Hi Keith,
Good to see your emails, even today--when I feel compelled to disagree
with much of what you are suggesting.
There's rather a lot, so bear with me in italics below.
Natalia Kuzmyn
Keith Hudson wrote:
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.
/You are leaving out what many would consider to be the strongest
element of economic engine: that of the arts! It's remarkable that the
first funding cuts in tough economic times are those allocated to the
arts, yet stimulus will still be provided to the very industries who
reaped in corporate welfare benefits, but who grossly mismanaged public
funds.
Despite the widely publicized notion that food and shelter are available
for all in need, there is a great disconnect between availability and
services actually delivered. Usually, there are never enough shelter
beds for the homeless. Women's shelters are harder to find, and
typically have wait lists. Understandably, many previously abused women
cannot emotionally afford to mix with men who are potentially offending
or intimidating. The number of shelters that allow pets are very few,
and those which allow alcohol to be at least checked at the door are
also at a premium. Such NGO judgments account for numerous homeless
choosing inclement weather over parting with their sole comforts. Then,
the working poor must not be overlooked when listing social and economic
disadvantages.
Your last sentence denies that women, on the whole, are driven by
status. Are you basing this upon the low numbers of women in so-called
power positions? Are you suggesting that women take no pride in status?
That accomplishment in this realm somehow evades the female ego?Have you
taken into account the higher number of female college/university
graduates? Are you perhaps equating status with job/career satisfaction?
I believe you have been misjudging both men and women in this respect.
Recent Canadian surveys of university students show that job
satisfaction plays a greater role today than status itself. Is it
possible you are using an antiquated paradigm to express your views of
what drives people to do what they do today? /
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.
/Would this account for the high number of teen pregnancies amongst the
economically disadvantaged? I don't think that most are getting knocked
up by those in elevated social or economic spheres. Girls give it up
because they're just as curious as boys, and are equally driven by
developing hormones. It's a feeling they wish to satisfy, and romance is
the main stage, rather than security. Young kids don't think in terms of
security. Fun, adventure, and social acceptance within their peer group
is of far greater concern. Many unfortunately succumb to peer pressure,
many are rape victims. Security comes into play once a woman is ready
for a life partner, and today this is more typically once career is in
place. Those who don't arrive at that step are usually seeking escape
from domestic abuse or poverty, are victims of their parents' cultural
beliefs, or have been victims of an impoverished educational system
which only offers training in obedience of authority, math and basic
English.
/
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).
/Again, you and those whom you favour quoting, tend to leave out the
arts as the strongest driver and shaper of economic development. This
accounts for the prevalence of primitive theories. The never ceasing
quest for the next great product to stimulate the economy!
As long as economists fail to recognize that creative minds (that do not
exploit natural resources) are our most valuable resources, and that
they need to be nurtured and fully explored, the economic state of the
world will quite simply be perpetually on the decline. Minds shape
worlds, not otherwise. Fear of scarcity in sex, security and status have
been exploited by church, industry and state in order to develop a
society that will suppress mind, along with all its possibilities for a
vibrant future.
/
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.
/Women who enter this male-dominated realm do not necessarily augment
credibility of women's worth, but rather are typically getting ahead
playing within rules and values men and the women who believe in them
have mistakenly established as sound. This fails to activate change, and
merely perpetuates the status quo. Women manipulating the system gives
them the illusion of being in control, but does nothing for positive
change, and less still to challenge the low value placed on women's worth.
Women, on the whole, regard security rather differently than do most
men, and the fact that more women do not bother to enter the existing
flawed economic system is not at all surprising. Society cannot create
and prosper within delusional systems doomed for failure. Exploitation
is a weakness, not a strength.
That women control more money than men based on a longer lifeline is a
pretty feeble attempt to placate those who, over the years previous,
never really had control over how said money was spent or invested. At
the ripe age of eighty, if they haven't succumbed to Dementia, cancer,
or some other debilitating disease of the elderly, most have the sense
to stay clear of systems which drove their spouses to an early grave.
/
How can we restore the female to her rightful place both in economic
discussion but also as an equally important actor in economic
development?
/Let's change the focus of education, and thereby help to initiate
change. Change that recognizes that real power is within, and depends on
a balance of energies that sustain interconnected life. Once we learn
this for ourselves, then we can export it to developing countries./
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.
/You are describing matrimonial decisions primarily based upon fear
generated by cultural doctrine, not choice. People tend to find marriage
partners where work is plentiful. Their more mature age usually
coincides with such interests. /
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.
/Actually, you're hypothesizing. Males tend to be more prone to mental
disorders afflicting homeless people. Up to 70% of any given city's
homeless will be suffering from same./ /Those in prison suffer from
these disorders, and you can throw in high numbers of illiteracy and
Dyslexia to add to the injustices of the socially and economically
disadvantaged.
Exceptionally gifted women do not seek out a provider; a partner maybe.
/
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.
/Too much to disagree with here. First, you concurred further down with
Levitt's study showing the direct correlation between right to abortion
and the staggering decrease in crime, then decide above it's actually
not such a great thing that women have choice today. The crime is as a
direct result of poverty and impoverished minds manifested by a flawed
male-dominated economic/educational system. It may surprise you to learn
that the single parent family is what is considered to be average today.
You are presuming that poor single moms are letting the TV babysit
because the moms are lonely. Most moms are actually working moms, and
many cannot afford babysitters or daycare. Kids who have two parents are
typically babysat by a TV as well because both parents are working. In
fact, the variables are too numerous to review, but economic class has
always been a factor in child development. Cultural background is
another huge factor. If a child is raised to speak an entirely different
language, and misses out on societal norms of the prevailing culture,
they too are at a great disadvantage. It will be the economic well-being
of the family unit that will pull a kid through the initial disadvantages./
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,
/The human species would hardly be human if this impossibility were ever
to take place. This would be as a direct result of genetic interference
rather than fatality, and short-lived at best. I don't think that as a
collective mind we could possibly allow that to undermine our destiny.
This seems too much to be a judgment on the minds of socially and
economically disadvantaged, and a speculation against the collective
mind of humankind. Please, focus on *b), *wherein you fortunately arrive
at a sane proposal.
Regards, Natalia
/
(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.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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