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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Are you saying that farming attitudes are useful to be successful in modern, industrialized market economies? My own personal observation in the past was that the mores of subsistence farmers are detrimental. (Keeping to yourself, producing as much as possible by yourself, persisting on the same path your entire life).Granted, the attitudes of foragers might be even more detrimental, but it seems to me that mercantile and bourgeois types cannot be subsumed under the farming category.

How do the Jews fit into your model? They were prevented from farming in many places. They flourish in industrial societies, yet are at the same time liberal. But are Jews foragers?

I believe that the mercantile or bourgeois type engages in larger, fluid, utilitarian social networks and in interactions with strangers, which would set them apart from both farmers (hierarchical order) and foragers (small egalitarian groups).

Are you postulating that farming attitudes make societies rich on the individual level (lots of farming worker bees generate lots of wealth), or that farmers generate the scaffolding and conditions under which, thanks to comparative advantage, all kinds of groups can prosper.

tangential observation:

Early classical liberals seemed to have imagined an entirely mercantile society. That still seems to be the libertarian ideal (including my own ideal and bias), if not the way in which libertarians seem to perceive real existing society.

Libertarians perceive workplace regulations, minimum wage, etc., as unjustified interventions from outsiders intervening in the mutual, self-actualizing and voluntary relationship between employers and workers. Libertarians don't see hierarchy and authority.

Catholic social teaching has God as a higher authority above the employer, telling him to treat his workers well:

Encyclica Rerum Novarum:"Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings. Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this - that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one's profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine."

The more effective secular variant of course has the state as the higher authority or the union as parallel authority to do the workers bidding. And workers, contrary to libertarian psychology, very much support this deference to authority.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

The primary question here Robin is whether you are willing to drop your ADD approach to subjects and actually reach for ground on this one. I doubt it. While you opine on the benefits of specialization you don't live it.

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