and dispose of the means of production (land and tools in most cases) whereas in others the slaves own nothing and the tools and resources they employ are owned and disposed of by others, who may be distinct from the person who owns them. The status and experience of slaves in slavery-based systems varies considerably, with colonial slavery in the Americas an extreme case. However, slavery is not the only way of organising work that does not involve payment. Another system, identified by Lucassen and deftly analysed, is the tributary economy. In this the means of production (land, tools, seeds, buildings, livestock) are privately owned and disposed of. The producers are not enslaved (although they may be subject to forced labour or corvee as a kind of tax). However, they do not own or dispose of the product of their work, most of which is not sold or traded in a market. Instead, it is collected as tribute by a central authority which then distributes it. This system is historically widespread, being found for example in Old Kingdom Egypt, and Sumer and also in some of the Pre-Columbian American civilisations (but not all of them—the Aztecs for example had a different system). Agricultural systems that are based on serfdom also have only limited payment in money for work although here the degree to which the products are bought and sold varies considerably. In contrast are the many systems where work is done in return for payment. A key point here is that once again there are many such systems. Wage labour regulated by contract is only one of them and a highly specific one at that. Its prevalence in modern developed societies obscures this reality and also leads us to think that this is the most advanced way of organising work or the best by some criterion. An often-neglected feature of radical classical liberal thinking was the rejection of this belief. The majority of nineteenth century liberals were sceptical of wage labour and the employment relationship or even hostile to them. Instead, they anticipated a system where the great majority were self-employed and owned their own means of production or one where, as John Stuart Mill put it, ‘labour hires capital rather than capital hiring labour’, with work carried on by producer cooperatives. This was an important feature of the Free Soil movement in the antebellum United States, to give just one example. Lucassen devotes a great deal of space to recounting how the contemporary system of waged employment as a way of organising work came about and tracing the often-torturous path that led to this and the resistance it provoked. This brings us to a central insight of the book. Lucassen explicitly rejects the idea that the various ways of organising work and its product (what we could reasonably call modes of production) can be put into a chronological sequence. He therefore rejects the stadial model of history shared by many modern thinkers including both Karl Marx and Adam Smith, in which there is a succession or sequence of different ways of organising productive activity and above all work, with each one growing out of its predecessor and in some way more advanced or developed. The many different ways of organising work that he identifies often coexist in the same time and place so that many historical societies cannot be clearly assigned to one category or another, even if we can say that one form of work organisation is predominant. Even more important, there is no simple way of saying that one type is more advanced than another and no clear chronological sequence. Instead, what we observe and he describes in his account is a back-and-forth process with movement between the various systems and no clear overall arc, and certainly not a determinative or teleological one. What then of the much-contested concept of capitalism? Many adhere to the belief that wage labour is an intrinsic and definitional feature of capitalism (a system in which the means of production are privately owned and both they and their product are traded and exchanged in a money economy) and that capitalism so defined is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. (This is an example of the often-overlooked overlap between liberal and Marxist notions of capitalism, which derives from their shared origins in classical political economy—it is the evaluative judgments that differ). Lucassen’s account rejects both of these and eschews the very concept and term capitalism. Echoing the arguments of an increasing number of scholars from all parts of the spectrum (we could mention both Andre Gunder Frank and Deirdre McCloskey, for example) he argues that the concept is badly defined and does not aid our understanding of either history or the present. If capitalism is simply wage labour as the way of organising work or private ownership plus market exchange, then it can be found all over the world and in every period of history, so the concept has little explanatory power. If it is defined very narrowly in an attempt to limit it to times and places where a very specific kind of organisation of work and relation of that to productive resources is found then it is not clear that there are many places that can be put into that box even in the contemporary world. His argument is that instead we should think about the many different ways that work and production have been concretely organised in specific places and times and to try to define ideal types, while recognising that actual historical cases will of course have elements of several of these, even if one is predominant. Rather than thinking of something called capitalism, we should focus instead on systems of waged labour where the people doing the work do not own or control the productive resources that they work with—something that includes both ones where those resources are privately owned and those where they are state owned. For more on these topics, see Alain de Botton on the Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. EconTalk. Erik Hurst on Work, Play, and the Dynamics of U.S. Labor Markets. EconTalk. “Pitfalls in GDP Accounting,” by Robert P. Murphy. Library of Economics and Liberty, Nov. 7, 2016. Stanley Engerman on Slavery. EconTalk. “Adam Smith and Stadial Theory,” by John Burrow. Adam Smith Works, Jan. 20, 2020. The focus on work and its organisation is thus a way of putting many debates to one side and looking at patterns and structures of economic, social and political life from a new standpoint. This is very enlightening and both yields insights and generates specific research agendas. One of these is undoubtedly the relationship between work and personal autonomy and liberty, an area that is ripe for new research and the shaking up of too-easily held assumptions. Another is the whole topic in moral philosophy of the ethics of work and its moral standing—what exactly is ‘good work’ for instance? The book contains far more than this schematic account of its central mode of analysis describes. There are detailed accounts of the way work was carried out and structured in a whole range of historical cases, drawn from every part of the world and the whole span of human history since agriculture appeared (hence the way the organising structure of the index is as much geographical as topical). There are also extensive explorations of subjects related to work, such as migration and migrant labour, the difference between long-term and casual work, the gendered perception and organisation of work, it’s connection with time and concepts of time, the contrast between work and leisure and the way the understanding of both concepts and the relation between them changes, the connections between work and welfare systems, and many others. This is a work of enormous richness of content and argument, which anyone interested in any aspect of life will find rewarding. Footnotes [1] The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind, by Jan Lucassen (sometimes spelled Lucasen). London and New Haven, CT; Yale University Press. *Dr. Stephen Davies is the Head of Education at the IEA. Previously he was program officer at the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) at George Mason University in Virginia. He joined IHS from the UK where he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Economic History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. A historian, he graduated from St Andrews University in Scotland in 1976 and gained his PhD from the same institution in 1984. He has authored several books, including Empiricism and History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and was co-editor with Nigel Ashford of The Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought (Routledge, 1991). As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases. (0 COMMENTS)

One key difference between what are sometimes labeled the eco-pessimist and eco-optimist perspectives is their very different take on the place of humanity within broader ecosystems. Anthropocentrism, or more recently “human supremacy,” views humankind as the most important form of life on Earth, endowed with an unparalleled and beneficial ability to remake its natural environment for its benefit. So-called Prometheans (named for the mythical Titan Prometheus who gave fire to humans) have long emphasized nature’s shortcomings, dangers, and resilience. While they acknowledged that human actions could create negative consequences, these would be best addressed through further innovation and economic growth. By contrast, ecocentrism (a.k.a. as the Arcadian vision) grants intrinsic value and rights to other life forms and rejects the notion that humans have a special status in the universe. While ecocentrists believe that Nature is plentiful and essential for human survival, they also view it as fragile and to be handled with extreme caution. As such, humans can never be immune from the negative consequences of ignoring natural laws while economic growth is inherently limited by the level of human abuse the local flora and fauna will tolerate. Until the recent publication of a few books devoted to the topic,1 historical treatments of Prometheanism were typically confined to short—and generally hostile—sub-sections within broader treatises and textbooks on environmental thought. In an age dominated by eco-catastrophism it is nevertheless useful to revisit some of the insights of more optimistic writers who saw much good in humans’ unique abilities to specialize in what they do best, trade with each over ever longer distances and expand and improve upon their stock of knowledge and capital by transmitting and (re)combining ideas, know-how and materials.2 Writing two centuries ago, anarchist William Godwin (1756-1836) observed that before the publication of Thomas Robert Malthus’ 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, most people believed that an increase in population would deliver better days. Godwin saw “something exhilarating and cheerful” in this earlier spirit when humanity believed it could summon “the unlimited power we possess to remedy our evils, and better our condition.” Humans, he observed, felt they “belonged to a world worth living in.” Earlier writers who held such thoughts included the German alchemist Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682) who argued that with “increase of population come increased facilities for subsistence, and through the latter comes influx of people; this in its turn causes further increase of population, and so on in an everlasting circle.” Another was the French economist Nicolas Baudeau (1730-1792) who wrote that the “productiveness of nature and the industriousness of man are without known limits” because production “can increase indefinitely” and as a result “population numbers and well-being can go on advancing together.” While they were profoundly divided over the benefits of free markets, Prometheans shared a belief that humans differ sufficiently from other animal species to invalidate analogies between growth in human societies and growth in the rest of the natural world. As such, they rejected any notion of an absolute limit to the number of humans a local ecosystem could support, a concept later labeled ecological (or environmental or ecosystem) carrying capacity. In his Treatise on Political Economy first published in 1803, French liberal economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) was confident that humans’ unique abilities to trade, barter, reason and use foresight would give them the ability to offset natural constraints, unlike other animals that were “incapable of providing for future exigencies.” As such, people were “not more scantily supplied with the necessaries of life, because their number is on the increase”, nor more materially prosperous “because it is on the decline”. Rather, their “relative condition depends on the relative quantity of products they have at their disposal; and it is easy to conceive these products to be considerable, though the population be dense; and scanty, though the population be thinly spread”. Indeed, he observed, famine was more common in Europe during the less populated Middle Ages than in his day. Godwin similarly observed that a human being is the “only animal capable of persevering and premeditated industry” and the “only creature susceptible of science and invention and possessing the power of handing down his thoughts.” As a result of past advances, most humans were “not living upon the wild fruits of the earth, or the wild animals of the field”, but upon the products of human industry. Every person born into this world was therefore “a new instrument for producing the means of subsistence” and every member added to the numbers of the community, is a new instrument for increasing those means”. The human species was therefore “capable of improvement from age to age, by means of which capacity we have arrived at those refinements of mechanical production and science, which have been gradually called into existence”. By contrast, “all other animals remain what they were at first, and the young of no species becomes better or more powerful by the experience of those that went before him”. Building on Say’s work, the French liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) granted Malthus his key premise for “all living species, except man.” A human being, he wrote, “is perfectible; he seeks to improve his situation” and “[p]rogress is his normal state”. As a result, “the means of existence increase more rapidly than population”. Bastiat, whose take on Malthusianism was rather cautious, argued his case “not only [based on] the theory of perfectibility”, but also on “facts, since everywhere we find the range of man’s satisfactions widening”. Karl Marx (1818-1883) later opined that an “abstract law of population exists for plants and animals only, and only in so far as man has not interfered with them”. In his 1879 best-selling Progress and Poverty, American economist Henry George (1839-1897) stated that “everywhere the vice and misery attributed to over-population can be traced to the warfare, tyranny, and oppression which prevent knowledge from being utilized and deny the security essential to production”. This was because, of “all living things, man is the only one who can give play to the reproductive forces, more powerful than his own, which supply him with food”. Indeed, “while all through the vegetable and animal kingdoms the limit of subsistence is independent of the thing subsisted, with man the limit of subsistence is, within the final limits of earth, air, water, and sunshine, dependent upon man himself”. As he put it, if “bears instead of men had been shipped from Europe to the North American continent, there would now be no more bears than in the time of Columbus, and possibly fewer, for bear food would not have been increased nor the conditions of bear life extended, by the bear immigration, but probably the reverse”. It was therefore “not the increase of food that has caused [the North American] increase of men; but the increase of men that has brought about the increase of food”. The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1873) observed In his 1957 book Theory and History that only humanity had the power to escape from the struggles for survival, provided people engage in social cooperation within the context of a market economy. As he saw things, an “eminently human common interest, the preservation and intensification of social bonds, is substituted for pitiless biological competition, the significant mark of animal and plant life”. As a result, humanity was “no longer forced by the inevitable laws of nature to look upon all other specimens of his animal species as deadly foes”. It was thus “inappropriate to refer to animals and plants in dealing with the social problems of man” because for “animals the generation of every new member of the species means the appearance of a new rival in the struggle for life. For man… it means rather an improvement than a deterioration in his quest for material well-being”. The American Trotskyist Joseph Hansen (1910-1979) also noted at the time that he and his comrades took “a decidedly different view of humanity” than neo-Malthusians because they “note that man has hands and a brain, the capacity to use tools and an inclination for teamwork. These have made him, in distinction to all other animals, a food producer.” He added that, in “today’s world, hunger is completely abnormal. Humanity can produce all it needs and many times over. Moreover, man’s capacity to increase his food supply expands with the increase in population and at an ever-higher rate than population growth”. A big population was therefore “an asset, not a liability. Failure to see this rather obvious fact is the basic flaw in the Malthusian argument.” “Fortunately for our species, economic and environmental indicators unmistakably convey that, in the context of market economies, albeit not in centrally planned ones, past Promethean writers proved much more right than their opponents.” Fortunately for our species, economic and environmental indicators unmistakably convey that, in the context of market economies, albeit not in centrally planned ones, past Promethean writers proved much more right than their opponents. This is not to say that environmental challenges are non-existent, but that their root causes are more ideological and institutional than rooted in some immutable natural laws that inherently constrain human actions. Although this was probably not her intent, a few years ago the ecologist Laura Jane Martin came with a better way to market Promethean insights to eco-pessimists when she suggested replacing the term “(ecological) footprint” with “handprint.”3 A footprint, she argued, is a “mark one never meant to leave” that “evokes both the weight of whoever left it and that being’s ominous absence.” To most environmentalists, the very notion of a footprint evokes actions such as trampling, treading, oppressing and dominating. Heavy feet further “imply antagonism and the lack of intimacy between humans and the non-human world.” For more on these topics, see Economic Growth, by Paul M. Romer. Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. “Self-Defeating Environmental Activism,” by Richard Morrison. Law & Liberty, Dec. 20, 2021. An Essay on the Principle of Population, by Thomas Robert Malthus. 1st edition. Econlib. “Ancient Wisdom on Climate and Society, Part 2,” by Pierre Desrochers. EconLog, Dec. 13, 2021. By contrast, a handprint is “deliberate, skilled and artful” while evoking “human agency and the human ability to shape the world by choosing among many possible natures.” A handprint, she wrote, “suggests stewardship” and allows us to ask about the “place of creativity in conservation” and “how can human existence lead to good?” Although Martin doesn’t quite understand this, stewardship has long been best incentivized in the context of free-markets and private property rights. Perhaps in time she and other eco-pessimists will further realize that voluntary market transactions are nowhere to be found where the law of the jungle reigns and that the invisible handprint of the market is often guided by a green thumb. Footnotes [1] See References. [2] Pierre Desrochers, The Paradoxical Malthusian. A Promethean Perspective on Vaclav Smil’s Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities (MIT Press, 2019) and Energy and Civilization: A History (MIT Press, 2017). Available online at https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/20/5306 [3] Laura Jane Martin, “Is Footprint the Right Metaphor for Ecological Impact?” Scientific American. April 2, 2014. Available online at https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/is-a-footprint-the-right-metaphor-for-ecological-impact/ References Hayes, Jason and Todd Myers, “Seven Principles of Sound Environmental Policy,” Mackinac Center Policy Brief. Available online at https://www.mackinac.org/27385. Meyer, William B. The Progressive Environmental Prometheans. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Minkov, Svetozar and Bernhardt Trout (eds), Mastery of Nature: Promise and Prospects. University of Pennsylvania Press, April 2018. Wolloch, Nathaniel, History and Nature in the Enlightenment. Routledge, May 2016. *Pierre Desrochers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Geomatics and Environment at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. His main research interests focus primarily on economic development, technological innovation, business-environment interface, energy policy, and food policy. As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases. (0 COMMENTS)

A common misconception is that if a person has an incentive to do something, that incentive will influence his behavior… people are incentivized against smoking… Almost every smoker knows the costs and risks of their habit, even if they downplay them. The problem is that, roughly speaking, the part of the brain that stores knowledge is not the part of the brain that decides what to do. —Luca Dellanna, The Control Heuristic,1 p. 159 Imagine that you are sitting in a car. You have a destination you are planning to reach. Your phone’s GPS is talking to you, giving you directions. Your eyes are feeding you information about your surroundings, including road signs and other vehicles. Overall, you seem to be situated about as well as possible to get where you intend to go. Except that you are in the back seat. The driver holding the steering wheel may or may not listen to you. Other factors may influence which way he turns the car. In this metaphor for the brain, the passenger in the back seat is your cortex. The driver in the front seat is your basal ganglia. (Luca Dellanna, author of The Control Heuristic,2 uses a different metaphor, in which the cortex is like the middle managers in a corporation, with the basal ganglia playing the role of CEO. This metaphor stresses that there are a variety of inputs that are sent to the basal ganglia.) The driver in the back seat sends suggestions to the driver. But the driver will move the steering wheel in order to maximize what Dellanna calls the “expected emotional outcome,” or EEO. This EEO is an immediate feeling, not a long-term calculation. EEO is a highly subjective evaluation of how good we expect an action to make us feel… our basal ganglia have access to feelings only. This means that they can only see the subset of what the cortex knows that produces emotions. p. 55 Suppose that the driver makes a strange turn. The passenger will proceed to propose reasons that try to rationalize it. But the driver will choose which reason to use to justify the turn. The basal ganglia will pick the reason that maximizes EEO, which typically means choosing reasons that best conform to social norms. The cortex proposes multiple ways to guess the reason for which we took action… [The basal ganglia] prioritizes the mental actions not based on whether they make sense. Instead, it uses the EEO. p. 64 “To get the driver to take us where we want to go, we have to make sure that the short-term emotional rewards that we put in front of him lead him to steer the car toward our long-term goals.” To get the driver to take us where we want to go, we have to make sure that the short-term emotional rewards that we put in front of him lead him to steer the car toward our long-term goals. For example, if we want to get a habit of running in the morning, it is not enough to know that our basal ganglia are currently stopping us because the EEO we associate with running is low. Instead, we must take action to increase the EEO—for example, by wearing headphones and listening to our favorite podcast during the run. p. 27 Although self-control is the central problem in The Control Heuristic, Dellanna offers many interesting observations on the side, and they are my favorite elements in the book. But many of these asides are only incompletely developed. One of the most interesting tangents in the book concerns beliefs. How do we form our beliefs? How can they change? Dellanna argues that what we describe as “truth” is instead coherence. There are many inputs to our beliefs. When they all agree with one another, the belief is strongly coherent, and we treat it as true. Different people can disagree about what is true, because: Everyone’s chain of coherence is based on his or her personal experiences. p. 173 Our beliefs are affected by our desire to affiliate with others. When the affiliation is strong, the beliefs are strong: The more costly it is to hold and express a belief, socially or financially, the more loyalty it generates within the few sharing it. p. 175 To me, this suggests the mechanism holding cults and religions together. Their shared costly beliefs are a binding force. Dellanna also argues that different personalities demand different degrees of what he calls “resolution.” At high resolution, we examine complex beliefs in detail for coherence. At low resolution, we accept the gist of a belief. Expressing a thought at high-resolution means giving a lot of justifications, clarifications, and caveats. Expressing it at low-resolution means taking shortcuts and using simplifications. Complex fields such as physics and mathematics, where rigor and exactness are critical, are best studied at high resolutions. Other fields, such as politics and sports, in which rigor and exactness are less relevant, are best studied at low resolutions… politicians are selected for their ability to communicate low-resolution stances that resonate with their electorate. p. 180 He suggests that people who are mildly on the autism spectrum may demand higher resolution than people who are closer to normal. What happens when not all of our inputs support the same belief? Dellanna says that we resort to creating narratives. A narrative is any story that takes two previously incompatible states and connects them, restoring coherence… Narratives might or might not correspond to reality. Truth is not a requirement for a narrative to be adopted; only coherence is… When a set of events is incoherent, people use narratives to restore coherence. Narratives are our automatic reaction to incoherent events. p. 187 There is an inherent bias against holding nuanced beliefs. Holding complex thoughts made of multiple statements makes people vulnerable to accusations that take a single statement out of context… The rationale for rejecting complex thoughts is that people can be socially punished for holding them. p. 177 For more on these topics, see Gary Greenberg on Depression, Addiction, and the Brain. EconTalk. The passenger in the back seat believes that the car is on a course for truth. But the driver holding the steering wheel might not take us there. Footnotes [1] Luca Dellanna, The Control Heuristic: The Nature of Human Behavior. Independently published, July 2020. [2] I was made aware of The Control Heuristic by listening to the EconTalk podcast episode Luca Dellanna on Compulsion, Self-deception, and the Brain. *Arnold Kling has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of several books, including Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care; Invisible Wealth: The Hidden Story of How Markets Work; Unchecked and Unbalanced: How the Discrepancy Between Knowledge and Power Caused the Financial Crisis and Threatens Democracy; and Specialization and Trade: A Re-introduction to Economics. He contributed to EconLog from January 2003 through August 2012. Read more of what Arnold Kling’s been reading. For more book reviews and articles by Arnold Kling, see the Archive. As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases. (0 COMMENTS)