Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

Claire (re: Rod Schmidt), your view of history is not defined as consisting of necessary and logical or rational(choices) wherein you describe causes as choices in rational self interest, but a construction that constitutes nothing more than a justification of the premise (in other words, circularity).

The evolution from consanguineous bands all the way to the absolute nuclear family, to the present single-person family, reflected the demands of the use of property in the division of knowledge and labor. Marriage was and remains a property claim on one another in order that the members of the corporation (marriage) will pool resources to produce returns unavailable to individuals outside of marriage on one hand, and on the other hand, marriage prevents the externalization of moral hazard upon society by the production of generations (children) that the community rather than the participants must supply. It was the extraordinary returns on marriage that produced superior quality of life – especially in late life, that preserved the institution. (The impolitic is that before marriage women were the ‘property’ of the males of the tribe (brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins), and treated as such. And still are by other great apes.) And in truth, the current conflict is in no small part over the group ownership of reproduction by males – an ownership that is necessary for the continuation of the men’s genes.

It was this balance of forces between internal interest, and external defense, that gave rise to marriage. Once marriage was long institutionalize, the problem of excess males remained, and normative governments (cults) generally but not always, imposed monogamy (outlawed polygamy) in order to absorb those males (and limit the harm done to families by competition between multiple wives (slaves).

The industrial revolution’s rapid decrease of costs of everything, the invention of household industrial machinery (appliances), the invention of birth control, the entry of women into the work force, the transformation of education to day-dare, the no fault divorce, the use of redistribution via child support, alimony, and retirement redistributions, have all served to produce greater taxes and greater redistributions at the expense of the returns on marriage.

Meanwhile the long term returns on marriage are increasingly lost and this has led to late life loneliness, depression for both genders, and rapid increases in particular of male suicide and female anti-depressant use – as well as the return of elder poverty.

People in the past were drawn to religion when they were, partly out of entertainment value, partly out of educational value, partly out of ‘belonging’ value, partly out of signaling value, and partly defensively such that they would not be seen as a risk or outcast by the superstitious and ignorant. But those incentives empirically do not exist any longer. We find entertainment, education, belonging, signaling, in other forums, and we are so relatively wealthy that being outcast is immaterial. Our primary problem is economic mobility that prevents friendship and family formation as the cheapest form of entertainment. And we lose the mindfulness that comes from such constant socialization using others as the cheapest form of entertainment.

So the problem is that you (Claire) start with a conclusion and make excuses for somehow enforcing by fiat that which is currently against human self interest – at all the levels that are possible for people to perceive. Yet you explain no possible method for doing so – for forcing them to ‘believe’. Worse, you mandate that they believe something is good despite the contrary evidence of their current choices and behavior. And worse you are apparently incognizant of the initial and ongoing costs of preserving that set of falsehoods and counter-incentives, – without realizing you’ve just adopted the model of the communists: forcible attempts to enforce counter-incentives, rather than the western model of constructing institutions that assist us in following incentives.

So while you undoubtably think you have some particular insight, you are simply doubling-down, and re-doubling down, on the only solution you have the intuition, ability, and understanding to comprehend, rather than continuing the search for a set of forces that will produce the incentives to restore the intergenerational family corporation – largely by ceasing our incentives to avoid it. In simple terms you’re proposing the praxeologically and economically impossible – political science equivalent of cold fusion.

The fact that you can believe your imagined world is possible is actually somewhat difficult to understand. And it’s a rather exceptional demonstration of dunning Kruger effects and lack of analysis, self reflection, and understanding of the human animal. If you are deeply religious we then can understand how you have been trained to think in such impossibilities and undesirabilities. But only the victims of Dunning Kruger ignorance and overconfidence, and those of limited intellectual ability and desperate need for confidence in decision making given their constant failure to make decisions that produce returns have the ability and incentive to advocate or follow such dictums.

So, like I said, do you really want to have such discussions with those of us who have had responsibility for the organization of, success of, and competitive dominance of, large groups of high performing highly talented people of great ability, when your thought process and the ideas you advocate are accessible to the people at the other end of the spectrum?

This is why I asked you if you really wanted to have such a discussion with the category of man that you wish to – because no such man would do anything other than dismiss such ideas, because he could not attain any success or power in the modern world if he thought in such a fashion. You do find, and we do all find, articulate schizotypicals, or the occasional borderline lunatic that manages to accumulate wealth despite is deficiencies for no other reason than unrelated industriousness. But you know, people who are successful largely are so because they have fewer defects of mind, emotion, and character than others combined with a high degree of industriousness.

Because in my experience people with such strange malinvestments cannot tolerate the falsification of their ideals because they are forced to start from zero and begin all over again. And so what they do is spew venom at their interlocutors. Whereas an intellectually honest person simply is thankful for the correction and re-education.