The socio-biological explanation for human's aversion to libertarianism

 

It's an interesting subject of research, to be sure. Is the human brain, by the nature of its method of performing algorithms, biased toward accepting some ideas over others, on an a priori basis? Or is ideological bias merely a consequence of conditioning? I think the algorithmic bias is plausible, as it has been shown to exist in areas of logical processing due to flaws in hueristic shortcuts used by the brain (whether these hueristic flaws are inherent is another subject altogether). However do these hueristic flaws carry over to more higher-level thinking in areas such as political ideologies? And if so, how do they influence socio-economic ideas?

It seems to me if there is any logical bias against libertarian ideas, it's Bastiat's familiar statement of the unseen: People focus on what is rather on what could be. So long as the fallacy is prevalent, it's easy for the state to show things like how printing money lowers the unemployment rate. What is not questioned, and what the state does not want us to question, is what would have happened had the state simply left the world alone.

Personally I think it's a problem with the software rather than the hardware:

Instincts seem to do to a decent job of keeping the average human being alive.

After being taught (implicitly and explicitly) by parents, peers, and teachers that some humans can/should have power over other humans, the hardware simply runs that program. Garbage in Garbage out...

Clayton (I think, its been a while since I've visited the forum) would call that dual morality...

Collectivists ('hurrah'-type automatons) have been plundering and raping individualists for so long now, that the collectivist genes are far more prevalent than the individualist genes in humanity's gene pool today. Perhaps, if the individualists were left alone for a couple of hundred years our gene pool may have a chance, but I wouldn't bet on it. 

Z.

is there a such thing as the 'collectivist' gene?

If you individualists were left alone if would be a hobbesian war of all against all and I doubt many genes would survive

Substantiate your (il)logic please.

z1235:

Collectivists ('hurrah'-type automatons) have been plundering and raping individualists for so long now, that the collectivist genes are far more prevalent than the individualist genes in humanity's gene pool today. Perhaps, if the individualists were left alone for a couple of hundred years our gene pool may have a chance, but I wouldn't bet on it. 

Z.

 

And where exactly are the individualist and collectivist genes to be found?

ravochol:

If you individualists were left alone if would be a hobbesian war of all against all and I doubt many genes would survive

Perhaps evolution is dynamically converging the indvidualist/collectivist ratio in humans to whatever value is needed for human sustainability. Perhaps a minority of individualist leaders and a majority of collectivist followers is the only mode for our specie's existence. The shepherds need their sheep as much as the sheep need their shepherds, forming a functioning symbiosis by which everyone gets what they need/want. The choice for an average individualist being: Lead or get run over.

To address your reply directly, perhaps a world of only shepherds (and no sheep) would not necessarily converge into a war of all against all (you need sheep fodder for war, after all) but not having anyone to milk and shear may turn out to be a problem of existential proportions. 

Z.

Joe, scineram --

No, most features of human nature are not (yet) mapped onto the human genome but we can still view them as products of evolution (what else?). Looking at human history and seeing who, how, and where survived/procreated should give plenty of insight into the evolutionary features that define us. 

Btw, this is just a pet theory of my own and I'm no geneticist or an expert in evolution by any means. So weigh it accordingly.

Z.

I vaguely remember that in a thread on Myers-Briggs personality analysis a while ago, a lot of members claimed to score somewhere along the lines of INTJ, INTP, INFJ and so on, meaning that they belonged to the introverted, analytical spectrum of the population: the scientists and system builders.

This is not surprising, given that libertarianism is not the most intuitive political philosophy and requires some serious study to be grasped. Unfortunately for us, scientists and system builders only constitute about 5% of the population, and even this small group is not going to agree with our position in its entirety.

As far as I'm concerned, libertarianism will only win major victories if it can be transformed to appeal to the extroverted majority: the duty-bound, caring and socially concerned. It needs to become a populist movement that attracts a broader audience than just introverted political theorists. Ron Paul's 2008 campaign is an excellent example that this can indeed be done.

My impression was that humanity was caught off guard by the realization of certain economic truths. Going from mass murer / conquest and rape, suddenly discovering that slavery was more profitable than this, and THEN (relatively quickly) discovering that free trade was more profitable still has got to play havoc with our psyches.

Its clear the vast majority of human beings are currently stuck in the slavery mindest (support of economic expropriation), while a significant minority is still stuck in the "kill em all" paradigm. From my experience, those involved in profit driven corporate environments are really pro free trade and anti expropriation.

Though human beings have great capacity to learn an adapt. This is our hope.

 

I've heard some people complain about how "Darwinists" come up with "just so" explanations for ideological phenomena.  I don't think there's any other way to look at it.  After all, evolution gave rise to our mental properties and therefore must explain how they operate.  Whether by conditioning or by a predisposed bias, evolution gave rise to brains that are easily conditioned by the enviornment or ones that have idea-specific tendencies.  Or a mixture of both.

Etiher way, I've noticed that a ton of libertarians, as previously mentioned by Sphairon, are heavily involved in fields such as science, computer programming, engineering, etc.  These people are definitely more analytical and understand systems and are less holistic in their thinking.  I think they have a grasp of how emergent things, such as markets, can give rise to order and operation whereas the holistic thinkers are more arftul, musical, etc. and can't see things in a reductionist manner.  I think these different sets of psychological makeup can make us predisposed to accepting certain ideologies.

Is the question of a socio-biological explanation for human's aversion to libertarianism a corollary of the question of a socio-biological explanation for man's unique ability to reason?   (... or perhaps not-so-unique?)

Is there a gene for reason?

 

 

Read Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market and Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter.

I think most people are conformists rather than socialists, democrats, collectivists. In 1600 nobody was lobbying for 50% income tax and a sales tax as far as I know.

Theorizing about libertarian justice is not very profitable except you have extremely low time preference or subjectively value freedom/logic/truth a lot.

As gov't gets worse (yup), marketing keeps improving (thanks Mises Institute) and ancap becomes feasible (semantic web in my opinion), it will start making sense for more people to get involved. I think. I hope.

Etiher way, I've noticed that a ton of libertarians, as previously mentioned by Sphairon, are heavily involved in fields such as science, computer programming, engineering, etc.  These people are definitely more analytical and understand systems and are less holistic in their thinking.

Isn't AE recognizing emerging systems the holistic thing to do? We are always stressing how PDAs would prevent chaos, how markets self-regulate, ... = how the whole impacts the parts.

Why is it assumed that humanity has an aversion to libertarianism? Most people don't grasp the complexities at work. But most people don't grasp the complexities at work in any other system either. And are people here running the risk of thinking of Libertarianism as a utopian ideal where war, famine racial prejudice and gangsterism don't occur? Because I would think that they would inevitably occur, yet libertarianism is better suited to deal with such things.

Checks and Balances. Checks and Balances. That's the way things work. You have an irrational emotive response to something, potentially your neocortex goes to work and talks you out of acting without using your faculties to reason. Are we assuming that in a libertarian system everyone will be logical? Doesn't work like that. But there are checks and balances so that the illogical actions of a few have less of a dramatic effect on the many.

Humanity is hardwired to be social. We have a pack mentality. Within the pack we try to achieve the greatest individual success in terms of procreation. We always have the principle of Dawkin's "selfish gene" to fall back on when we cannot reproduce individually. We care for like organisms. The impulse to collective will is for the superorganism (the pack/the species) to thrive. But within the superorganism is you, and you are designed to compete with other members, because this competition breeds better fitness. If the habitat changes this ongoing competition provides the redundant checks and balances to keep the superorganism alive. And so, sociobiology is an extended order emerging spontaneously (to quote Hayek).

That said, I don't see how this process could play out any better than in a libertarian society. Fact of the matter is that some people are lazy and will sit on their ass and collect if you give them the chance. Strike that, all people will. So we need to put into place leaders who won't let people be comfortable in their poverty (to quote Franklin). But with the incentive to achieve more personal power many will strive and compete.

Maybe I haven't said all I need to explain myself, so I hope you folks get the gist of where I'm going. I don't think there is a socio-biological explanation for human's aversion to libertarianism because I don't think such an aversion exists. We just haven't communicated the method of libertarianism to enough people for it to take hold.

But it can happen. There are languages in Africa that are complete. Meaning, there is no combinatroial system. No exponential principle. No way to combine words or sounds to make NEW concepts (Zulu would be an example of this). BUT - some folks in the areas where such languages are spoken may learn French, or even English (the language best suited for forming new ideas through new words and sounds because it hasn't been perfected and the rules are still a little loose - optimal for a free market of competing ideas).

As Darwin taught us the language of evolution, we must teach others, especially those demographics that may pump out leaders, the language of Libertarianism.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

From my experience, people have an emotional aversion to Libertarianism. They don't really look into it but will characterize it as being a selfish and greedy philosophy since the element in their life they are used to:government is being removed or weakened. They view government as a benevolent entity because of things like food stamps and unemployment insurance so naturally they would disapprove of something  like libertarianism because they are only looking at the present and not alternative scenarios.

 

There are only a few of us in public who speak up for the philosphy compared to amount who represent the typical left and right who will speak out against the philosphy if it ever pops up. I believe Rachael Maddow tried to refute libertarianism by saying we should look at Somalia to see what happens when you remove government. People accept this without really thinking about it.They don't want too. They are content.

Governments exist in every culture so the predisposition to accepting the moral/legal double-standard which comprises the "root cause" of statism cannot have its root in cultural conditioning of any sort. This suggests that its origin is, in fact, biological. I think the most likely biological behavior which is the basis for this tolerance for moral/legal double-standards is alpha-male mating since we evolved from primates that engage in alpha-male mating patterns.

Clayton -

I agree with what Clayton has said. But i have to ask, are you guys defining libertarianism as having no government or hierarchy? Because I don't..........

Bryan: Not no governance, but no government (in this thread aversion to libertarianism seems to mean "affinity for statism").

 

Clayton: I agree it has to be something inherent in human beings, and I also agree with your monogamy explanation. But there is something else inherent in humans: the fact that we are social beings and must use words to explain our internal thinking to each other. Words cannot convey much detail tersely so they tend to be aggregating/collectivizing in terms of concepts, simply out of convenience:

"Drugs are addictive." True, because there are addictive drugs; yet also false, because not all drugs are addictive. It's simply more convenient and succinct not to get into the details but rather to collectivize all drugs into that category.

"France and Germany are at war." Does France refer to the French government or all the people in the territory? Of course it refers to both. The semantic ambiguity leads people naturally to collectivism ("You're German so you must be my enemy, because we're at war!" "We the people are the government."). Probably not solely because of propaganda, but also because we have no choice but to use words, and we can only say so much before people stop listening.

Since most people are in the habit of using words to guide their thought process and words color their thinking to a large extent, most people's thinking may for that reason have a fundamentally collectivist bias (among other word-based biases and systematic thinking errors). So there's another universal factor that could be posited.

"Walter Block is one proponent, he uses a bathtub snake analogy to introduce it. "

 

I think he's partially correct and partially wrong.  We're not hardwired to intuitively understand it, but we are hardwired to realize the benefit of social cooperation.

 We can intuitively understand the benefits of the division of knowledge and labor at the very local and micro level but we are unable to extract from that a broad theory of social cooperation without extensive and systematic mental effort.  I think this is the challenge.

Education is indeed a challenge, especially as we need more libertarians to realize ancap as we need to safeguard it. (In ancap, only a few % trained judges/philosopher can keep civilization going, just as we only need a few % engineers to make good cars.)

So socio-biology would teach us that people have a predisposition to hierarchy, and that leads to statism. Would you guys agree? If that is the case, which I believe to be so, then the goal is what consultant just pointed out about only needing a few % of judges just as engineers. I've always explained this using what I like to call the power pyramid. I intended on using this model in a novel I'm writing, so it's not exact - it's more for elegance than precision, however I think it will work here.

It's a basic class structure for upward mobility based on privileges given (voluntarily in a ancap society) by the community. There are 3 layers. At the bottom is the Common Folks. (I don't want to say commoners because that sounds almost demeaning). That's just about everybody. The next class up is the Warrior class. Not very many citizens. This class exists in every society, but in America and in a free society the Warrior class is defined by their privilege to exercise FORCE. This could be security guards, cops, bouncers, militia, military, coast guard, whatever. Those recognized to be allowed by the rest of us to use force in order to preserve our rights. Without getting into examples of people abusing it, I want to say that the key is to ensure enough liberty for the common folk that upward mobility to this class is possible. At the top is our leadership, coming out of the warrior class. The leaders are invested with the power to command force.

Now, getting a good leader in a libertarian society would rely on knowing the difference between a leader and a ruler. A Ruler tells people what to do, punishes them if they don't obey. Leaders typically lead by example. It's the journey that defines them. And this a key point because it explains why personal liberty is so important in this model. Rulers get where they are through self sacrifice. It's true. They give up a lot of things to get authority and be in charge, quite often they sacrifice close personal relationships, possibly other dreams and aspirations. So, when they get to the top of the hill they are (A) paranoid about having their authority taken away, & (B) of the impression that everybody else owes them since they had to sacrifice so much. That is what makes a ruler, based on my understanding of human nature. But a Leader does not sacrifice himself. One of the most important variables seems to be creativity. A creative person should not be willing to self sacrifice, only using authority to ensure that they can keep creating without restrictions.

In a free society, with governance based upon negative liberty and personal property and initiative considered to be of the highest value this structure will still arise, but if central planning is rejected then it will lead to more leaders than rulers, and those who wish to rule as opposed to lead may be deposed.

Feel free to dissect that. Like I said it's part of a novel I'm writing but I like it nonetheless.

Leader = entrepreneur or business president.

Class system = not centrally planned, but resulting from the natural order - you posit?

Yes on both but I would expand leader to a little more than that. Could be an intellectual leader. Maybe even a spiritual one. It's open to interpretation because it results from the natural order. Could be a sheriff that we hire and elect to watch our homes while we're at work.

The market will most likely pick different type of leaders for different types of services (defense, courts, ...)

Alright, fine. I'm talking about the leader of community. Or the nation. The political leader.

I believe we're naturally wired toward creating a state (don't want to call it statism, though) simply because we evolved as social, cooperative creatures. Had we evolved as as solitary animals, then I'd say a libertarian approach would seem intuitive.

But maybe the aversion we feel toward libertarianism isn't socio-biological at all, but a pro-statist bias we share simply because we've been indoctrinated with it by the State from birth.

I think of the state as behaving almost like an organism, concerned primarily with its survival and growth/expansion.  

Given this, Libertarianism is a natural enemy of the State, one that threatens not just its expansion, but its very survival.  Thus, the State has clear incentives to discredit the philosophy and thwart  its acceptance among its citizens.  We see it all the time, the propaganda, the misinformation, the smear tactics. The latest example is how the government is trying to shift the blame for the financial meltdown from the Fed (and government) to the free market.  Not one person ever called Obama out when he says this nonsense. Nobody ever asked him how you can have a free market if you have a central planner setting interest rates at the same time. And if you noticed, this lie ends up smearing Libertarianism because of its close association with free markets.  It's no surprise what's going to happen. The State will promise a solution to the problem that it created, and the end result will be more government.

If my hypothesis is correct, States increasing their power/expansion should be the rule, not the exception. If this is clearly not the case, then I'm dead wrong.

Yes. I agree. I was trying to use a model that demonstrated how we organize that social and cooperative instinct into order. I think that we do need leaders to fight statism, but the leaders should be those we see as creative and not self sacrificing. That was what I was trying to illustrate with the ruler-leader dichotomy.

I really like the point about a state being an organism. I would call it a superorganism. That's what Howard Bloom call's it. In fact, his books tackle everything we're talking about. The third one is all about capitalism (and it's pro). If you're interested in finding a really entertaining book that deals with what you're talking about I would suggest The Lucifer Principle, the first of his three books.

It would have to be established that humans are averse to libertarianism before an explanation is attempted.  As it is there is no reason to think that anyone significant portion of people are.  I managed to live 19 years before knowing that it existed and I was a scholarly kid.

Collectivists killed individualists one by one.

"I believe we're naturally wired toward creating a state (don't want to call it statism, though) simply because we evolved as social, cooperative creatures. Had we evolved as as solitary animals, then I'd say a libertarian approach would seem intuitive."

I think you are conflating libertarianism with individualism or egoism. I agree that humans have an evolved social context. Our very biology testifies to this fact (our bodies biologically presuppose clothing, shelter and cooked food). Nevertheless, I disagree that a social evolutionary context implies a State. The State is something more than just people interacting with one another, it is a social construct that is characterized by a pronounced asymmetry in the rules of interaction between State and non-State individuals.

There is another human social relationship that shares this strong asymmetry and that is the relationship between a very small child and its parent(s). The small child accepts, as a matter of course, the coercive actions of its parents. It should be obvious, biologically, why this is the case, since the small child is unable to care for itself, even unable to keep itself safe from basic dangers.

I can clearly see why the family evolved and how it benefits humanity. It is not as easy to see why the State evolved and no matter how hard I think about it, I cannot come to any other conclusion than that the State benefits the few on the backs of the many. This "few" or elite somehow provided a real advantage to human survival and reproduction, otherwise, it would never have arisen. But really understanding this is, to me, an unsolved problem of monumental significance.

I believe we are on a large evolutionary arc away from the State and toward a family order. This might seem counterintuitive to the modern, Western mind where the family has, apparently, been on the decline and the State has been on the rise for the last 150 years. But it's exactly the fact that there is a conservation of momentum between the family and the State that I think is significant. The State only derives its power in the context of the decline of the family. States 5000 years ago were far more powerful in real terms than States today. The family, on the other hand, has been steadily increasing in importance until about 150 years ago.

Clayton -

This "few" or elite somehow provided a real advantage to human survival and reproduction, otherwise, it would never have arisen.

That is a common type of fallacy regarding evolution.  Anything can arise that does not constantly decrease the population on the margin.  Conference of advantage is not required.   There can be a very detrimental trait that lasts forever because there is enough to counteract it.

As others have said, I don't see any inherent aversion to libertarianism within humanity. Rather, what I see is the vast majority of people being 1) hobbled in their critical thinking abilities, and 2) because of 1), more or less simply accepting whatever they're "taught" as being true. In other words, the modern aversion to libertarianism seems to be a product of statist indoctrination.

I think it's also important to note that "social animal" is not the same as "collectivist animal". Nearly all human beings have an instinct to seek out signs of approval and acceptance from other humans around them. Dogs have the same (or a very similar) instinct. The impact of this instinct on our behavior cannot be overstated. But that in no way means that human beings are inherently collectivist. Here I define "collectivism" as the idea that groups of individuals necessarily give rise to separate entities, with their own separate wills, whose interests necessarily trump those of the component individuals. Notice that this idea is inherently fallacious and absurd, if for no other reason than that it commits the reification fallacy.

If there's any "inherent" aversion to libertarianism that some people feel, I'd say it's an aversion to a sterile, every-man-is-an-island presentation or interpretation of libertarianism. Objectivism is inherently guilty of this, I'd say. That's why I think it's important to stress that libertarianism is not (or, at least, should not be) about stripping humanity of any and all social context. Rather, it's about 1) informing people that part of their current social context (namely the state) is in fact *anti-social*, and 2) advocating that they therefore oppose that part. Hopefully, if 1) is done well enough, 2) will come about on its own!

Nonfederal Nonreserve:

Collectivists killed individualists one by one.

 

haha, brilliant.

Clayton:

 The small child accepts, as a matter of course, the coercive actions of its parents. It should be obvious, biologically, why this is the case, since the small child is unable to care for itself, even unable to keep itself safe from basic dangers.

 

I disagree. Child is able to care of itself (at least, to a degree). Otherwise human species wouldn't have survived. It's an evolutionary trait to preserve one's life and there is really no need to violently protect it from "dangers" (there are exceptions, of course). The error here is that this flawed system of parenting is so deeply grounded into our lives, that we think now, that without forcefully protecting child it will die or commit a crime etc. It's taught by parents, it's taught in public schools.

To stop this is the only way - to stop using force over children. Force kills their incentive to act as responsible beings, because they think then that "oh, somebody will save/protect me anyway". And this "somebody" is the STATE in a modern world.

From this, I believe, comes all "aversion" towards libertariansim.

I've given this some more thought. Is there a link to the original paper I can read so I know what he's asking and how he's defining terms?

If he's asking if there's a socio-biological reason why humans have an aversion to Libertarianism, is he also stating we have a socio-biological bent toward collectivism or statism? I assumed so, but I never read the piece. 

Also, is he assuming that there can be only only one reason why so few people are Libertarians, and that reason must be rooted in socio-biology? Would propaganda by the Statist regime not also be a possible answer?

Would it be fair to ask whether people in Saudi Arabia have a natural aversion to atheism? Or is the answer far more likely that their aversion springs from societal influence and isn't socio-biological at all.

I'm also puzzled by what constitutes a socio-biological explanation. Does the law of scarcity count as a socio-biological reason? If so, then I'd pretty much agree that our actions are greatly influenced by socio-biological reasons (or incentives). 

Anyway, I don't know how he defines Libertarianism, so I'll give it a shot here and proceed. I'll define it as a philosophy where people believe in the sanctity of private property and that all interaction be voluntary and free from coercion. 

If this is a reasonable definition of  Libertarianism and it's natural to be repelled by this philosophy, then we should also naturally be repelled by idea of having property rights, freedom of choice without coercion, natural rights, and the freedom to pursue your own happiness. 

Since I'm not exactly sure what a socio-biological reason is or how these reasons might affect other reasons (do these reasons trump, say, the socio-biological reason for self preservation?), my answer is: I don't know.

If it's fair to say socio-biological can be described as natural (something you're born with not taught), then I'd say 'No', We have no natural aversion to Libertarianism. The opposite might be true, however.