HL INTRO Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States James C. Scott

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

James C. Scott

Last annotated on Sunday September 24, 2017

183 Highlight(s) | 149 Note(s)

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Introduction: A Narrative in Tatters: What I Didn’t Know
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OW did Homo sapiens sapiens come, so very recently in its species history, to live in crowded, sedentary communities packed with domesticated livestock and a handful of cereal grains, governed by the ancestors of what we now call states?
Note:COME È EMERSO LO STATO?

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this template prevailed for more than six millennia
Note:SEIMILA

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agrarian, ecological complex.
Note:LO STATO... ENTITÀ AGRICOLA

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The narrative of this process has typically been told as one of progress,
Note:PROGRESSO?

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this narrative is wrong

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The founding of the earliest agrarian societies and states in Mesopotamia occurred in the latest five percent of our history
Note:5%

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fossil fuel era, beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, represents merely the last quarter of a percent
Note:0.25%

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“Anthropocene,”

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activities of humans became decisive in affecting the world’s ecosystems and atmosphere.
Note:ANTROPOCENE PAUL CRUTZEN

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when it became decisive is in dispute.

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the first nuclear tests,
Note:PROPOSTA INIZIO ANTROPOCENE

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Industrial Revolution and the massive use of fossil fuels.
Note:SECONDA PROPOSTA

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tools—for example, dynamite, bulldozers, reinforced concrete (especially for dams)—to radically alter the landscape.
Note:TERZA PROPOSTA

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Anthropocene began only a few minutes ago.
Note:SECONDO LE TRE PROP

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I suggest that we begin with the use of fire, the first great hominid tool
Note:FUOCO... PROPOSTA DEL LIBRO

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is dated at least 400,000 years ago

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long predating the appearance of Homo sapiens.

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agriculture, and pastoralism, appearing about 12,000 years ago, mark a further leap
Note:DATARE L AGRI

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AGRI... QUINTA PROP

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The other decisive premodern invention was institutional: the state. The first states in the Mesopotamian
Note:SESTA PROP.. STATO

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earlier than about 6,000 years ago,

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how we came to be sedentary, cereal-growing, livestock-rearing subjects governed
Note:COME È PERCHÈ

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the call by an earlier generation of French historians of the Annales School for a history of long-run processes (la longue durée)
Note:ANNALES

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PARADOXES OF STATE AND CIVILIZATION NARRATIVES
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unprecedented concentrations of domesticated plants, animals, and people
Note:CONCENTRAZIONE

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the state form is anything but natural or given.
Note:STATO NATURALE? NO

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Homo sapiens appeared as a subspecies about 200,000
Note:CRONOLOGIA...

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outside of Africa and the Levant no more than 60,000 years ago.

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cccccc

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sedentary communities appears roughly 12,000 years ago.
Note:SEDENTARI

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we lived in small, mobile, dispersed, relatively egalitarian, hunting-and-gathering bands.
Note:IL 95% DELLA NS STORIA

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tax-collecting, walled states pop up in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley only around 3,100
Note:TASSA... INVENZIONE RECENTISSIMA

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four millennia after the first crop domestications and sedentism.
Note:cccccc

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a problem for those theorists who would naturalize the state
Note:IL PROBLEMA DEGLI STATALISTI

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mesmerized by the narrative of progress

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Agriculture, it held, replaced the savage, wild, primitive, lawless, and violent world
Note:NARRATIVA

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the superiority of farming was underwritten by an elaborate mythology
Note:MITOLOGIA

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the sacred grain

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sedentary life itself is superior
Note:L ALTRO ASSUNTO

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fish don’t talk about water!

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massive evidence of determined resistance by mobile peoples everywhere to permanent settlement,
Note:RESISTENZA

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fought against permanent settlement, associating it, often correctly, with disease and state control.
Note:GUERRA AL CAMPO GUERRA ALLO STATO

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Native American peoples

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Sioux and Comanche becoming horseback hunters, traders, and raiders, and the Navajo becoming sheep-based pastoralists.
Note:MOBILITÀ AUMENTATA NN DIMINUITA

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From Thomas Hobbes to John Locke to Giambattista Vico to Lewis Henry Morgan to Friedrich Engels to Herbert Spencer to Oswald Spengler to social Darwinist
Note:IL MITO DEL PROGRESSO

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from households to kindreds to tribes to peoples to the state
Note:SI MIGLIORA

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Rome was the apex, with the Celts and then the Germans ranged behind.
Note:ROMA E I CELTI

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standard narrative has had to be abandoned once confronted with accumulating archaeological evidence.
Note:ARCHEOLOGIA IMBARAZZANTE

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hunters and gatherers—even today in the marginal refugia they inhabit—are nothing like the famished, one-day-away-from-starvation desperados of folklore.
Note:NOMADI E FELICI

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never looked so good—in terms of their diet, their health, and their leisure.
Note:DIETA SALUTE PIACERE

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shift from hunting and foraging to agriculture—a shift that was slow, halting, reversible, and sometimes incomplete—carried at least as many costs as benefits.
Note:COSTI E BENEFICI

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reflected in the biblical story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Note:VERITÀ EDENICA

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it has been assumed that fixed residence—sedentism—was a consequence of crop-field agriculture.
Note:FALSO ASSUNRO

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sedentism is actually quite common in ecologically rich and varied, preagricultural settings—
Note:cccccccf

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crop planting associated with mobility and dispersal except for a brief harvest period.
Note:VERO ANCHE L OPPOSTO

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There are, even today, large stands of wild wheat in Anatolia
Note:GRANO SELVATICO...I BENEFICI DELLE PIANTE NN SONO ESTRANEI AI NOMADI

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Long before the deliberate planting of seeds in ploughed fields, foragers had developed all the harvest tools,
Note:ATTREZZI

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For the layman, dropping seeds in a prepared trench or hole seems decisive.
Note:SEMINA E RACCOLTO... NON DECISIVI

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What had appeared previously to be unambiguous skeletal evidence of fully domesticated sheep and goats has also been called into question.
Note:DUBBI SULLA DOMESTICAZIONE

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identification of a single domestication event both arbitrary and pointless.
Note:NN BASTA UN EVENTO X CONVINCERE

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not entirely wild and yet not fully domesticated either.
Note:VIA DI MEZZO

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multiple, scattered domestications of most major crops (wheat, barley, rice, chick peas, lentils).
Note:FULLER SULLA PRIMA AGRICOLTURA.. PRticata dalle bande

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one can perhaps see this early period as part of a long process, still continuing, in which we humans have intervened to gain more control
Note:OBIEZIONE ALLA CONTRONARRATIVA

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Guillermo Algaze

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“Early Near Eastern villages domesticated plants and animals. Uruk urban institutions, in turn, domesticated humans.”
Note:LA VIA X ADDOMESTICARE L UOMO

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PUTTING THE STATE IN ITS PLACE
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For us—that is to say Homo sapiens—accustomed to thinking in units of one or a few lifetimes, the permanence of the state and its administered space seems an inescapable constant
Note:L ILLUSIONE DELLA PRESENZA STATUALE

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Compounding this institutional bias is the archaeological tradition,
Note:ILLUSIONE ARCHEOLOGICA

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if you built, monumentally, in stone
Note:COSTRUZIONI

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If, on the other hand, you built with wood, bamboo,

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Once written documents—say, hieroglyphics or cuneiform—appear in the historical record, the bias becomes even more pronounced. These are invariably state-centric texts:
Note:SCRITTI.. ANCHE I NOMADI SCRIVEVANO... MA SU MATERIALE DEPERIBILE

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tribute lists, royal genealogies,

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no contending voices,

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state archives left behind,

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And yet the very first states to appear in the alluvial and wind-blown silt in southern Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Yellow River were minuscule affairs both demographically and geographically.
Note:AFFARI MINUSCOLI

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tiny nodes of power surrounded by a vast landscape inhabited by nonstate peoples—aka “barbarians.”
Note:CAGATINE

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On a generous reading, until the past four hundred years, one-third of the globe was still occupied by hunter-gatherers,

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400 ANNI

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Much of the world’s population might never have met that hallmark of the state: a tax collector.
Note:MONDO SENZA TASSE

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we risk missing the key fact that in much of the world there was no state at all until quite recently.
Note:RISCHIO

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Southeast Asia
Note:STATI DEL

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Those of the New World,

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The states in question were only rarely and then quite briefly the formidable Leviathans that a description of their most powerful reign tends to convey. In most cases, interregna, fragmentation, and “dark ages” were more common
Note:LEVIATANI... MA NN TROPPO

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mesmerized by the records of a dynasty’s

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Greece’s four-century-long “Dark Age,” when literacy was apparently lost, is nearly a blank page compared with the vast literature on the plays and philosophy of the Classical Age.
Note:ESEMPIO CLASSICO

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fragility of state forms.

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recognize that for thousands of years after its first appearance, it was not a constant but a variable,
Note:UNA VARIABILE

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This is a nonstate history
Note:LA STORIA DELL UOMO

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flight from the early state domains to the periphery was quite common,
Note:PERIFERIA

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it contradicts the narrative of the state as a civilizing benefactor
Note:CONTRADDIZIONE

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disease was a major factor in the fragility of the early states.
Note:MALATTIE...DIFFICILI DA DOCUMENT

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slavery, bondage, and forced resettlement
Note:DIFFICILI DA DOCUMENTARE

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THUMBNAIL ITINERARY
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domestication of fire, plants, and animals
Note:PRIMO CAP...ADDOM

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be gathered—

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Fire,

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allowing us to resculpt the landscape
Note:FUOCO E CONCENTRAZIONE

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fire rendered a host of previously indigestible plants both palatable and more nutritious.
Note:FUOCO E DIETA

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The domestication of grains—especially wheat and barley, in this case—and legumes furthers the process of concentration.
Note:GRANO E CONCENTRAZ

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domestication of plants and animals was, as I have noted, not strictly necessary to sedentism, but it did create the conditions
Note:ADDOM E SEDENTARI

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resettlement camp involved a lot more drudgery than hunting and gathering and was not at all good for your health.
Note:PIÙ FATICA E PIÚ MALATTIE

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Why anyone not impelled by hunger, danger, or coercion would willingly give up hunting and foraging or pastoralism for full-time agriculture is hard to fathom.
Note:ENIGMA?####

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It is not so clear, for example, to what degree we domesticated the dog or the dog domesticated us.
Note:IL SENSO DELL ADDOM

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It is almost a metaphysical question who is the servant of whom—
Note:IL SERVO

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effort of Homo sapiens to shape the entire environment
Note:ADDOM IN SENSO LATO

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The assemblage of plants, animals, and humans in agricultural settlements created a new and largely artificial environment
Note:AMBIENTE

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make the case that the life of farming is comparatively far narrower experientially and, in both a cultural and a ritual sense, more impoverished.
Note:IMPOVERITA

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The burdens of life for nonelites
Note:VITA DURA

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farming was far more onerous than hunting and gathering.
Note:LA TERRA L È BASSA

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no reason why a forager in most environments would shift to agriculture unless forced
Note:CAMBIO FORZATO

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epidemiological effect of concentration—
Note:MALATTIE DA CONCENTRAZIONE

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measles, mumps, diphtheria, and other community acquired infections—
Note:ELENCO

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Antonine plague and the plague of Justinian in the first millennium CE or the Black Death of the fourteenth century in Europe.
Note:EPIDEMIE

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the state plague of taxes in the form of grain, labor, and conscription
Note:ALTRA PIAGA

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state formation was possible only in settings where the population was hemmed in by desert, mountains, or a hostile periphery.
Note:CARNEIRO E STATO

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the grain hypothesis.

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all classical states were based on grain,
Note:STATO E GRANO

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no cassava states, no sago, yam, taro, plantain, breadfruit, or sweet potato states.
Note:ccccccc

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only grains are best suited to concentrated production, tax assessment, appropriation, cadastral surveys, storage, and rationing.
Note:GRANO E CONCENTRAZIONE

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state formation becomes possible only when there are few alternatives to a diet dominated by domesticated grains.
Note:DIETA E STATO

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the state did not invent irrigation
Note:IRRIGAZIONE

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crop domestication;
Note:ANIMALI

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both were the achievements of prestate peoples.

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maintain, amplify, and expand the agro-ecological setting
Note:NN INVENTA MA MOLTIPLICA

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The early state strives to create a legible, measured, and fairly uniform landscape of taxable grain crops and to hold on this land a large population available for corvée labor,
Note:IL MODELLO COSTANTE

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what is a state anyway?
Note:LA DOMANDA

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Mesopotamia
Note:ES

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is an institutional continuum,

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specialized administrative staff,

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monumental center,

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tax collection

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the last centuries of the fourth millennium BCE
Note:INIZIO

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the southern Mesopotamian alluvium
Note:LA CULLA

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fixed settlements and domesticated grains can be found earlier elsewhere (for example, in Jericho,
Note:COLTIVAZIONI E GRANO VENGONO PRIMA

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Egypt,
Note:ALTRI STATI SUCCESSIVI

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northern Mesopotamia,

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Indus Valley.

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north China, Crete, Greece, Rome, and Maya.
Note:ccccccccc

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What is required is wealth in the form of an appropriable, measurable, dominant grain crop and a population growing it that can be easily administered and mobilized.
Note:COSA SERVE

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wetlands,
Note:LA VARIETÁ NN SI ADDICE ALLO STATO

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the role of coercion in establishing and maintaining the ancient state.
Note:LA QUESTIONE PIÙ DIBATTUTO

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If the formation of the earliest states were shown to be largely a coercive enterprise,
Note:HOBBES CONFUTATO SE...

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social-contract theorists as Hobbes and Locke,

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The early state, in fact, as we shall see, often failed to hold its population;
Note:FALLIMENTI

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prone to collapse or fragmentation.

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Evidence for the extensive use of unfree labor—war captives,
Note:SCHIAVITÙ E GUERRE

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Unfree labor was particularly important in building city walls and roads,
Note:BENI PUBBLICI

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Formal slavery in the ancient world reaches its apotheosis in classical Greece and early imperial Rome,
Note:APOTEOSI DELLA SCHIAVITÙ

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other forms of unfree labor, such as the thousands of women in large workshops in Ur
Note:MESOPOTAMIA... NN SCHIAVI MA FORZATI

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That a good share of the population in Greece and Roman Italy was being held against its will is testified to by slave rebellions
Note:RIBELLIONI

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fleeing and absconding populations in Mesopotamia.
Note:FUGA E OCCULTAMENTO

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Owen Lattimore’s admonition that the great walls of China were built as much to keep Chinese taxpayers in as to keep the barbarians out.
Note:LE MURA CINESI

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the Mayan “collapse,”
Note:PERCHÈ FALLISCE UNO STATO? SE CI FA STARE TUTTI BENE?

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Egyptian “First Intermediate Period,”

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Greece’s “Dark Age.”

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causes are typically multiple,
Note:RISPOSTA DIFFICILE

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As with a patient suffering many underlying illnesses, it is difficult to specify the cause of death.
Note:TANTE MALATTIE CAUSE MISTERIOSE

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the disease effects of the unprecedented concentrations of crops, people, and livestock
Note:PRIMA CAUSA

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ecological effects of urbanism and intensive irrigated agriculture. The former resulted in steady deforestation
Note:DEFORESTAZIONE EALLUVIONI

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subsequent siltation and floods.
Note:ccccc

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salinization of the soil, lower yields, and eventual abandonment of arable land.
Note:SALE

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“Ba-ba” was meant to be a parody of the sound of non-Greek speech.
Note:BARBARO... I 4/5 DEL MONDO

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those outside the state.
Note:cccccccccc

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I want to argue that the era of the earliest and fragile states was a time when it was good to be a barbarian.
Note:VIVEVANO MEGLIO

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a zone of hunting, slash-and-burn cultivation, shellfish collection, foraging, pastoralism, roots and tubers, and few if any standing grain crops. It is a zone of physical mobility,
Note:TERRITORIO BARBARO

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in a word, “illegible” production.
Note:TROPPA DIVERSITÀ VARIAZIONE COMPLESSITÁ

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diversity and complexity,

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Barbarians are not essentially a cultural category; they are a political category
Note:LA CATEGORIA DEI BARBARI

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taxes and grain end.

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those whose households had been registered
Note:LA REGISTRAZIONE... IL NERO

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entered the map.”
Note:FUORI MAPPA

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Why should one go to the trouble of growing a crop when, like the state (!), one can simply confiscate it from the granary.
Note:ASSURDO COLTIVARE

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Raiding is our agriculture.”
Note:PROVERBIO BERBERO

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the tame European cow was easier to “hunt”
Note:I PELLEROSSA SE NE ACCORSERO

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it invested heavily in defenses against raiding and/or it paid tribute—protection money
Note:RISPOSTA... DIFESA E TASSE

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only the barbarians could supply the necessities without which the early state could not long survive: metal ores, timber, hides, obsidian, honey, medicinals, and aromatics.
Note:RAPINA MA ANCHE MOLTO COMMERCIO

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The result of this symbiosis was a cultural hybridity far greater than the typical “civilized-barbarian” dichotomy
Note:ESITO DEI COMMERCI

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the early state or empire was usually shadowed by a “barbarian twin,”
Note:IL GEMELLO BBARBARO... THOMAS BARFIELD

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Celtic trading oppida at the fringe of the Roman Empire

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the long era of relatively weak agrarian states and numerous, mounted, nonstate peoples
Note:L ETÀ DELL ORO DEI BARBARI

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the main commodity traded to the early states was the slave—
Note:LA MERCE PRINCIPALE

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In addition, it was a rare early state that did not engage barbarian mercenaries
Note:SECONDA MERCE PER IMPORTANZA... IL MERCENARIO@@@@@@@

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CHAPTER FIVE Population Control: Bondage and War
Note:5@@@@@@@@@

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In the multitude of people is the king’s honor, but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince.
Note:SERVE LA MASSA MA NON LA SUA VOLONTÀ

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concern over the acquisition and control of population was at the very center of early statecraft.
CONTROLLO

Il trionfo dello statalismo è inevitabile

L’ideologia liberale, vincente sul piano intellettuale, è perdente nei fatti.

Qualcuno si è spinto a parlare di “pensiero unico” riferendosi alle ideologie post-muro: non sappiamo ragionare che in termini liberali.

D’altra parte, mentre i liberali pontificano, il ruolo dei governi cresce in continuazione, così come la spesa statale. Perché? Tenta di rispondere Tyler Cowen nel saggio “Does Technology Drive the Growth of Government?”.

Perché nel mondo occidentale (ma anche in Giappone) il governo si occupa praticamente di tutto?

Gordon Tullock ha parlato di paradosso: per quanto la teoria ci dica che la formula “meno stato” sia vincente sul piano dell’efficienza, i governi crescono ovunque.

Prima del novecento l’azione di governo era limitata, la spesa non superava il 5% del pil. Oggi, arriviamo al 40-50%!

Per non parlare della regolamentazione, oggi ipertrofica, ieri rarefatta.

Nel frattempo, gli economisti liberali vivono sdraiati da mattina a sera nell’ aula magna delle loro università: disturbarli è anti-scientifico. Ma cosa diavolo sta succedendo?

Ci sono ottime spiegazioni contingenti, ma puo’ essere pensata una teoria generale dello statalismo?

E’ un po’ difficile poiché le cause sono molte. Passiamole rapidamente al vaglio registrando la loro insufficienza.

Il paradigma della “public choice” ci dice che il governo serve gli interessi dei politici (e dei gruppi a loro vicini) più che quello dei cittadini.

L’interesse dei politici si traduce in “più potere”, ovvero “più governo”.

L’elettore è un “ignorante razionale” che non ha interesse a controllare più di tanto l’azione politica, i frutti di uno sforzo del genere andrebbero a tutti cosicché si creano comportamenti opportunistici.

Ma la spiegazione public choice non soddisfa del tutto: i governi c’erano anche nell’ottocento…

… Those theories, however, at best explain the twentieth 2 century, rather than the historical pattern more generally. Until the late nineteenth century, governments were not growing very rapidly. The standard public choice accounts do not contain enough institutional differentiation to account for no government growth in one period and rapid government growth in another period. Some structural shift occurred in the late nineteenth…

Altri pensano all’ideologia: gli intellettuali sono tutti di sinistra e l’influsso di una simile figura è aumentato nel corso del novecento.

Di certo l’ideologia liberale classica nel novecento ha subito un tracollo a favore dell’ideale socialista. Tuttavia, non si vede come mai gli intellettuali abbiano virato così senza una ragione precisa. Molti di loro, nel farlo, erano e sono senz’altro sinceri, c’erano probabilmente quindi condizioni oggettive che favorivano la visione socialista…

… Ideologies changed, in part, because intellectuals perceived a benefit to promoting ideas of larger government, rather than promoting classical liberalism. It remains necessary to identify the change in social conditions that drove this trend…

Altri abbinano l’esplosione del peso governativo alle grandi guerre del novecento: questi eventi emergenziali (la guerra non è l’unico ma è il più clamoroso) spingono ad allargare i compiti della politica che poi, finita l’emergenza, non rientra mai nei ranghi ma mantiene buona parte del territorio acquisito.

Robert Higgs nel suo “Crises of Leviathan” ha indagato il fenomeno parlando di “ratchet effect”: in certe epoche storiche, la politica ha l’occasione di  piantare le sue bandierine e da lì non arretra.

… For instance, state activity invariably expands in wartime, if only to fight the war. Taxes increase, resources are conscripted, and economic controls are implemented. When the war is over, some of these extensions of state power remain in place. The twentieth century, of course, has seen the two bloodiest and most costly wars in history, the two World Wars…

Ma anche la teoria del ratchet effect ha i suoi buchi…

… The example of Sweden is instructive. Sweden avoided both World Wars, and had a relatively mild depression in the 1930s, but has one of the largest governments, relative to the size of its economy, in the developed world. The war hypothesis also does not explain all of the chronology of observed growth. Many Western countries were well on a path towards larger government before the First World War. And the 1970s were a significant period for government growth in many nations, despite the prosperity and relative calm of the 1960s…

C’è chi accusa il suffragio universale: prima – all’inizio dell’ottocento - il voto era limitato ad una minoranza benestante di maschi istruiti e con interessi privatistici. Oggi la massa vuole garanzie e welfare…

… Under this hypothesis, widespread voting was the central force behind the move to larger government. The small governments of the early nineteenth century are portrayed as the tools of ruling elites. But once the franchise was extended, the new voters demanded welfare state programs, which account for the bulk of government expenditure…

I problemi legati a questa ipotesi non mancano…

… First, non-democratic regimes, such as Franco's Spain, illustrate similar patterns of government  Along these lines, Husted and Kenny (1997a), looking at data from state governments, find that the elimination of poll taxes and literacy tests leads to higher turnout and higher welfare spending. Lott and Kenny (1999) find that women’s suffrage had some role in promoting greater government expenditures… Second, much of the Western world was fully democratized by the 1920s. Most governmental growth comes well after that date, and some of it, such as Bismarck’s Germany, comes well before that time. Third, and most fundamentally, white male property owners today do not favor extremely small government, though they do tend to be more economically conservative than female voters…

Cio’ non toglie, sia chiaro, che l’opinione pubblica conti: se il popolo volesse meno governo un politico che promettesse meno governo avrebbe molte opportunità di vittoria.

… Democratic government cannot grow large, and stay large, against the express wishes of a substantial majority of the population…

Probabilmente l’elemento che più ha spinto l’espansione dei governi è la tecnologia che si è resa disponibile nel XX secolo. E’ questo l’elemento mancante.

La tecnologia di cui parlo ha facilitato le comunicazioni, l’organizzazione e il coordinamento delle masse, proprio cio’ che occorre ad un governo. Parliamo di…

… electricity, automobiles, airplanes, household appliances, the telephone, vastly cheaper power, industrialism, mass production, and radio…

Le ferrovie erano a disposizione già da prima ma solo nel novecento hanno visto uno sviluppo compiuto. Nel 1950 entra poi in campo la TV.

Questa idea legata al ruolo cruciale della tecnologia ha dei precursori…

… The historian S.E. Finer (1997a, 1997b) first suggested that technology was behind the rise of big government, though he did not consider this claim in the context of public choice issues. Bradford DeLong’s unpublished manuscript, “Slouching Towards Utopia,” sometimes available on the web in various parts, appears to cover related themes…

Ma perché il miglioramento nei trasporti dovrebbe incidere sull’azione di governo?

… Transportation has made it possible to extend the reach of modern bureaucracy across geographic space. The railroad allowed the North to defeat the South in the Civil War. More generally, cheap transportation increased the reach and power of a central Federal government. Federal employees, police, and armies can travel to all parts of the country with relative ease. Transportation allows published bureaucratic dictates to be distributed and shipped at relatively low expense…

Le lobby vanno a Washington in poche ore. I contatti più frequenti ci fanno pensare i problemi  in termini di “nazione” e la soluzione in termini “governativi”. Si viaggia e nasce una coscienza nazionale.

Con il telefono il centro comunica con la periferia a costi molto più bassi. La nazione viene “cucita insieme” grazie al telefono, cosa prima impossibile.

La produzione di massa garantisce luoghi di lavoro fissi e ben identificabili… 

… Factories, smokestacks, power plants, and assembly lines…

…il che facilita la tassazione. Le aliquote lievitano, la “vittima” non puo’ più scappare o nascondersi, il controllo è ubiquo…

… When most of the population lives from small-scale subsistence farming, and takes income in-kind, it is much harder both to levy taxes and put the in-kind revenue to good use…

Radio e la tv danno la possibilità di sentire i propri capi. F.D. Roosvelt è il primo presidente a ricevere una montagna di lettere. Cresce la voglia di storie e miti. Il politico puo’ incarnare la figura del super-eroe.

Il totalitarismo novecentesco – inutile dirlo – sfrutta appieno questi media, ma la democrazia non è da meno. Molti movimenti si formano grazie alla possibilità di far incontrare interessi altrimenti dispersi: il movimento dei consumatori, quello ambientalista. I movimenti si trasformano in lobby e le lobby in richiesta di leggi e di espansione di governo. la politica diventa un affare emotivo, l’analisi è scoraggiata e i costi-opportunità di ogni soluzione proposta diventano invisibili ai più. Il fuoco è sul tutto, sulla nazione. Occuparsi del “locale” diventa affare per politici di serie b.

La contabilità sistematica e le nuove tecniche manageriali accompagnano la crescita della burocrazia…

… advances in recording, processing, manipulating, and communicating…

Il welfare senza burocrazia non potrebbe semplicemente esistere.

Noi diamo per assodata l’esistenza di certi registri ma prima dell’avvento del “management scientifico” non esisteva niente del genere: i meticolosi sistemi contabili in grado di connettere milioni di dati sono in realtà una conquista recente.

… British government did not organize its paper records in terms of "files" until 1868 (Finer 1997b, p.1617)…

Inutile dire che la raccolta delle tasse ha beneficiato grandemente di questi metodi di registrazione e reporting…

… a wealthier economy will have many citizens working at legitimate, regular businesses with a distinct physical locale… The growth of the publicly owned, limited liability corporation, also helped create the systematic records that make corporate taxation possible. Collecting taxes is easier in an economically advanced environment…

Il governo è un bene di lusso e quando gli uomini escono dalla povertà cominciano a “comprarne” di più per tacitare la propria coscienza...

… Wealth above subsistence allows people to vote to assuage their consciences, even if the collective result of such votes destroys wealth and opportunity (Brennan and Lomasky 1993)…

Le società ricche hanno molto tempo libero e nel nel tempo libero ognuno vuol contribuire, ognuno vuol dire la sua. Ma perché sbilanciarsi su questioni piccole che interessano poca gente? Meglio farlo su questioni grandi che interessano tutti! Tanto non costa niente. Quando cerchi una ricetta per risolvere la “questione nazionale”, la politica è l’unico fornitore di bacchette magiche.

Tutti avanzano la loro soluzione definitiva ai grandi problemi sociali, tutti propongono di affrontarli premendo i bottoni in una sequenza originale. Ma tutti hanno qualcosa in comune: non possono prescindere dalla presenza “stanza dei bottoni”. Nell’immaginario collettivo esiste come esiste Dio. Quanto più la soluzione è ingenua, tanto più la “stanza dei bottoni” diventa imprescindibile.

La domanda di governo cresce perché la tua soluzione ideale (pensata nella pausa caffé) ai problemi del mondo richiede un governo giusto e competente per essere realizzata. La mente semplice ha difficoltà a pensare la società in mancanza di un Creatore/Pianificatore.

Quanta più tecnologia è disponibile, tanto meno chimerica è la stanza dei bottoni.

Cerchiamo ora di pensare ad un mondo impoverito di tecnologia…

… Assume that we had no cars, no trucks, no planes, no telephones, no TV or radio, and no rail network. Of course we would all be much poorer. But how large could government be? Government might take on more characteristics of a petty tyrant, but we would not expect to find the modern administrative state, commanding forty to fifty percent of gross domestic product in the developed nations, and reaching into the lives of every individual daily…

l’ipotesi di una correlazione tra tecnologia e crescita del governo ha il pregio di rispettare il timing della storia…

… The lag between technology and governmental growth is not a very long one. The technologies discussed above all had 10 slightly different rates of arrival and dissemination, but came clustered in the same general period. With the exception of the railroads and the telegraph (both coming into widespread use in the mid-nineteenth century), none predated the late nineteenth century, exactly the time when governmental growth gets underway in most parts of the West…

L’esplosione si ha negli anni 20 e 30 del novecento: esattamente gli anni in cui esplodono anche le innovazioni di cui abbiamo parlato.

E il settore privato? L’ipotesi prevede che anche altre organizzazioni, oltre ai governi, abbiano sfruttato i cambiamenti della tecnologia.

E infatti il mondo delle corporation ha subito una mutazione analoga con aumenti spaventosi nella dimensione media… 

… This is exactly what we observe. Prior to the American railroads, which arose in the middle of the nineteenth century, private business corporations were not typically very large. The costs of control and large-scale organization were simply too high and no single business had a truly national reach… Following the railroads, large corporations arose in steel, oil, and later automobiles, to name a few examples. The United States Steel Corporation was the largest of the new behemoths. The J.P. Morgan banking syndicate created the company in 1901, through a 4 On the rail numbers, see Warren (1996, p.2). On the growth of large rail companies, see Chandler (1965). 11 merger of numerous smaller firms. The new company owned 156 major factories and employed 168,000 workers. The capitalization was $1.4 billion, an immense sum for the time…

Le fusioni erano all’ordine del giorno…

… Other very large companies followed, including General Electric, National Biscuit Company (Nabisco), American Can Company, Eastman Kodak, U.S. Rubber (later Uniroyal), and AT&T, among others…

Grandi governi e grandi società si spiegano con i mutamenti tecnologici. Nel timing il privato anticipa lo stato per il solo fatto ché è più pronto nella reazione ai cambiamenti.

L’ipotesi tecnologica sembra supportata anche dalla storia umana in senso lato. I pigmei sono anarchici non per la loro filosofia politica ma per la mancanza di tecnologie in grado di sostenere un governo…

… Consider a society of hunter-gatherers, as we still find in the Pygmies of Central Africa. Under some interpretations Pygmy society has a kind of anarchy. The reason for this state of affairs is obvious. It is not due to the Pygmy electoral system, Pygmy ideology, or the infrequency of Pygmy war. The Pygmies simply do not have any large-scale formal institutions of any kind. A typical Pygmy family (at least those who continue to live a traditional Pygmy existence; there are migrants to other cultures) will not own any more than its members can carry on their collective backs, when moving from hunting camp to hunting camp. Given this low level of technology, big government, for the Pygmies, simply is not an option…

L’avvento della scrittura, dell’aritmetica e delle grandi città diede modo di creare governi estesi, come nel caso dei Sumeri (3500 avanti Cristo). la burocrazia diveniva possibile per la prima volta… 

… Sumerian bureaucracy made extensive use of files, records, and archives…

Lo stesso puo’ dirsi per l’impero persiano (classico esempio di tirannia per Erodoto, almeno rispetto alle città-stato greche).

Detto questo, rendiamoci conto per attraversare l’impero occorrevano 60 giorni, cosicché il tiranno probabilmente aveva meno controllo sulle vite dei sudditi rispetto ad un politico dei tempi nostri. Ma come tiranneggiare senza tecnologia? Era praticamente impossibile…

… The Persians therefore governed through a simple formula, as explained by Finer (1997a, pp.297-8): “[They] set themselves the most limited objectives possible, short of losing control: in brief, to provide an overarching structure of authority throughout the entire territory which confined itself to two aims only: tribute and obedience. Otherwise nothing.”…

Gli egiziani erano la società totalitaria per eccellenza, incentrata su burocrazia, annotazioni e tassazione formale. Potevano godere di un’autostrada ante-litteram, il Nilo.

… Nile ran through most of the Egyptian kingdoms and served as a highway… the best communications system of the ancient world…

Riepilogando:

… "For thousands of years mankind had no large-scale empires or bureaucracies. Suddenly government became much larger in Sumeria, Egypt, and other locales, and has stayed large." While our historical understanding of this period is incomplete, new technologies appear to have been central to the growth of empire in that time. The same advances that boosted living standards also boosted centralized rule…

Nella storia seguente abbiamo visto sorgere molte tirannie anche spietate, ma nessuna con a disposizione tecnologie paragonabili alle nostre. Questo fa dire allo storico Jean Dunbabin:

… "nobody was governed before the late nineteenth Century."…

Nella Cina imperiale l’ideologia era fortemente statalista, nonostante questo ecco come Finer parlava della vita laggiù:

… “In principle the emperor knew no substantive or procedural limits to his authority, and the localities, down to the 14 villages, were supposedly completely controlled and directed from his palace.” In reality, however, the reach of the emperor was quite modest. Finer (1997a, p.73) tells us that in Imperial China “the scope of the central government was, of course, very much narrower than in our own day.”…

Le città-stato greche a volte erano tirannidi sanguinose ma erano piccolissime: se volevi te ne potevi andare votando con i piedi.

Gli imperi del passato erano macchine per estrarre tasse più che per governare. Di certo erano così l’impero mongolo e quello atzeco: le truppe del sovrano arrivavano facendo le veci di Equitalia, poi se ne andavano e le rivedevi l’anno dopo. Il Governo era cosa lontana e intangibile.

… They could not issue, communicate, and enforce the kind of detailed laws and regulations that emanate from Western governments today. So for much of recorded human history we had a combination of oppressive local governments, on a small scale geographically, combined with the payment of tribute to an external central ruler…

Negli USA la cosa più simile al big government di oggi è stata la schiavitù. Ma anche in quel caso l’istituto era tenuto in piedi da autorità locali…

… Government sanctioned a system of private violence and oppression, but the government of that time did not have the reach or the machinery to run a full-scale slave economy…

Oggi i paesi poveri possiedono una tecnologia povera e vivono con governi ridotti nelle dimensioni.

Prendi Haiti…

… Per capita income ranges around $400, literacy rates run about fifteen percent, and life expectancy barely exceeds forty. The rate of malaria infection is almost one hundred percent… Most parts of the country have neither electricity nor running water…. Few people have cars… oral culture… relies very little on newspapers… Haitian countryside lives in a state of virtual anarchy…

Il brutale governo di Haiti è composto da una manciata di persone che spende giusto il 20% del pil.

Basta passare in Botswana - il miracolo africano - e la musica cambia…

… Unlike most African polities, which stand closer to Haiti, Botswana has democratic government, a semblance of rule of law, and a developed market economy…

Il governo rosicchia il 40% del pil, come nei paesi occidentali.

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Fin qui i fatti. Che fare?

Sembra proprio che invertire la tendenza sia problematico: mica possiamo rinunciare alla tecnologia!

L’ipotesi tecnologica è comunque una condizione necessaria per il “big gov”, ma non una condizione sufficiente. Il legame, in via di principio, puo’ essere tagliato. Così come è stato domato il fascismo, puo’ essere domato anche il leviatano democratico…

… Those technologies made mass culture possible and in the realm of politics that mass culture translated into fascism. Only after bitter experience did fascist ideas become less popular and social and political norms subsequently evolved to protect electorates against the fascist temptation. In any case, these examples raise the question of whether we might see a subsequent evolution of institutions today, reversing how mass media and technology have shaped our politics…

Ma se ci guardiamo indietro non abbiamo molto da rimpiangere: i primi tempi non erano affatto il paradiso delle libertà, quanto piuttosto dei clan.

Forse la contrapposizione liberismo vs statalismo è scorretta: con la libertà arriva l’innovazione e quindi anche lo statalismo, il “pacchetto” ci viene offerto insieme, prendere o lasciare. L’epoca liberale non tornerà più.

Ma la tecnologia del futuro sarà un propellente per il governo o un freno?

C’è chi sogna l’ingegneria genetica o  l’anonimia di internet come il paradiso dell’anarchia. La storia ci spinge a diffidare: quando l’innovatore opera è debole mentre il governo è forte e si accaparra senza sforzo cio’ a cui è interessato facendo leva sulle mille possibilità di ricatto che possiede.

Altri puntano sulla competizione tra governi sperando che spinga verso politiche liberali. Ma questa ipotesi non è supportata dai dati: i paesi piccoli e aperti sono anche più interventisti di quelli grandi (Rodrik 1998). I paesi piccoli sono più esposti alla volatilità economica e gli abitanti desiderano più protezione: quanto più si arricchiscono, tanto più la desiderano…

… The more open the economy, the more risk that individuals face from the perturbations of larger world markets. These citizens then tend to favor more government intervention, not less, to protect themselves against those risks… Canada is a more “open” economy than is the United States, yet it typically has greater government intervention and higher levels of government spending… Nordic economies are both very open and have lots of government spending…

Non resta che rassegnarsi e meditare sul “pacchetto” che ci viene offerto e a cui accennavo prima: tornare indietro o incassare la maggiore ricchezza prodotta dall’innovazione con in allegato l’odiato statalismo? Forse, quest’ultima è ancora l’opzione migliore.

Does Technology Drive the Growth of Government? di Tyler Cowen

Does Technology Drive the Growth of Government? di Tyler Cowen

• The puzzle, courtesy of the great Tullock: I start with what Gordon Tullock (1994) has called the paradox of government growth. Before the late nineteenth century, government was a very small percentage of gross domestic product in most Western countries, typically no more than five percent. In most cases this state of affairs had persisted for well over a century, often for many centuries. The twentieth century, however, saw the growth of governments, across the Western world, to forty or fifty percent of gross domestic product... I'd like to address the key  question of why limited government and free markets have so fallen out of favor.
• Inadequacies of public choice theories of government growth: Public choice analysis has generated many theories of why government grows and why that growth is inevitable. Special interest groups, voter ignorance, and the pressures of war all are cited in this context. Those theories, however, at best explain the twentieth century, rather than the historical pattern more generally. Until the late nineteenth century, governments were not growing very rapidly. The standard public choice accounts do not contain enough institutional differentiation to account for no government growth in one period and rapid government growth in another period.
• Inadequacies of ideological theories of government growth: According to this claim, the philosophy of classical liberalism declined in the mid- to late nineteenth century. This may be attributed to the rise of socialist doctrine, internal contradictions in the classical liberal position, the rise of democracy, or perhaps the rise of a professional intellectual class. While the ideology hypothesis has merit, it is unlikely to provide a final answer to the Tullock paradox. To some extent ideology stems from broader social conditions. Ideologies changed, in part, because intellectuals perceived a benefit to promoting ideas of larger government, rather than promoting classical liberalism.
• Inadequacies of ratchet theories of government growth: The ratchet effect becomes much stronger in the twentieth century than before. Furthermore most forms of governmental growth probably would have occurred in the absence of war. The example of Sweden is instructive. Sweden avoided both World Wars, and had a relatively mild depression in the 1930s, but has one of the largest governments, relative to the size of its economy, in the developed world. The war hypothesis also does not explain all of the chronology of observed growth. Many Western countries were well on a path towards larger government before the First World War. And the 1970s were a significant period for government growth in many nations, despite the prosperity and relative calm of the 1960s.
• Inadequacies of franchise extension theories of government growth: The hypothesis of franchise extension, however, again leaves much unexplained. First, non-democratic regimes, such as Franco's Spain, illustrate similar patterns of government growth as do the democracies. Second, much of the Western world was fully democratized by the 1920s. Most governmental growth comes well after that date, and some of it, such as Bismarck's Germany, comes well before that time. Third, and most fundamentally, white male property owners today do not favor extremely small government, though they do tend to be more economically conservative than female voters.
• acknowledging the ultimate power of public opinion: No matter how incomplete it may be, there clearly must be something to the voter hypothesis. That is, there must be some demand for big government. If all or most voters, circa 2009, wanted their government to be five percent of gross domestic product, some candidate would run on that platform and win. Change might prove difficult to accomplish, but we would at least observe politicians staking out that position as a rhetorical high  ground. In today's world we do not observe this. Voter preferences for intervention are therefore a necessary condition for sustained large government. Democratic government cannot grow large, and stay large, against the express wishes of a substantial majority of the population.
• turns to the many technological changes...  [N]o one of these technological advances serves as the cause of governmental growth. Taken as a group, however, these factors made very large government possible for the first time. To see this, perform a very simple thought experiment. Assume that we had no cars, no trucks, no planes, no telephones, no TV or radio, and no rail network. Of course we would all be much poorer. But how large could government be? Government might take on more characteristics of a petty tyrant, but we would not expect to find the modern administrative state, commanding forty to fifty percent of gross domestic product in the developed nations, and reaching into the lives of every individual daily..... Think also about the timing of these innovations. The lag between technology and governmental growth is not a very long one. The technologies discussed above all had slightly different rates of arrival and dissemination, but came clustered in the same general period. With the exception of the railroads and the telegraph (both coming into widespread use in the mid-nineteenth century), none predated the late nineteenth century, exactly the time when governmental growth gets underway in most parts of the West. The widespread dissemination of these technologies often comes in the 1920s and 1930s, exactly when  many Western governments grew most rapidly, leading sometimes to totalitarian extremes. The relatively short time lag suggests that strong pressures for government growth already were in place. Once significant governmental growth became technologically possible, that growth came quickly.
• People always had a latent demand for big government; then technology finally made it possible to satisfy them
• si pensa in termini di mondo ideale. qual è il mondo ideale? quello del tiranno benigno.

continua