Origins of virtue - Chapters 2 and 10

2. Division of labor

• Hutterites example: community that actually cares for each other. Ridley says that our society is not like that, we tend to favor relatives over everyone else.
  • Selfishness is almost the definition of vice
  • We are all huterites at heart, we all share a belief in pursuing the greater good.
  • We praise selflessness.
• Humans are dependent on each other.
• It is specialization that makes human society greater than the sum of its parts.

Groupishness

• If a creature puts the greater good ahead of its individual interests, it is because its fate is inextricably tied to that of the group: it shares the group's fate.
• Human beings cooperate at a level other than the family.
  • This makes benevolence harder to explain.
  • Nepotism is seen as a bad thing. Favoring relatives is seen as corruption.

The parable of the pin-maker

• The advantages of society are those provided by the division of labor.
  • Because each person is a specialist of some sort, the sums of all our efforts are greater than they would be if each of us had to be a jack of all trades.
  • An example of this is the human body, each organ, each cell, plays a separate part in the functioning of the body.
• Adam Smith was the first to recognize that the division of labor is what makes human society more than the sum of its parts.
• The reasons for this advantage lay in three consequences:
  • Improving dexterity at one activity through practice
  • Save time that would otherwise be spent switching from task to task
  • It pays off to invent machinery that speeds up the task
• He also said that the division of labor increased with:
  • The size of the market
  • With the improvement in transport and communication
• By specializing at the level of the individual, the species can generalize at the level of the colony
• Smith made the paradoxical argument that social benefits derive from individual vices
  • Self ambition leads to industry, resentment discourages aggression, vanity causes acts of kindness
  • "It is not from the benevolece of the butcher that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest"
  • This also does not mean that the butcher is malevolent
• It allows for trade
  • The customer gets tbe product cheaper
  • The producer makes enough to exchange for all the other goods he needs
  • It is not a zero-sum game
• Between strangers, the invisible hand of the market, distributing selfish ambitions, is fairer

The technological stone age

• Economists conclude that this specialization is modern invention.
• Ridley disagrees
  • It is hard to imagine any group of grown men working together as a team for a fairly long period of time without some similar sort of specializations emerging.
• Husband and wife have divided chores

10. Gains from trade

• Example: Yir Yoront
  • Australian tribe that had a sophisticated system of trade
• Trade is the beneficient side of human groupishness
  • We segregate into territorial groups, which allows for trade
• The glue of alliances is trade
• Example: Yanomano villages
  • Each village could supply its own wants, but they choose not to to keep trade open
  • When they fell out with their allies, they quickly remembered the skill to produce their own stuff

The merchant law

• Trade predeced law
• Modern commercial law was invented and enforced not by governments, but by merchants themselves
• As markets grew, merchants wanted to exploit the law of comparative advantage between countries
  • But commercing in a foreign country meant that the rules were different and they had no assurance that theywouldn't be cheated
  • So merchants got together to form a universal set of rules of the game
  • It was voluntarily places and voluntarily enforced
• Good customs that worked drove out bad by natural selection and so the law evolved
• Then middlemen and bankers emerged
• Finally, the government enacted into national law these merchant customs, and took the credit for it

Silver and gold

• Arabs and Crusades changed the value of silver and gold in their regions

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