So far, concerning the subject of economics, the female of the species
might as well not exist.
When basic food and minimum shelter are available for all in any
post-agrarian society, then status, sex and security are the three main
driving forces of economic development. The male tends to be driven mainly
by status and sex, being much less concerned with security than the female.
The female tends to be driven by security and sex, being much less
concerned with status than the male.
The male can't get sex willingly from a female unless he has some minimal
status -- a role in society or possession of money. The female won't give
sex willingly unless she is given some form of security -- safety of a
partnership or money.
These three are not only the three drivers and shapers of economic
development but also (with the addition of food and shelter) of evolution
as a whole. The exploitation of all of them is deep within our genes. It is
sad, therefore, that the study of economics (as defined in all text books)
is still largely trapped at a primitive level -- that of the distribution
of basic resources (together, in the last 350 years only, with the
distribution of the mass manufactured products of those resources).
Even the classic economists got little further than this. Even the three
greatest economists of the last century -- Keynes, Friedman and Hayek --
were preoccupied with money and trade and little else. The only great
economists who concerned themselves with status (but not sex!) were
Thorstein Veblen and Joseph Schumpeter. Veblen wrote a lot about the great
need of (mainly) males to display their status by means of the things they
bought (particularly their houses), and Schumpeter wrote a great deal about
the need of (mainly) males to display status by inventing something new and
disruptive in the scheme of things.
So far, therefore, economics is an almost totally male-dominated subject --
not only as the predominant sex of its exponents but also in the way the
subject is conceived. Yet the female is half of the species! And --
something which is usually forgotten -- the female actually possess more
money (and thus economic choice) than the males by virtue of living longer.
How can we restore the female to her rightful place both in economic
discussion but also as an equally important actor in economic development?
It can be solved immediately by giving much more cognizance to the fact
that teenager girls, mainly obsessed with the looming possibility of
becoming mothers, endeavour to select the most able male that is available
within her culture. This culture can be her immediate culture or, if she is
more than usually able herself, in a better culture that might lie
elsewhere. This is instinctive and applies everywhere and in every society.
Today, with equality of educational opportunity in developed countries,
more girls than boys get to university. More girls than boys in the
economically benighted parts of a country (e.g. the north in the case of
England) will travel to more prosperous parts to find work and thus to
find males who can give them more security than their former male
peers. Measured by IQ tests, girls nearly always marry upwards. In a
highly stratified society (in developed countries until recently or in
Indian and other agrarian societies today) girls never marry males from a
lower class or caste. Indeed, girls have been, and still are sometimes,
ostracized or even killed if they marry beneath them.
The same evolutionary phenomenon also explains why almost all the bums and
vagabonds in a city are almost exclusively males and also, at the other end
of the ability range, why exceptionally gifted females find it very hard to
find a suitable male whom they can respect as a partner and provider.
But perhaps the most serious consequence of female sexual (and thus
economic) choice is that it accounts for the growing underclass in modern
society and also for the vast majority of crime. The females who are not
able enough to leave the more economically distressed parts of a country
will tend not to get married because the males around them are not able to
provide for them or who are even less able. But because such girls can also
receive adequate welfare benefits from a developed country government and
have priority in local council housing lists they will still have children.
However, in recent years since the availability of cheap abortion, these
girls no longer have multiple children but nevertheless they produce
children in families without fathers. Such children tend to be lonelier and
less socially able than children born into normal families. In their very
earliest and most formative years of life such children tend to be left in
front of the TV while their mothers, themselves much lonelier than they
would be if marfried, seek social (and/or sexual) comfort outside the home.
One result of this is that teachers of primary school children can
immediately detect the children of single parents because, on the whole,
these children are not only culturally, socially and manually deficient
compared with other children but cannot even converse above a fairly
primitive level. Increasingly, teachers have got to give conversational
lessons before they have a chance of tackling the normal syllabus.
Another important result of this is that the male single children make up
the bulk of crime 15 to 20 years after their birth. This was first proved
by Steven Levitt in a brilliant analysis some 20 years ago and now widely
accepted. He was able to prove this scientifically by analysing overall
crime figures in all American cities before and after abortion became a
basic female right by a ruling from the Supreme Court.
And Steven Levitt is an economist! For the first time in the whole history
of economic thought, the female of the species is now being brought fully
into the picture. (For those who would like to pursue this in more detail
-- or, indeed, want to try and refute it -- then I would recommend his
book, "Freakonomics". I might also mention the reverse phenomenon which
Levitt doesn't deal with. This is the phenomenon of the highly talented
female who is no longer willing to remain a childless spinster for lack of
a suitable male and decides to have a child without marrying because she
can support a child economically all by herself these days.)
The lower class single mother is not to be condemned. She is a product of
both our deep evolutionary instincts of sexual selection and of the
hyper-meritocratic, hyper-specialized society in which we are now
increasingly finding ourselves. The big problem is that this is now likely
to be a permanent feature of any developed society -- and it will grow, the
more specialized and credentialized our society becomes.
There have always been the poor in any society. This is a natural result of
the variability of talent in every generation. But, in advanced society
these days, the poor are becoming an underclass, and a criminal underclass
at that. And, furthermore, a permanent, criminalized underclass. This will
mean that a steadily increasingly number of children will be blighted in
their earliest years before they even have a chance of exercising the
talent they may potentially possess by virtue of their genes.
In a society which is becoming even more meritocratic and specialized it
will mean that either (a) the human species will inevitably divide into two
separate species over a period of time or, (b) that the most radical
attempts must be taken to give every child the maximum opportunity for self
development from the moment he or she is born. To the extent that we are
already losing a great deal of potential talent, even genius, then this is
by far the most important economic and political problem in any developed
country -- far beyond the economic depressions that we are wont to
experience from time to time.
And, as a byproduct, economics must become a much more rounded subject. We
need far more Veblens, Schumpeters and Levitts than so far.
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>,
<<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>/> _______________________________________________
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