Bill Mitchell — Why progressive values align more closely with our basic needs

Thomas Fazi and I have been discussing the shape of our next book and I think it will be an interesting and worthwhile followup to Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, 2017). We hope it will be published some time late in 2019. One of the angles that will be delved into is the way in which neoliberal narratives and constructs have permeated individual consciousness. Yes, sounds a bit psychological doesn’t it. But there is a strong literature going back to well before the recent period of neoliberalism that allows us to draw some fairly strong conclusions on how the process has worked. It also allows us to make some coherent statements about the dis-junctures that are going on across the world between the people and their polities, which have spawned the support for Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the popularity of far-right movements, the electoral demolition of the traditional social democratic political parties, the election of the new Italian government, and the on-going trouble that the Gilets Jaunes are causing the mainstream political processes in France (and Brussels). The literature also provides a guide as to how the Left might break out of their current malaise based on their tepid yearning for cosmopolitanism, identity and their fear of financial markets to reestablish themselves as the progressive voice of the people. That is what I am writing about at present and here is a snippet....

Bill goes "there," where "there" is philosophy in the best sense as "the study of the wholes in terms of wholes," that is, in terms of systems and subsystems. Economics cannot be approached on than on a simplistic basis without considering its relationship to society. Society is a network of networks, and these networks are dynamic rather than static. That implies that history counts, which includes culture, traditions, and institutional arrangements that are fluid.

Without taking into consideration the considerable knowledge that has been developed in the various disciplines, the social sciences in particular, economics doesn't have much to say about society that is of any worth practically. And the world is looking for practical solutions to pressing challenges.

In other words the mechanistic models based on physics that assumes that human being are like atoms obeying laws of nature and that assume ergodicity are barren with respect to practical application. Reality is not like that idealized world, which is mathematically tractable but non-representational. The social world is non-ergodic; uncertainty and asymmetries are facts of life.

As managers of our lives and environment, we humans need appropriate models to approach human problems efficiently and effectively, and devise workable solutions to pressing issues of the day. The paraphrase management guru Peter F. Drucker, "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things." Business people figured out long ago that conventional economic theory is of little usefulness in management. Go figure.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Why progressive values align more closely with our basic needs
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Joe Brewer — Society As Platform — A New Frontier in Complexity Science

Must-read.

Joe Brewer elaborates on the foundation for contemporary problem solving at the macro level. It's short and to the point. This is going to take specialists in a variety of fields and generalists to tie it together. Being complex and therefore subject to emergence, it's always a work in progress as seizing opportunities leads to fresh challenges.

Resilience
Society As Platform — A New Frontier in Complexity Science

Joe Brewer

David Sloan Wilson — Proof That Policies Informed by Evolution Can Succeed Where Other Perspectives Have Failed

Evolution, the theory that has already proven itself for understanding the rest of life, is equally relevant for understanding the human condition. With understanding comes improvement. Thus, evolutionary theory can be used to improve the quality of human life in a practical sense....

HuffPost
Proof That Policies Informed by Evolution Can Succeed Where Other Perspectives Have Failed

David Sloan Wilson | SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo

Eric Schliesser — Dennett as Synthetic Philosopher

Weekend reading for those of wide-ranging interests. It's on Daniel Dennett's contribution to the study of consciousness and his synthetic approach that blends many fields, biology and evolutionary theory in particular.

Digressions&Impressions
Dennett as Synthetic Philosopher
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Evolving the New Economy: — David Sloan Wilson interviews Tim O'Reilly

Evolutionary theory meets artificial intelligence and the management of algorithms.

Evonomics
Evolving the New Economy: Tim O’Reilly and David Sloan WilsonDavid Sloan Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo, interviews Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media

Branko Milanovic — The importance of Taleb’s system: from the Fourth Quadrant to the Skin in the Game

Interesting exploration of Nassim Taleb's systematic thought and its implicitly evolutionary basis.

Global Inequality

The importance of Taleb’s system: from the Fourth Quadrant to the Skin in the Game

Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

See also

Branko Milanovic also meanings Hayek's The Fatal Conceit, in which Hayek points to what is now called "bounded rationality" in arguing for a conservative approach that emphasizes the importance of tradition as that which served us well to get where we are. Here is an interest reflection on it.

The Commentator
God, Hayek and the conceit of reason

Jonathan Neumann

Pan Wang — Chinese dating shows are changing traditional views on love and marriage

Why is this important to know about? Liberalization is changing the conditions for sexual selection, a primary evolutionary input. 

This is taking place not only in China but also in some other traditional societies, although it is resisted in others. 

From the standpoint of evolutionary theory and group selection, it is a big deal. 

Arguably, one factor in America's success has been "the melting pot," and the looser ground rules for sexual selection are key.

This is just one of the many evolutionary effects of liberalization going global. History has a liberal bias, and it has been given a big push.

This bias toward freer choice affects social, political and economic development hugely. For example, it is has direct bearing on collective consciousness in addition to individual consciousness as the group mindset shifts, which gets reflected in culture and institutions like marriage. As a result the change become culturally heritable through memes rather than genes.

Quartz
Chinese dating shows are changing traditional views on love and marriage

Pan Wang | Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

Dom Galeon — This study suggests we are still evolving as a species

A study that analyzed large-scale genetic data from more than 200,000 people showed that the human genome is still evolving. Researchers form Columbia University found that a natural selection process weeds out mutations that shorten human life.…

Don’t imagine, however, that it’s the kind of evolution you see in X-Men — sorry, no mutant powers just yet. However, it’s the type of evolution that could occur in one or two generations, and can prolong human life....

World Economic Forum
This study suggests we are still evolving as a species
Dom Galeon

Lord Keynes — The 10,000 Year Explosion, Chapter 2: A Summary

Chapter 2 of Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending’s The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution(2009) is called “The Neanderthal Within,” and examines the possibility that early humans outside of Africa interbred with Neanderthals, and how this affected human evolution....

Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
The 10,000 Year Explosion, Chapter 2: A Summary
Lord Keynes

Philip Ball — How Life (and Death) Spring From Disorder

Life was long thought to obey its own set of rules. But as simple systems show signs of lifelike behavior, scientists are arguing about whether this apparent complexity is all a consequence of thermodynamics.

Hmm. Jason Smith may be onto something with information transfer economics.

Quanta

How Life (and Death) Spring From Disorder

Philip Ball

ht Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

Lawrence Davidson — Are Humans Natural-Born Killers?

A new study, published in the journal Nature and entitled “The Phylogenetic Roots of Human Lethal Violence,” argues two points: (1) along with many other mammals and particularly primates, human lethal violence is innate because it is part of a long “evolutionary history”; and (2) for humans, however, it is also a behavior that is responsive to our cultural environment. So, over time, “culture modulates our bloodthirsty tendencies.”

What is particularly original about this study is that it places human violence against the backdrop of general mammalian and primate lethal behavior. The researchers found that there is a correlation between the level of intra-group violence of those species that lie close to each other on the evolutionary tree.

In order to come to this conclusion the authors of the study (who are evolutionary biologists) looked at the available data on in-group violent deaths in 1,020 mammal species. From this information they tried to approximate how murderous each group is. For conclusions about the human propensity for murder, the researchers looked at 600 human groups stretching back as far as 50,000 years ago. It turns out we are less violent than baboons and more violent than bonobos, while about as violent as chimpanzees.…

For instance, this study claims that among Paleolithic hunter-gather groups, roughly 2 percent of deaths were the result of lethal violence. Later, in medieval times, this allegedly jumps to 12 percent. But in the modern age, with “industrialized states exerting the rule of law,” the rate appears to have fallen to 1.3 percent. Is all of this really accurate?
The authors are not the first to make this claim. The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, in a 2011 book entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature, argues that humans can and have lowered their level of interpersonal violence through creating institutions and laws that discourage such behavior.

As a general rule we should be wary of such sweeping claims about behavior over such large expanses of time. As one observer of the Nature study commented, much of the data [sources range from archeological digs to modern crime statistics] is “imprecise.” The same is true of Pinker’s evidence. It is due to just such challenges that such studies present these claims in terms of statistical models.…

All of this only gives added credence to the notion that our willingness to slaughter each other is innate – an adaptive habit of a long evolutionary history. This conclusion is offered as an explanation rather than an excuse. For, as the Naturestudy authors recognize, culture can impact such behavior – tamping it down at least within a designated in-group.

Yet it is hard to shake the feeling that our addiction to lethal violence is our evolutionary fate, and that it hangs there, like a sword of Damocles. always ready to impose itself should the delicate strand of law snap.

Look like Hobbes's law of the jungle over Rousseau's noble savage is correct. This is reflected mythologically in the biblical story of Cain slaying Abel, as well as the theological conception of the effects of "original sin." Law is a cultural institution to bridle that tendency of the human disposition.

Consortium News

Are Humans Natural-Born Killers?
Lawrence Davidson, retired professor of history, West Chester University, West Chester PA

David Sloan Wilson’s Statement: The Neo-Darwinian Revolution Is Far from Complete

Weekend reading.

DSW focuses on Nikolaas Tinbergen's four questions.

Having clearly stated my definition, here is the position that I will defend in this essay: Tinbergen’s four questions are enough for the future progress of evolutionary theory. In fact, to claim otherwise is a distraction.…

The Best Schools
David Sloan Wilson’s Statement: The Neo-Darwinian Revolution Is Far from Complete

David Sloan Wilson | SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University and Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo

William Hawes — Growing Up Insane

Why do democracies select insane people — psychopaths and sociopaths — to lead them. This is yet another paradox of liberalism.

In biology (and sociology), the dominant of a species discipline the sub-dominant and control the submissive. Is there any way for humans to get out of this cage imposed evolutionarily?

The current state of American politics must make us question whether any of our leaders in the Beltway can be described as “grown-ups”, i.e., fully mature and sane individuals. Between the endless war crimes, corporate corruption, lobbyists who bribe congressmen and write legislation, and the ineptitude of federal entities who are supposed to protect our health such as the FDA, EPA, and CDC, it would appear that leaders in all three branches of government, as well as the leaders of the corporate world, are either insane, suffer from various psychological disorders, as well as suffering from a type of collective hallucination, the common denominator being an utter lack of empathy for others humans, or respect for the Earth.

Further, we must at least question whether collectively, we the citizenry, are as susceptible to mass delusions as our psychopathic leaders are. Our society can be effectively generalized as forming what Paulo Freire calls a culture of silence, many of whom see no problems with exploiting and despoiling other countries, looting wealth, and killing millions; and many more that are simply afraid to speak out against the indignity of the US empire, in fear of socio-cultural reprisals. This culture of silence, which we are taught at a young age, indoctrinates and effectively eliminates the ability of people to form critiques of our rotten political and economic systems. This is who Richard Nixon was really referring to, when he spoke of the “Silent Majority”: citizens too naïve, dumb, childlike, and afraid to confront the injustices inherent to our system were exactly who Tricky Dick was appealing to.…

Counterpunch
Growing Up Insane

William Hawes

Jag Bhalla and David Sloan Wilson — Updating Hayek: Can 'The Market' Prioritize Well?

This is diablog 9 between David Sloan Wilson (DSW) and me (JB)

Think Big — errors we live by
Updating Hayek: Can 'The Market' Prioritize Well?

Jag Bhalla

ht Evonomics

Cameron K. Murray — How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth

Cameron Murray reviews Peter Turchin's Ultrasociety. How we got here.

Evonomics
How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth

Cameron K. Murray

According to parasite stress theory, we should see higher levels of collectivism in situations of higher pathogen stress, but not in response to other kinds of material insecurity. 

According to the material insecurity or institutional hypotheses, we should expect people to exhibit less collectivism and in-group loyalty when state-level institutions successfully meet people’s basic needs and guard against material threats.

Finally, the asocial life history hypothesis suggests that in situations where people have fewer opportunities to control risk, for example, in situations of greater mortality and economic uncertainty, they will avoid investments in anything but their own immediate reproduction (and thus eschew commitments to relationships and other social investments).

Another important distinction between these different theories is the feedbacks they posit.

Parasite stress and asocial life history theories both assume a relatively fixed environment to which individuals adapt.

The material insecurity or institutional hypothesis, on the other hand, assumes positive co-evolutionary feedbacks, whereby the existence of beneficial institutions can lead people to make further investments in those institutions to render them even better investments in the future. Thus, the material insecurity or institutional hypothesis can lead to novel social trajectories which are not purely driven by initial conditions—such as parasite levels—in a setting.…

Suggestive rather than conclusive, but interesting nevertheless.

Evonomics
A New Theory That Explains Economic Individualism and Collectivism
Daniel Hruschka | Associate Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University

East Asian Forum — China Regards Harmony as a Strategic Concept

One of the discipline’s greatest theorists, Kenneth Waltz, argues that the international system has a consistent set of features that transcends time. Most important is the anarchical structure (the lack of a central authority to govern the relations between states). For Waltz, the anarchy of the international system drives competition between states and is the permissive cause of conflict.

Therefore, it may appear that China is shaping up for a new era of global imperial competition. Yet appearances can be deceiving.

Shiping Tang, professor of international relations at Fudan University, argues that the international system is evolving to the point where war is no longer something states inevitably choose to engage in under anarchy. Tang argues that as a part of human society, the international system has been evolutionary from the beginning. The evolutionary changes are endogenous — that is, they are caused from within the system. The co-evolution of agent, agents’ behaviour, and system is key for understanding this transformation of the international system.

The evolution of the international system from an offensive to a defensive system was complete after World War II. The offensive system was the one the European imperialists inhabited. It was aggressive and war-prone. The gradual reduction in number of states and increase in the average size of states lead to the spreading of certain social ideas, such as that conquest was becoming more and more difficult. This learning process changed state ideas and practice, in time bringing about a defensive system.

The current defensive international system is evolving into a more institutionally rule-based system. Some offensive states still exist. Tang says proof that we live in a defensive system can be found in the decline of successful conquest and the existence of small states that would not have survived in the war-prone world inhabited by the imperial powers. States have learned that successful conquest is unlikely, that attempts will be punished, probably severely. Xi’s foreign policy can only be properly understood in light of this evolution of international politics.…

Economy Watch
China Regards Harmony as a Strategic Concept
East Asian Forum

Chris Mooney — 6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil

Harvard's Joshua Greene on the evolution of morality—and why humanity may, objectively, be getting better in the long run.

AlterNet
6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil
Chris Mooney | Mother Jones

Peter Turchin — Blame Rich, Overeducated Elites as Our Society Frays

Complex human societies, including our own, are fragile. They are held together by an invisible web of mutual trust and social cooperation. This web can fray easily, resulting in a wave of political instability, internal conflict and, sometimes, outright social collapse.
Analysis of past societies shows that these destabilizing historical trends develop slowly, last many decades, and are slow to subside.

The Roman Empire, Imperial China and medieval and early-modern England and France suffered such cycles, to cite a few examples. In the U.S., the last long period of instability began in the 1850s and lasted through the Gilded Age and the “violent 1910s.”

We now see the same forces in the contemporary U.S. Of about 30 detailed indicators I developed for tracing these historical cycles (reflecting popular well-being, inequality, social cooperation and its inverse, polarization and conflict), almost all have been moving in the wrong direction in the last three decades.

The roots of the current American predicament go back to the 1970s, when wages of workers stopped keeping pace with their productivity. The two curves diverged: Productivity continued to rise, as wages stagnated. The “great divergence” between the fortunes of the top 1 percent and the other 99 percent is much discussed, yet its implications for long-term political disorder are underappreciated. Battles such as the recent government shutdown are only one manifestation of what is likely to be a decade-long period....

Bloomberg
Blame Rich, Overeducated Elites as Our Society Frays
Peter Turchin | Vice President of the Evolution Institute and Professor of Biology and Anthropology at the University of Connecticut

Izabella Kaminska — Striving for social de-evolution

I don’t think there’s anything stopping us from achieving the top future. The only thing that gets in the way is if people fail to understand that we can’t have the perks of technology without the adjustment in the social hierarchy that comes with it.

Any attempt to preserve the status quo is to de-evolve and destroy.

It leads us to Back to the Future II, to Alphaville, to Tank Girl, to the Empire in Star Wars and so on…

Dizzynomics
Striving for social de-evolution
Izabella Kaminska

The agendas of the reactionary right versus the radical left. The center? Meh.