I'm currently reading this book about how evolution has occurred over the past 10,000 years since 'civilization' occured. It talks about the genetic selection that has taken place since the advent of agriculture. And how culture has effected evolution. I think in opposition to SJ Gould and others' claim that not much human evolution has occurred in about 40,000 - 100,000 years.
One scary chapter, but a relevant one, is how agriculture came with the rise of statism. And how people wwere selected for and bred like crops and livestock. This included cutting down on natural competition, much like how cows and plants are not competitive in farms.
He gives all kinds of evidence for differences in skeletal structure and brain sizes since then. (Much of the book is like Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel.) And even has some interesting theories about introgression between Humans and neanderthals that may have caused us to pick up language ability. Each of us probably has some neanderthal in them.
Of course, there are many other excellent point in this book. I don't know if he is sympathetic to primitivism (like many who talk about pre-agriculture), but he sure seems to be sympathetic to anarchism. Speaking of the state in a way that describes them as the sadists and human farmers they are. (particularly around page 110). He says the first states lowered standards of living for most. Just as agriculture probably made people sicker than they were under hunting and gathering, because of diets we weren't genetically used to (but later become more so). Over time people became more genetically 'tame' and also displayed neoteny (prolonged obedience usually limited to youth).
There is also a lot of talk about time preferences and how they change with the rise of property.
I still have much left to read, but it is a good book so far.
As always, I have the book on scribd for any who would like to read it.
Wow, thanks for posting a link! I have been looking for something like this for some time. The view that evolution has been negligible for the last 40-100 millenia is on the way out. I recommend the book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, it is a fascinating look into evolutionary psychology and what it has to tell us about how the human brain, language and complex social behavior evolved. It's short but it really blew my mind over and over.
Clayton -
Sounds like a paleo-diet libertarian friendly book! :p
This part sounds interesting to me...
Thanks for the link and intro! After Sitchin, this is what I need.
Aliens?
I got to half. I can only say that theirs must be the lamest excuse for the rise of the state I’ve ever heard of. The state emerged because it could?! And that’s it?!
Otherwise seems a very fine book.
I don't think they are giving an excuse.
And I don't think it is as simple as 'because they could', either.
I agree that he’s not looking for an excuse, but his explanation I find lacking nonetheless. Perhaps later on he does come up with something else, but up to now all I’ve seen is “since with agriculture things could be stolen, then a parasitic class could develop. It did because it could.” Basically like an Austrian holding that the division of labor per se begets the state. But again, perhaps I’m speaking to soon.
Sometimes you find a sufficient cause and its not a necessary cause, so it goes...
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
Just read the book in the last two hours. Some thoughts: how does more recent technology select for certain characteristics? Technology has certainly causes demographic and genetic changes, he concluded.
It seems that with birth control (see Human Action somewhere around pp. 600-700's), more industrialized nations will have below replacement birth rates.
In the same way, due to lower time cost of children for women, less industrialized nations have less use of birth control.
Does that mean industrialized society is going demographically to die, so long as free movement across borders prevents productivity and standard of living equilibrium?
That means that the capital stock of the west is falling by the day, and hence the optimal population level is likewise falling. Societies with falling capital stock tend to die. Its as simple as that.
No...
1. Capital stock is increasing in industrial societies (but still less than it could be due to waste during business cycles), causing greater labour productivity causing greater wage (most importantly, for women).
2. Women can either move forward in careers or expend time on children, foregoing wage or greater specialization, etc., etc., or at least income which must be spent on children.
3. They choose: # kids vs. # hours working.
4. If they want to work more, but have sex, they use the pill. Mises summarized 60+ years ago the modern opinion (attached to Gary Becker's name since the 1980's, for some reason): its not merely that there are more methods of birth control--there are--but only the fact that people today actually resort to them more often (paraphrase that section of Human Action).
Current situation, then:
On the other hand, capital stock in less industrialized societies is not increasing so much, so they have more children; but this causes those societies to demographically press on our societies for lack of free flow of capital and barriers to capital accumilation there to stabilize population growth (and after that, there still remains population momentum for several generations!).
I cannot agree. Do you mean that 130 years of welfare states, 30%+ tax rates and double digit annual monetary increase rates have left Ithe stock of capital unchanged or even increasing?
First, wages rates tell us nothing, as they do not take into account inflation. Second, even if the standard of living has not decreased it could well be due to people consuming the capital stock. And as long as there is capital to consume, this will be sustainable. Well, sorts of. Debt per capital is a good measure of this: it’s soaring throughout the west, as far as I know.
The optimal population model has been developed by Mises in HA, and a very simple application tells us that, in Germany, the capital stock stopped growing the late ’70 (now Thatcher’s policies start to make sense, from a statist point of view). Now its all downhill. The way the crash is going to materialize is though sovereign debt default.
Third world countries on the other hand, are pursuing some interesting policies. Add the outflow of capital that is trying to leave the west, and you get an increasing capital stock. Of course they are going to multiply like rabbits.
Romans knew of contraceptive substances in their days, and made liberal use of them (to the point of driving the plant concerned to extinction), and yet population growth was positive until the economic fabric of the Empire was dissolved. You see, contraception has nothing to do with population growth.
It not cultural, its not “the woman in career” thing. Its really very simple: the west has lost to the east the game of economic development. Politician will try to “cultural differences” their way out of the truth, and yet the truth is clear, and I see no way around that.
The Ten Thousand Year Explosion is less about political science and more about how civilization has had an effect upon human evolution. It's useful for rebutting liberals who claim thousands of years is not enough time for humans to evolve non-superficial genetic differences (I think the author mentions variants of DBA1 as a good example, but there are numerous others).
GG&S is absolute garbage. It passes over research on racial differences in intelligence, dismissing them as 'loathesome' without even bothering to explain what, if anything, is wrong with the methodology. I also laughed at his explanation that 'China lacked a convoluted coastline for dissidents to hide out in', hence the authoritarian nature of successive Chinese dynasties.
"If diversity were a strength people would practice it spontaneously. It wouldn't require constant cheer-leading or expensive lawsuits."- Jared Taylor
A convoluted coastline would make trade much less costly though. If you take a look at the coastline of Europe, it’s insane. The whole continent is just crying “trade here!”.