Thinking about Evolution & Economics and Some Notes on the Evolution of Ideas

Part 4 - Freedom and Democracy - The strange tale of Tommy Jeffers and the arrogance of intelligent design

All power corrupts even when the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Now God said, and I agree with him, ‘consider the lilies how they grow, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these’ …

Once upon a time alongside the incredible, purposeful design of the lilies, us folks occupied niches everywhere as evolution beavered inexorably on.

Different genes, different niches and different ideas, folk not only had different skins and different eyes but they even had different speaks and worshipped different Gods.

Unsurprisingly different folk didn’t always agree and they quarrelled somewhat and it all got bloody.

And as they considered the lilies and their miraculous array, it was difficult to understand how the Gods designed perfect lilies but made such a mess of folk.

The best design had passed us by, we were flawed? This worried Tommy Jeffers.

But Jeffers was different of course, he didn’t make passable bread and he was too old and decrepit to work the fields, in fact many thought he was errant. However he did observe and investigate his thoughts. He had no truck with the Soothsayers wasting their think hours trying to predict the unknowable future, he just observed, investigated his thoughts and mulled.

Sure he was different but he was not alone, many of his ancient ancestors had mulled. He felt like a confused dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants - Hamurabi, Mahavira, Budda, Elijah, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Constantine, Augustine, Aquinas, Hereward, Galileo, Luther, Hobbes, Locke and Adam the Smith ... it appeared an almost endless stream of inspired ancestors had wrestled with the same problem of the messiness of folk. Not to mention the other lot who were so disgusted they abandoned the golden thread of the giants and went for broke along their wrong hubristic way.

For sure some of Mitochondrial Eve’s descendants were prospering and Ricardo and his friends were discovering new tricks all the time. The new tricks provided new comforts and everyone wanted them. Jeffers observed Ricardo’s success with his friends and smiled as more and more folk joined his gravy train. Many even travelled across the oceans from afar, clamouring to get on, they didn't want to miss out .. and they were having a dreadful time at home where Dominants were pecking them something rotten.

Ricardo’s group got bigger and bigger. More folk not only led to more specialisations and more new tricks but also more folk led to more success defending the fruits of the tricks from the marauding Belligerents. It seemed size was a double whammy, more production and better defence of the stocks.

But Jeffers also observed that every time Ricardo needed more folk for more specials as the group gotten bigger and it all went pear shaped. Not only more folk, more specials, more tricks but also more folk, more differences, more quarrels. It seemed more new tricks were there to be discovered if only folk didn’t quarrel.

It seemed that smiles and good manners were needed for trading specials, after all specialists were no longer independent and self sufficient ... they depended on others ...

But who to trust? Family and friends were easy to suss out but more and more specialised tricks resulted in a bigger and bigger groups, and some were strangers with different Gods ...

How to get more different folk to cooperate and stop the quarrelling before it all got bloody? Jeffers mulled.

In some villages Ricardo’s friends had used their new special spears to overthrow Dominant and release his gold and his girls and takeover the 'power'. In this way, perhaps, they could get on with the job of discovering new tricks and impressing the girls without diverting the 'pork' in taxes.

It seemed everyone wanted to be free from the onerous pecking order?

But alas, some folk somewhere somehow were shy of the hard discovery work and they were greedy and envious of Dominant's gold and his girls, and wanted the 'power' to divert the 'pork' for themselves. After all the gold and the girls were nicely arrayed and folk always drooled.

So it seemed, on the other hand, everyone wanted to be the top peck?

It really was a puzzle, folk seemed to want to be free from pecks and yet they wanted to be top peck themselves … depending … ?

But there's more … there were still others who ogled and wished for the 'power' and the 'pork' so they could implement their own 'grand designs’. Perhaps these intentions were more noble, perhaps they thought they could repair the faulty design work of the Gods? … if only they were top peck they could do it!

But it came to pass that all these folk always caught the 'Creep' ... the gold tarnished, the girls caught the 'Clap' and the 'grand designs' ended in rubble. The treasures were useless when you became infected with the 'Creep', it was a fate worse then death.

It was clear when folk didn’t quarrel they could produce the finest bread and the finest spears but when they aspired to overthrow Dominant and deploy the 'power' to impose and to redesign the mess they were always infected with the odious 'Creep'. It seemed the debilitating 'Creep' was everywhere, was it really the infected 'pork'? It seemed the 'power' was corrupting the discovery of tricks?

It was all very very mysterious and not at all like the best laid planned design of the lilies.

So they quarrelled somewhat. Then it all went bloody again.

The 'Creep' was certainly debilitating but it was also infectious. The problem was bother, discovering new tricks was bother, and the infection seemed to stop the search work. When the gold and the girls could easily be stolen, why bother about working on new tricks?

But the whammies piled up, so although Dominant's strength and his armies provided some protection from the Belligerents and sometimes he organised organisation ... he was constantly being undermined, not least by ambitious pretenders.

But the 'Creep' rendered him devious and he squandered effort and ingenuity on strategies for maintaining the tyranny and oppression of his peck position -

* enlisting the support of the Gods to steal other folks property - if folk found a trick it would be confiscated for pleasures or 'grand designs' for the Gods - so why should folk bother? In this way the others succumbed also, it was an odious infection. Folk couldn't be bothered so they didn't.

* extracting your tax for his spend - with the 'power' Dominant could collect enough 'pork' to enable him to inflict his old designs onto all other folk. After all old designs were all he had ... and inevitably the old designs always succumbed, the new tricks always always worked better, otherwise they wouldn’t be new tricks, would they? It was slow to dawn but confiscation of money didn't seem to work because it was useless unless there were new tricks to buy, and it was new tricks everybody wanted!

* imposing new red tape on folk's behaviour - when Dominant's grand designs didn't produce new tricks, like all the top pecks, the only thing they could do was to issue more and more frantic instructions, regulations and prescriptions in a vain attempt force folk to discover under pain. Nobody can legislate wealth!

So in this way the whammies were debilitating, successful new tricks were stolen, stagnant old tricks were imposed and the new trick discovery process was wrecked. And worse all these Creeps crept up and up and up there seemed to an inexorable escalation of Creep.

So it appeared that Dominant begat trouble for ordinary folk as his prowess didn’t seem to stretch to new tricks. They were never found in the expected places and they didn’t crop up in the same place twice. It was clear uncovering new tricks was not a facile process they came from the most unlikely of sources. And surprise surprise even the girls who danced backwards discovered new tricks!

Jeffers was sorely troubled and almost became a full stop. But he mulled again. It was not only very difficult for the new tricks to be discovered but also it was very difficult to steal them! Dominant stole his gold and his girls quite easily but the best tricks were much more ethereal, tricks that were survival ‘know how’ - tacit, dispersed, incomplete, transitory, elusive … accumulated only from the toil of generations ... this 'know how' was not easily pinned down … it was embedded in the fingers and skulls of many folk … how could you steal it ... ?

Jeffers was perplexed, and he worried more and mulled more.

So it came to pass the 'Creep' crept up on all Dominants or their descendants … eventually.

So Jeffers concluded that replacing one Dominant with a 'better' one couldn’t solve the problem. Every new Dominant dynasty with promise eventually became afflicted and beset with the same odious ailment. He was agitated at this slow dawning because the most obvious solution to the problem of the 'power', the 'pork' and the 'Creep' was to replace the incumbent with a pretender of 'healthy promise'. Time and again he read his history books, replacement couldn’t be the answer, The 'Creep' was very infectious eventually it would strike ...  the pretenders were no better ...

So how to avoid the 'Creep'?

So they quarrelled somewhat. Then it all went bloody again.

And so it came to pass in the fullness of time that some of the communities gave up on the idea of improving the design work of the Gods with the 'healthy promise' of pretenders and set about restraining all Dominants whatever their credentials and aspirations. So instead of the 'power' there would be checks and balances and folk would be permanently free of the onerous pecking order.

The idea was simple, but it wasn’t Jeffers' idea, all he was doing was observing and investigating his thoughts and reading about the giants. He mulled as many had mulled before. Who knows where the idea came from? Strange ... but some folk were doing without thinking, they were just doing what worked … but then they always did that, didn’t they, no point in doing what doesn’t work … is there?

Firstly Jeffers observed that everyone needed a leader to lead the affairs of the teams and particularly they needed a 'shout' in the battles against the Belligerents. Everybody shouting at the same time would surely lead to chaos and rout by the Belligerents.

For sure the 'shout' contributed, he had a loud voice and he organised the others with their permission, but the special special skills came from the folks who made the special spears and special shields and the special strategies which resulted from the discovery of new tricks. Everybody began to notice that the battles were now being won by the folks with the best tricks not the best Dominant. Things had changed. But then things don't stand still, do they?

So Dominant became the 'shout', he was a leader not a dictator, a servant of the people and like everyone else he did not have access to all the girls, the 'tablets' were clear, one man one girl …importantly he was also denied the 'power' to extract the 'pork' and the taxes as Ricardo's friends set up systems to stop him squandering their money and breaking the 'tablets' of Law.

Dominant became a sub Dominant. He was no longer top peck.

Secondly Jeffers observed that folk always knew from the 'tablets' that envy and greed were a problem but when afflicted by the 'Creep' Dominant always tried to rewrite the 'tablets' for his own pleasure. Or worse still the 'tablets' would be rewritten to favour his entourage of 51% of the village at the expense of the poor 49% who provided the 'pork' but who were outnumbered by spears or votes. So it was important that the 'tablets' were kept secure in 'another place', inaccessible and protected by elders ... this made rewriting difficult.

Thirdly Jeffers observed that some of the 'pork' still had to be diverted, particularly to defend against the Belligerents and to keep the 'tablets' secure and to keep Dominant’s voice in good order. But Ricardo’s friends would send their own trusted representatives to town to divert any necessary 'pork' so Dominant couldn’t easily get his hands on it and become infected. And furthermore and again checks and balances were needed in another place to ensure their own trusted representatives could not be outvoted by the 51%. It seemed there had to be checks and balances everywhere …

And sure enough without the 'power' Dominant didn’t have the 'pork' and couldn't break the 'tablets'. And lo he didn’t catch the 'Creep', and in any case the 'tablets' now said he was only the 'shout' for 8 annums at most … and in this way some leaders even managed to contribute great things ...

So they quarrelled somewhat less. And it only went bloody again when Belligerents tried to grab the 'power' again.

Jeffers further investigated his thoughts and mulled about his ‘learn’.

Surprisingly it seemed the design work was best left to the Gods.

We the people should forget about stealing, it's a mugs game, and concentrate on discovering new tricks, clever new ways of doing things, we have abundant energy and curiosity for this task. Perhaps us folk are well designed after all !

If we choose to toil and learn we can discover immune systems which will protect us from the debilitating 'Creep'.

We require an Administration to lead the teams but our Legislative representatives must deny any leader easy access to tax and a separate Judiciary must protect evolved human rights of the law so they cannot be changed by Bishops, Princes, Generals nor majorities.

In this way the group can grow bigger because everybody is welcome under the law, whatever Gods they worship, and the group will flourish because every difference is a potential source of more specialisation and more new tricks ...

It was so blindingly obvious that Tommy wondered why folk took so long to work it out?

In this way the evolution of freedom and democracy has hatched a plenitude of the new tricks that everyone desires.

But the systems of freedom and democracy we see are not the best ... just better than the alternatives.

Evolutionary theory explains what is observed, not completely, but better than the alternatives. The discoveries are random but adaptation, the natural selection of survival value, is progressively more complex, it only goes in one direction.

Surprisingly and implausibly the evidence mounts … freedom and democracy have great survival value ...

But freedom and democracy always have enemies ... all those who aspire to power … and next how to avoid the free-riding parasites?

 john p birchall

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