Theme: Class

E.D.;

To add to your pile for your book.

Marxists did most of this work a long ago.

I’m sure you know about Emmanuel Todd’s work.

This is a dense summary of the reasons for the competitive advantage of patriarchy.

It’s in economic logic which may be interesting.

Cheers

Curt Doolittle

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WHY PATRIARCHY WAS AN EVOLUTIONARY NECESSITY AND OUT-COMPETED ALL OTHER FORMS OF ORDER -AND ALWAYS WILL

0. In any competitive primate order, largely related males capture females and territory by competing with, and killing off, competing largely related males. Females often defect mate and return. Humans demonstrate this same behaviors. Males create commons – meaning territories – that contain women and their children, and at maturity genders split into their roles as warriors and mothers. This is not to state a naturalistic fallacy, only that we are not unique, and all great apes demonstrate some variation on this basic set of behaviors, and these behaviors are evolutionarily beneficial – and possibly necessary. Bonobos for example are geographically isolated from competition and could extend the feminine method of genetic expression rather than the masculine.

1. As demand for the division of labor increased, individual productivity increased, and the atomization of property increased, so the organization of the family has increased in atomization in parallel – from the consanguineous, to matrilineal serial monogamy with frequent defection, to the paternal serial with less frequent defection and frequent polygamy, to paternal monogamous, to traditional extended less defection, to the nuclear with much less defection, absolute nuclear with little defection, and now to the single female parent – returning us to serial monogamy.

2. Property (a system of measurement) is necessary for organizing increasingly complex polities in a division of labor, and for providing incentive to specialize and rewarding people to take initiative in that division of labor. We assume today what adam smith first documented, and that other than in purely intellectual innovation, which happens only at the extremes, the returns on cooperation are not linear but between geometric and logarithmic: depending upon the complexity of the task, ten men can be a thousand times more productive than one, not ten times.

3.Patriarchy (Government) in a relatively consanguineous band is irrelevant. Patriarchy in a tribe with assets where reproductive anonymity is possible is necessary to prevent caloric parasitism (dysgenia). Patriarchy evolved because only men can defend property, and only men have the reproductive and status interest in defending property – women have the opposing interests. (This is the traditional complaint of marxists and feminists).

4. A man and a woman are the most parsimonious tribe possible, where each man is a headman over a tribe of one woman (or more) and their children. This puts males and females in the optimum nash equilibrium competition insuring the least free riding, most cooperation, with the least defection. In other words, it’s the optimum return on investment under marginal rates of production (agrarianism).

5. A pareto distribution is a power law, where the top 20% use control over 80% of the assets to provide incentives necessary to organize a society by positive incentives (opportunity) rather than forced labor. To successfully compete a population must produce a pareto distribution sufficient to organize the production of private consumption and public investment that the group can survive competition from other groups. This is an evolutionary necessity and where reversed, results in decline and dysgenia, which eventually undermine the pareto distribution. A Nash equilibrium is a condition under which everyone gets the best everyone can as a group even if some get less and some get more. Pairing off mating (serial relationships) is an example where the best get the best, the worst get the words, but everyone gets something, whereas in a disequilibrium some get most and most get none. All orders that maintain a pareto distribution of power (order), but a nash equilibrium of returns (benefits) eliminates the maximum disincentive to cooperation and minimum incentive to defect, thereby producing the optimum velocity of production, providing the least work load for every member of the polity. Elites seek rents for maintaining this, and within reason they are earned. However, rents tend to accumulate and cause calcification leading to inability to adjust to shocks, that cause collapse because not enough free capital exists to reorganize the polity during the period of stress.

6. The principle differences between extant human groups consists of a) adaptations (Speciation) to geographic conditions consisting largely neoteny necessary for the climate, disease gradient, and population density, b) different degrees of neoteny c) producing different rates and depths of maturity, d) resulting in variations in physical and cognitive development e) different degrees of dimorphism (masculine feminine) and the greater advantage of verbal skill as complexity of social, reproductive, economic, political, and military complexity increases. As such the principle difference between human groups is the size of the underclass, lowering the possibility of a competitive pareto distribution sufficient to create a nash equilibrium under which groups can compete. This is offset by the tendency of complex groups to use anonymity, procedure, and complexity to seek rents on heretofore nash equilibria, until there is insufficient free capital whether genetic, cultural, institutional, human, or material to adjust to shocks, changes in trade routes, or warfare.

7. In conclusion non-patriarchal groups cannot utilize maximum returns of cooperation because they lack the ability to produce a division of labor by pareto distribution of power, and nash equilibrium of benefits. This is why all paternal, monogamous, sky worshipping, metal-smithing, military, expansionist, pastoralists were able to conquer peoples who had developed earlier agriculture and failed to create equally competitive orders.

9. Controversial Warning: men cheat but women defect, just like our ape cousins and our ancestors. This is the primary reason for a) differences in compensation, b) lack of women in headman (senior) positions outside of female consumer goods. c) preference for male managers regardless of gender at least in the competitive roles. A woman in a headman capacity whether business, political, or military is a luxury good, or a signal good. Or putting a woman in charge to manage a decline, and women rarely amass their own fortunes outside of entertainment because of it. This is the other side of why the patriarchy exists: women are devoted to their children but they are not loyal to the tribe. This is why men only tolerate female leadership in management of a decline, or inability to resolve conflict between factions. Or when there is so little risk that the symbolic value is of some value such as when a brand has been burned in the market. This is why companies prefer to hire women as CEO’s for companies that cannot recover (xerox, hp,etc) – the privilege of the role even in decline does not harm a woman’s career but destroys a man’s, and the public demonstrate genetility of women under hardship.

10. If you can internalize this understanding, then you will avoid the naturalistic fallacy on one hand, and avoid the blank slate of possibility on the other. Human groups succeed by adapting to what is competitive despite human wants and biases, not because of them.

11. Human beings always and everywhere are bound by the same physical laws as the rest of the universe, and while memory, consciousness, and reason give us pause to outwit the forces of time and ignorance, we can only violate those physical laws as long as our reserve genetic capital holds out.

It’s been spending down since the mid 1800s.

97 is a limit, and 95 is a cliff and 93 is unrecoverable without political interference in reproduction.