Economics Questions

Re: Native Americans

Hairnet — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:52:45 GMT

All very interesting. Well, I think there needs to be more professional investigation into other cultures in general. Contemprorary China and Native Americans is what I am requesting. So if anyone didn't have any ideas on what to research, there you go... (I will buy a book about either).

Re: Native Americans

jmorris84 — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:30:41 GMT

sicsempertyrannis:

Most American Indian tribes had no concept of private property. Without that, it would be difficult to characterize most of them anything close to being 'ancap'.

Where did you get this idea?

Re: Native Americans

sicsempertyrannis — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:37:34 GMT

Solid_Choke:

sicsempertyrannis:

Most American Indian tribes had no concept of private property. Without that, it would be difficult to characterize most of them anything close to being 'ancap'.

Can you provide us with some evidence for this assertion? I am genuinely interesting in finding out if this is true.

I will see if I can dig one up, but even the more 'advanced' Indian tribes the closest they came to property rights (IIRC - this is American History in college from about 8 years ago speaking) had more in common with state or common property; this is our tribes, this is your tribes. Only with the arrival of Europeons did Indians slowly begin to adopt truly private property (and in some cases, they were forced to do so).

Re: Native Americans

Marko — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:57:56 GMT

fakename:

I'm pretty sure (not certain) that the indians didn't hunt buffalo before they had guns supplied by the europeans.

Sure they did.

And it was the horse that really raised their standard of living, by the time they got guns in large numbers the herds were already close to being exterminated.

Re: Native Americans

krazy kaju — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:17:03 GMT

ClaytonB:
I would love to see an Austrian treatment of the economics of tribal culture. I think that the perception that tribal cultures are "communal" is a misunderstanding of the context in which tribal cultures usually exist and make sense...

Mises does write a little about this. He differentiated between a small tribe or family, which does not run into the socialist calculation problem, and a large-scale society, which does run into the socialist calculation problem. The tribe/household/family doesn't run into the economic calculation problem because the value scales of all of the individuals of the tribe/household/family are known by each individual. Addmitedly, I didn't explain that very well. When I'm semi-awake, perhaps I'll come back to this post and expand and/or find a Mises quote.

Re: Native Americans

Solid_Choke — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:53:52 GMT

sicsempertyrannis:

Most American Indian tribes had no concept of private property. Without that, it would be difficult to characterize most of them anything close to being 'ancap'.

Can you provide us with some evidence for this assertion? I am genuinely interesting in finding out if this is true.

Re: Native Americans

fakename — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:34:09 GMT

I'm pretty sure (not certain) that the indians didn't hunt buffalo before they had guns supplied by the europeans.

As for why native culture never industrialized, I must wonder though, their societies couldn't have faced such abundance to the extent that it was absolutely ridiculous that industry would be a loss. I mean, they did have needs too, ceteris paribus if you're having a pretty good tribal existence, you'd have an even better one with urbanization.

Re: Native Americans

Marko — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:56:04 GMT

EinarFridgeirs:

It's not the amount of foodstuffs, but how you obtain it that makes all the difference. The Nile, Indus and Yangtze civilizations HAD to stay put, work their fields, figure out how to make irrigation work etc. That's a lot of planning, lots of work, lots of waiting for things to happen, getting the harvest into storage while it's fresh etc. That writing and arithmetic came into existence virtually on the heels of the emergence of large-scale agriculture is also sensible - there was a very strong need to record things like grain inventories, calculate who owed how much to whome etc.

In contrast, the Native American abundance of food, although perhaps equal in terms of volume was of a very different kind and didn't require this large degree of cooperation. The buffalo, elk etc, etc. was out there for the taking for whoever was a good enough hunter to acquire it. No need for large-scale organization.

That makes sense for later on, but early on I would say abundance is crucial. Before they built irrigation systems the people there were already taking advantage of yearly floods that left behind them the fertile mud that made things grow like crazy. This allowed them to stay put. (You want to stay put, you don't want to need to migrate around.)

In contrast the plains Indians had to be nomadic so they could follow the buffalo herds around. Moving twice a year without horses is not pleasant. You want to avoid that if you can. In other places the populations had to be nomadic in order to find sufficient grazing for their herds of domesticated animals again due to poor conditions for vegetation. In jet other cases people had to move around because the primitive techniques of farming required slash and burn agriculture to provide them with enough to survive. Only in the river valleys did the yearly floods every year bring them new soil to exhaust so they could stay settled.

But I suppose your theory would prove valid for some sort of settled fishing culture.

Re: Native Americans

EinarFridgeirs — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:34:17 GMT

Marko:

Civilizations first arose in the extremely fertile river regions like Mesopotamia, the Nile, Indus and the two big Chinese rivers. There the people could very early on produce so much foodstuffs that the population levels and the division of labour could grow very fast.

It's not the amount of foodstuffs, but how you obtain it that makes all the difference. The Nile, Indus and Yangtze civilizations HAD to stay put, work their fields, figure out how to make irrigation work etc. That's a lot of planning, lots of work, lots of waiting for things to happen, getting the harvest into storage while it's fresh etc. That writing and arithmetic came into existence virtually on the heels of the emergence of large-scale agriculture is also sensible - there was a very strong need to record things like grain inventories, calculate who owed how much to whome etc.

In contrast, the Native American abundance of food, although perhaps equal in terms of volume was of a very different kind and didn't require this large degree of cooperation. The buffalo, elk etc, etc. was out there for the taking for whoever was a good enough hunter to acquire it. No need for large-scale organization.

Re: Native Americans

MB — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:32:25 GMT

Hard Rain:

Hairnet:
Why weren't they industrialized? Was it lack of property rights? Were their values insufficient for that kind of thing (low time preference, envy culture)? Was it lack of resources?

It seems to be a similar situation in Africa. More likely, it was the abundance of space and resources that inhibited the need for technological advances.

Actually, that's quite true for many native american tribes.

In Florida, you had so much abundance in the coastal estuaries that you had societies that were still largely hunter-gathers and able to stay in one area and build large communities. Usually one had to become an agricultural society to do this. Other societies in the eastern americas did farm and develop 'complex societies' (ie people specialized), but the technology did not advance beyond pottery and basic metal work. When the Europeans arrived, they prefered to trade for what they wanted (using the abundant deer hides) that in many cases native technologies (pottery, weaving) pretty much died out (metal pots & pans, european trade goods, even guns) replaced it.

Re: Native Americans

Marko — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:06:04 GMT

Civilizations first arose in the extremely fertile river regions like Mesopotamia, the Nile, Indus and the two big Chinese rivers. There the people could very early on produce so much foodstuffs that the population levels and the division of labour could grow very fast. It stands to reason therefore that early on they having this advantage they would create the most new technologies which would then spread from these places. So it stands to reason that if due to geography you had no lines of communication open to these areas that you would be left behind.

Re: Native Americans

Hairnet — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:38:03 GMT

That is an interesting theory. I do find it very weird that while places like east asia and europe were developing along somewhat similar lines, northern america and africa never seemed to advance technologically beyond the iron age.

Re: Native Americans

Hard Rain — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:11:00 GMT

Hairnet:
Why weren't they industrialized? Was it lack of property rights? Were their values insufficient for that kind of thing (low time preference, envy culture)? Was it lack of resources?

It seems to be a similar situation in Africa. More likely, it was the abundance of space and resources that inhibited the need for technological advances.

Re: Native Americans

Hairnet — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:05:03 GMT

Wow. I made the anarcho-communist statement for the reason that my government ... teacher... described them as "without property" and being near completely democratic. That is basically what anarcho-communism is. She even said they were communists.

Why weren't they industrialized? Was it lack of property rights? Were their values insufficient for that kind of thing (low time preference, envy culture)? Was it lack of resources?

Re: Native Americans

Clayton — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:03:38 GMT

Hairnet:

So today iny my freshman year American Government class, we read an exerpt from this book called the indian givers. I think the thesis of this book is that the United States is awesome because of native americans. I am sure there may be a little truth to that. I wanted to ask what people here thought about some of the various native american societies.

   Was the iroqouis confederacy an example of Anarcho-Communism?

   The exerpt seemed to imply that and even managed to mention various anarchist "thinkers" . The article made their society sound like it was the best ever. People had personal freedom, there was no racism, sexism, or slavery. The exerpt also mentioned that many native american tribes did not have property.

   Is this true, or is this just leftists bastardizing the history of native americans?

   Any good libertarian-perspective papers on native american societies?

I would love to see an Austrian treatment of the economics of tribal culture. I think that the perception that tribal cultures are "communal" is a misunderstanding of the context in which tribal cultures usually exist and make sense... namely, an environment of abundant hunting (or fishing) land. Nobody puts "their" air in a bag to be carried around and breathed. There are no property lines in the ocean. The reason for this is that these resources are abundant. It doesn't make sense to impose property boundaries on abundant resources, it's more expense with no benefits in terms of increased division of labor and exchange. The Bedouin were nomadic herders and nobody ever said they had "no concept of property". It's just a form of cultural mistranslation, I think. You can't translate tribal culture into the context of Western legal systems developed in Europe where land was extremely scarce and valuable by comparison to land on the American continent.

Clayton -