Notebook per
Human Sacrifice
Citation (APA): Leeson, P. (2014). Human Sacrifice [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Parte introduttiva
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 2
Human Sacrifice Peter T. Leeson
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 4
I argue that human sacrifice is a technology for protecting property rights. It improves property protection by destroying part of sacrificing communities’ wealth, which depresses the expected payoff of plundering them.
Nota - Posizione 6
TESI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 7
immolating a live person is nearly impossible to fake,
Nota - Posizione 8
FALSIFICARE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 9
human sacrifice is presented as a religious obligation.
Nota - Posizione 9
DOVERE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 13
here we find a warlike ferocious race, delighting in cruelty and devastation, we may be assured that they will have deities delighting in slaughter, and rites polluted with blood.”
Nota - Posizione 14
DOVE C È GUERRA C È SACRIFICIO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 15
1 Introduction
Nota - Posizione 15
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 19
human sacrifice in support of behavioralist doubts about the canonical rendition of “economic man”
Nota - Posizione 20
IRRAZIONALITÀ UMANA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 22
My theory builds on Allen (2002) who introduced the idea that lowering an asset’s gross value might sometimes be a sensible way to improve its enforcement.
Nota - Posizione 23
AIMPOVERIRSI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 26
If conflict’s cost is sufficiently high, it is cheaper for communities to protect their property rights by destroying part of their wealth.
Nota - Posizione 27
CONFLITTI E RICCHEZZA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 29
The Aztec’s sacrificial victims were overwhelming one of two sorts: captured enemy soldiers and criminals. Here human sacrifice was little more than capital punishment.
Nota - Posizione 30
ATZECHI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 33
human sacrifice is spectacular, communicating a sacrificing community’s wealth destruction far and wide.
Nota - Posizione 34
SPETTACOLO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 35
unlike burning a mound of crops, which can be manipulated to appear to destroy more wealth than is in fact destroyed, immolating a live human is nearly impossible to fake.
Nota - Posizione 36
FALSIFICAZIONE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 40
it helps explain why some persons who live in unsafe neighborhoods drive cheaper cars than persons with similar incomes who live in safer ones;
Nota - Posizione 41
AUTO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 42
why persons in ancient societies expended inordinate resources building monumental tombs, such as pyramids; and why these same persons buried their most valuable goods with the dead.
Nota - Posizione 42
MONUMENTI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 43
“conspicuous destruction”:
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 45
Zomia people of Southeast Asia who choose to live at near subsistence levels. Gypsies, who have traditionally prevented themselves from accumulating greater wealth by refusing even basic literacy, might exemplify such a group too. 2 So may the members of ascetic groups, such as monks, who take vows of poverty, or the Jewish Essenes, who, famously, lived in voluntary destitution for centuries.
Nota - Posizione 47
SOCIET
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 50
what distinguishes them from others may not be different preferences for material wealth,
Nota - Posizione 50
PREFRRENZE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 72
2 A Theory of Human Sacrifice
Nota - Posizione 72
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 172
Human sacrifice must destroy valuable property:
Nota - Posizione 172
CONDIZIONE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 173
This precludes immolating criminals or enemies, whose death would not depress
Nota - Posizione 174
CROMINALI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 175
Purchasing innocent humans with valuable property, such as part of a community’s land or that land’s output, and then slaughtering them accomplishes this.
Nota - Posizione 176
COMPRARE INNOCENTI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 176
Sacrificed humans must be purchased from outsiders:
Nota - Posizione 177
OUTSIDERS
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 178
only persons who lie outside the society the community inhabits will be willing to sell it victims for immolation.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 183
In Section 4, I test these predictions using human sacrifice as practiced by the Konds.
Nota - Posizione 183
aKONDS
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 185
my theory also suggests that when relatively favorable agricultural shocks are stronger— i.e., produce relatively more output— communities should destroy more wealth and thus should sacrifice more innocents.
Nota - Posizione 186
ABBONDANZA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 188
3 Human Sacrifice among the Konds
Nota - Posizione 188
YT
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 234
3.2 Kond Sacrifice
Nota - Posizione 234
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 234
Kond communities sacrificed humans. 15 Their victims were called meriahs. Konds purchased these persons from meriah sellers called Doms (or Pans) who I discuss in Section 4.16 In principle meriahs could be persons of any age, sex, race, or caste. In practice they were nearly always non-Konds. 17
Nota - Posizione 235
ACQUISTO DEL SACRIFICIO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 247
Sacrifice was “celebrated as a public oblation ... both at social festivals held periodically, and when special occasions demand[ ed] extraordinary propitiations”
Nota - Posizione 248
MODALITÀ
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 271
These festivals’ main event was the immolation itself, which took place on the party’s third day. On this day the sponsoring Kond village’s head brought the meriah, intoxicated with alcohol or opium, to a spot previously appointed for the sacrifice.
Nota - Posizione 273
SACRIFIVIO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 275
In some cases the victim’s arms and legs were broken to prevent his motion. After this and some final prayers, the priest gave the word, and “the crowd throws itself upon the sacrifice and strips the flesh from the bones, leaving untouched the head and intestines”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 283
4 Testing the Theory of Human Sacrifice
Nota - Posizione 283
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 287
According to Kond belief, “To be acceptable to Tari a victim had to be purchased” by a sacrificing community
Nota - Posizione 287
PRIMA CONFRRMA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 291
In slaughtering meriahs, communities destroyed the valuable property they exchanged for them.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 292
A life consisted of property such as “a bullock, a buffalo, goat, a pig or fowl, a bag of grain, or a set of brass pots.... A hundred lives, on average... consist[ ing] of ten bullocks, ten buffaloes, ten sacks of corn, ten sets of brass pots, twenty sheep, ten pigs, and thirty fowls” (Macpherson, 1865, p. 64).
Nota - Posizione 294
EQUIVALENTE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 296
This constituted a “very great expense attendant upon procuring the victims”
Nota - Posizione 296
IMPORTANTE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 319
4.2 Wealth Destruction is Preemptive
Nota - Posizione 320
T
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 325
By sacrificing humans between the sewing and harvesting of crops, Kond communities destroyed wealth preemptively. Communities did not learn their natureassigned output values, and so could not sensibly choose whether or not to aggress against their neighbors’ property,
Nota - Posizione 326
PREVENTIVO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 329
4.3 Wealth Destruction is Public and Verifiable
Nota - Posizione 329
CERIMONIA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 349
How could immolation-festival attendees, and thus those who heard about such festivals second-hand, be sure that the victim a community immolated was a purchased victim?
Nota - Posizione 350
DIFFICOLTÀ
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 351
Kond communities ensured others that the meriahs they sacrificed were purchased by leveraging the persons who sold them meriahs.
Nota - Posizione 352
LEVERAGING
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 362
Knowing a meriah had been purchased was not the same as knowing how much that meriah had been purchased
Nota - Posizione 362
AQUANTO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 363
First, as themselves buyers in the meriah market, communities knew the approximate price of a meriah.
Nota - Posizione 364
BORSA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 365
there was “a fixed price for each person” set by custom
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 365
4.4 Contributions to Wealth Destined for Destruction are Incentivized
Nota - Posizione 366
AT
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 380
Konds’ solution to this problem was the second means they employed to overcome the collectiveaction problem that threatened their ability to use wealth destruction to protect property rights: human sacrifice was rendered a religious obligation.
Nota - Posizione 381
RELIGIONE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 398
4.5 Sacrificed Humans are Purchased From Outsiders
Nota - Posizione 399
T OUTSIDERS
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 399
Kond communities purchased meriahs from the members of an untouchable caste called Doms (or Pans).
Nota - Posizione 399
INTOCCABILI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 411
The meriah trade was simple. Doms “purchase[ d] them without difficulty on false pretenses, or kidnap[ ped] them from the poorer classes of Hindus in the low country” (C.R., 1846a, p. 61). 22 Having done so, they traded their human victims to Kond communities in the hill tracts for wealth in the forms described earlier.
Nota - Posizione 413
RAPIMENTO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 417
Because these Doms lived outside Kond society, when they received Kond wealth in exchange for meriahs, that wealth exited Kond society with them.
Nota - Posizione 418
RICCHEZZA CHEXESCE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 423
4.6 Human Sacrifice Ends when Government Protects Property Rights
Nota - Posizione 423
T FINE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 426
Kond communities should have ceased to sacrifice humans when government became available to them to protect their property rights.
Nota - Posizione 427
IPOTESI DA TESTARE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 428
threatening the Konds with violent punishments if they refused to abandon human sacrifice, and attempting to reason with the Konds by “educating” them about the barbarity of the practice and the scientific baselessness of their belief in the necessity of satisfying an earth goddess with the blood
Nota - Posizione 430
DUE STRATEGIE INEFFICACI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 452
5 Summary and Conclusions
