[A] friend sent this update on Axelrod’s work on the competitive value of ethnocentrism, and how entho-centrism always wins. I had assumed this was fairly obvious, but while axelrod also focuses on cooperation, I want to convert this into propertarian language and therefore make it more compatible with ethics and political economy. So over the next few months I’ll try to write a few posts that make use of this argument. (Thanks)
THE ERROR OF ANGLO UNIVERSALISM – CONVERSATION WITH NICHOLAS CARDACI ON EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGIES
DAVID Were you aware of this series of experiments that were carried out on evolutionary strategies competing with one another? I found them very useful: https://egtheory.wordpress.com/…/06/30/how-ethnocentrics-r…/ CURT Yes. Axelrod and followers have been working on this model for many years. I include him in my reading list. This particular set of studies is interesting in that it addresses the value of ethnocentrism. While economic utility CAN be expressed as reproduction, it is not always the case as Sweden shows today. But I should probably comment on the study so that I draw the connection with propertarianism. DAVID Were you surprised that the mechanism of ethnocentric ascension was straight up robbery of humanitarians, rather than limitation of free riding? I think there’s definitely both going on, but the weakness of the mediation (?) hypothesis surprised me. CURT No, it’s obvious. One of the values of modeling that Axelrod (and other life-models) brought to the debate (with the aid of computer science) was equilibrial modeling rather than linear projection. It’s great stuff. I think I read him first … I dunno. It seems like the 80’s or maybe early 90’s. My wife and I were travelling in the UK at the time and I read it in the wee hours of the morning. It was one of the most influential pieces that I read. Actually, maybe i’ll write a post about the relationship between axelrod in cooperation and mandelbrot in stock markets, and taleb in risk, and equilibrium in prices. These behaviors are all the same: before we had data and computers we could not conduct these measurements and we could not see them. This means that unless one can describe an idea as a supply and demand curve, that one is engaging in idealism. DAVID I’ve been pondering this topic recently, mulling over the conflict between the moral universalism and ethnocentrism. One thing that’s readily obvious to me, especially being around alot of southern europeans, is that this ethnocentrism though isn’t always great. As it seems to me that it’s always accompanied with high family nepotism. Italy, is extremely regionalist and nepotistic within the family, and seriously limits how big their commons can be I think. The country is way too big as it is, with that level of heterogeneity. Some of it seems to be the greater levels of inbreeding that’s gone on historically. The bolded text in this post by hbd chick pretty much nails the kinship/family nepotism that goes on down there. https://www.reddit.com/…/the_reality_of_deep_southern_euro…/ Even in the anglo countries, I still see it going on, with italians from the same region letting eachother off parking fines It makes them more impervious to outside infiltration, but they can never reach the same commons as their northern neighbors. CURT Nepotism (family corporialism) is not the same as corruption or deceit. if one biases opportunities toward the family in maters not in the commons then that is not an imposition of costs upon others. If one exercises corruption in the production of commons, then that is another thing altogether. So you’d distinguish those then? CURT Yes. Favoring market opportunity is different from imposing costs upon the commons. Even the innocent nepotism, seems to be harmful to an extent. Like you mentioned on the Shoah, it limits a society’s ability to put the best person in the job. There was a good article recently outlining how in Romance Europe, family owned corporations are far more dominant than in the Anglo markets, where there’s ‘market-based management’, meritocracy essentially. So just as anglo model works under great opportunity (and as the model shows) the family model (and aristocracy which is also a family model) defeats the anglo over time. that’s what Axelrod’s model shows. DAVID This is true. As they cooperate with people defecting against them. Yes. It seems to me to be both a gift and a curse. That’s cliched, but its the only way I can think do describe attitudes in southern europe. CURT It’s just that no principle of measurement is infinitely extensible. A rule acts as a means of measurement (decidability). There are not infinitely true rules. There are limits to every rule. (Which is a very complex bit of philosophy, but the reason why apriorism can’t be true.) The tactics you use in one circumstance and those in another are different. It is probably short term better to use universal ethics until your competitors catch up, and then return to familial ethics in order to prevent defectors from becoming parasites. (this is a very good discussion we should probably post for others to follow) DAVID Yes. That’s what it seems to me. Southern europeans are capped in what they can do, but what they have is far more robust and secure than what the anglos and co have achieved. Should we post it on the Subreddit? CURT Yes. It’s a pretty good conversation that we can probably use to educate others. We are touching on a set of very big ideas here that are not obvious: the limits to any evolutaionary strategy, the advantage of familialism over universalism in the long term, the conceptual problem of training people to models and demand curves instead of ideal types and linear progressions. What we are saying is that we must increase the complexity of the basis of moral argument. DAVID Yes, we cant simply pretend to have moral arguments among ourselves (as europeans) in isolation any longer. It’s eating away at us. I went through my finance textbook and found the study about family ownership I mentioned. Faccio & Lang, “The Ultimate Ownership of Western European Corporations” (1997) A bit older than I thought Also, there’s a study indicating their outperformance over more anglo style firms, strangely enough. Anderson & Reeb, “Founding Family Ownership and Firm Performance from the S&P500” (2003) Going to head off. CURT Cheers
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