Theme From an Imaginary Book

On human interdependence

Every once in a while, I get an itch to organize some of my essays into a book. Usually, I just lie down until the itch goes away.

Maybe I could talk Jason Manning and Dan Williams (and how about Rob Henderson?) into doing a collaboration. But then I would really be committed.

Here is a rough chapter outline (not counting the introduction) for a book on human interdependence.

1. Mating. The Old Spice deodorant package says, “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.” That is the theory of evolution in a nutshell. Your behavior is to some degree governed by your genes, and your genes come from people who mated successfully. Some of the average differences between men and women—what Joyce Benenson calls “warriers” and “worriers”—make sense in light of evolution. The variety of traits that personality psychologists observe makes sense in light of evolution.

2. Strategizing. Humans are strategic. Sometimes it pays to cooperate with others. Sometimes it pays to cheat them. Much of individual and group behavior revolves around trying to get others to cooperate rather than cheat. As part of playing this game, we often deceive and self-deceive.

3. Learning. Our ability to learn is the key to humans surviving as individuals and conquering the planet as a species. To learn, we can experiment for ourselves. But most of what we learn we learn by copying others. We copy people to whom we assign prestige. But prestigious people may try to take advantage of us. And people who do not deserve prestige have an incentive to come across as prestigious. We can observe through history and across cultures many different ways to obtain prestige. To improve the way that we learn from others, we have developed many institutional mechanisms to filter knowledge and to transmit knowledge.

4. Status-seeking. We play a zero-sum game in which we try to move up in a status hierarchy. Some of our status competition is pro-social and some of it is anti-social.

5. Energy-seeking (here I borrow from Randall Collins). Some of our interactions with others give us positive energy. Other interactions detract from our energy. We are drawn to the former and learn to avoid the latter.

6. Economizing. As homo economicus, we specialize and trade. Our objective is to get the greatest enjoyment with the least effort. Incentives in the market guide firms to meet the needs of customers. The market is a learning mechanism. Entrepreneurs attempt experiments. These are evaluated by consumers. Successful experiments earn profits and persist, and failed experiments go out of business.

7. True Communism/socialism does not work at scale. People will not spontaneously organize to be able to assemble complex products. If you let everyone choose their occupation, you will get a lot of artists and no janitors. A large-scale economy requires a combination of planning and price incentives. And planning has many weaknesses.

8. Grouping. We form tribes. A tribe develops distinctive signals for demonstrating membership. It develops mechanisms to enforce tribal loyalty.

9. Warring. We engage in collective violence. Tribe will fight tribe. Nation will fight nation.

10. Organizing. We form small firms, large corporations, charities, political parties, and other collectivities. The small ones are held together by norms and customs. Larger entities employ formal mechanisms, including organizational charts, training programs and rules and procedures that get written down. One of the novel challenges posed by social media on smart phones is that it puts on the same screen people from our smaller groups and from the larger society.

11. Legitimate coercion. We assign to certain people a right to coerce, and we tell everyone else that they have a duty to obey. This is the field of politics and state power. Different forms of government emerge.