This is a story about mediaeval merchants, Khalahri bushmen, American ranchers, and Arctic inuits, and Wisconsin business.
We know the story by now: according to Thomas Hobbes life without the state is intolerable for four reasons:
Competition over resources.
Insecurity
Glory (reputation)
Equality of strength
Because of this, we give up our freedom and submit ourselves to the yoke of a sovereign authority.
Hunter-gatherers
At what price, under the point of whose spear, under what kind of domination, to what justification, would a person give up their capacity to decide for themselves? Or to contribute to the deliberative will of the collective? Who would give up that freedom?
The Innuits know no rulers, no person who can compel obedience, they know, amongst men at least, equality of condition.
Those who seek physical glory, who bully and threaten, are gossiped about, ostracised, or eventually, killed. The anthropologist Jean Briggs noticed that the Innuits lived by a central principle: never in anger.
The 11th century Mediterranean was rich in an anarchy of trade criss-crossing and skirting the basin. Maghribi Merchants had a vested interest in sending goods around the what was, to these men and women, the world. But they had no time, no way of abandoning their responsibilities to go on long journeys. They could hire someone, but who could you trust?
In fact, agents would take merchants good from town to town, city to city, country to country, paying customs, unloading ships, paying customs fees, and selling merchants goods at foreign markets.
In such an anonymous world, what prevented these agents returning less profit to merchants, embellishing the truth about the costs of transport, or outright taking the goods to sell themselves?
A vast network of Magrhibi traders exchanged information through gossip, letters, and meetings.
One agent who lived in Jerusalem embezzled a merchants money. He was ostracised around the entire basin and after begging for forgiveness was forced to pay compensation before working again.
Take this letter from an agent to merchant transporting two loads of pepper:
‘”[I] held it until the time when the sailing of the ships approached in the hope it would rise. However, the slump got worse. Then I was afraid that suspicion might arise against me and I sold your pepper to Spanish merchants for 133 [quarter dinars]…. It was the night before the sailing of the ships-pepper became much in demand . .. [since] boats [with buyers] arrived … I. . . [sold] my pepper at 140-142. But brother, I would not like to take the profit for myself. Therefore, I transferred the entire sale to our partnership.”’
Another agent described how after he cheated a merchant “people became agitated and hostile to [me] and whoever owed [me money] conspired to keep it from [me]”
The Marghrbi Traders and traders left behind letter after letter describing an economy of 11th century.
The San bushmen of southern Africa number some 64,000 in tribes live as egalitarian hunter-gatherers. They subject themselves to no chief, only persons of influence who should not be arrogant, overbearing or boastful. The san fear and avoid conflict and share resources. According to anthrologist Richard Lee they say that ‘good fences do not make good neighbours.’
Further north, in the Congo basin, the pygmies say that the forest “is the chief, the lawgiver, the leader, the final arbitrator.’
Stewart Macaulay is one of the most influential scholars of contract law. In the sixties he produced one of the most influential studies in the disciplines history when he found, through hundreds of interviews with Wisconsin businessmen and lawyers, that they hardly ever relied on contracts.
Business Contracts
In the sixties, Professor Stewart MacCaulay interviewed hundreds of businessmen and lawyers across Wisconsin and found something surprising: not only were contracts rarely enforced, they were treated with a kind of hostility.
He found that businessmen would rather trust a ‘man’s word’ or seal deals with handshake, one said they’d rather ‘keep it simple and avoid red tape’, despite often knowing that the law was on their side.
One businessman said that ‘if something comes up, you get the other man on the telephone and deal with the problem. You don’t read legalistic contract clauses at each other if you ever want to do business again. One doesn’t run to lawyers if he wants to stay in business because one must behave decentlý’
Another said ‘”You can settle any dispute if you keep the lawyers and accountants out of it. They just do not understand the give-and-take needed in business.’
Professors Simon Holiday and Patrick Schmidt have recently said that his landmark was an ‘eye-opening exercise in empirical exploration. Contrary to the assumptions of the legal creed, he found a world in which law was not central – where custom and other noncontractual social practices provide order.’
400 years earlier the Jesuit missionary Paul Le Jeune made the same observation when he spent the winter of 1633 with the Naskapi. He marvelled at their lack of leadership, their goodwill, their genorsity and reported that “”The toilsome and lonely life of the Indian in the woods made him inclined to accept a compromise in any legal dispute. His dependence upon his neighbor’s aid and good will strengthened this tendency to work out an amicable solution, even with members of other bands.””
Today, vast tracts of the US are open range. In Shasta County, California, cattle roam, trespass, cause damage, and tear down fences. Ranchers must cooperate to maintain the land, planning controlled fires or irrigation systems
Roaming animals and the politics of fences are a big part of Shasta County life.
By law, And the owner of an animal doing damage is liable to pay for that damage.
But in Shasta County, no-one knows much about legal rules. They think, instead, in moral terms.
One of those moral norms is live-and-let-live. If an animal causes minor damage, a phonecall, a collection, and an apology usually follows. One resident told author Robert Ellikson “I figure it will balance out in the long run.” Another said ‘I hope they’ll do the same for me’
And by law, if one person builds a fence on an enclosed boundary line their entitled to compensation from the neighbour. ‘No-one enforces this,’ one rancher says. Instead, they follow the norm of proportionality, sharing costs and splitting labour depending on how much livestock they each have in the adjoining fields.
And Theres very little monetary calculation, they’ll owe favours, help plant crops, or split the time. They also discuss fencing first; they wouldn’t charge a neighbour after doing the work, despite the law allowing it.
One resident said that “I don’t believe in lawyers [because there are] always hard feelings [when you litigate].” Another said “[I never press a monetary claim because] I try to be a good neighbor.”
If a rancher is uncooperative, locals resort to gossip, which they say usually works.
We love to gossip.
In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin noticed that domesticated animals like pigs, sheep, rabbits were often smaller than their wild counterparts, had smaller teeth and floppy ears.
In the 1950’s Dmitry Belyayev a Russian geneticist wondered whether these physical characteristics were a by-product of something else: friendliness.
He tested his theory with an experiment on aggresive silver foxes. Out of a group and over generations, he selected the friendliest fox to breed. After four generations, the foxes had wagging tails, droopy ears, were smaller, and nicer. They had fewer stress hormones, more serotonin and oxytocin, the so-called ‘love’ hormone that enhances trust, empathy, bonding.
In 2014, an American team of scientists looked at human skulls from over the past 200,000 years. They noticed that like the foxes, our faces had grown softer, more youthful, the teeth were less sharp.
And this process sped up some 50,000 years ago when humans began painting and using more tools.
Humans have evolved to select for cooperation, domestication, friendliness. Our foreheads are communicative and unlike other primates we have white eyes to track one another’s gaze with.
Macauly found that those Wisconsin businessmen who did without contracts had long relationships, knew each other well, and often ‘gossiped’ about competitors, prices, shared dinners, golfclubs, and committees. Going to a third-party to deal with a dispute would sully a relationship. One man ssaid that he they shouldn’t rely on legal rights because he ‘would not be treated like a criminal. A Shasta county rancher said “Being good neighbors means no lawsuits.”’
The Semai of Malaysia have no private property, organise by assemblies, and are known for their peacefulness. During a becharaa disputes are aired, and according to anthropologist Clay Robarchek explored from ‘every conceivable perspective’ where ‘every possible explanation’ is offered until there is nothing left to say, elders then make speeches.
Before the Russian Revolution, the 250,000 village communities of the Siberian Buryates lived in joint-families organised into clans, tribes and confederations of generations with 20-60 sharing roasted meat. Out of luck families are given cattle and loaners are given food and a seat by the fire. Their Russian ocnquerors called them the ‘brotherly ones’. Selling and buying is frowned upon.
Each autumn, the 46 clans across hundreds of miles meet for a hunt – the aba – to cement unity. Thousands come and each persons share muste be equal
Reputation, socialisation, contracts, moral law
What are the common threads that weave these stories together?
Hobbes believed it was natural, followed from the laws of nature, that in basic conditions we’d be so disputatious that we’d forfeit our freedom to be the final arbiter of right from wrong so that a leader could decide for us.
But what you find, again and again, when you search for parallels for this in – in neighbors, in business contacts and traders, in hunter-gatherers – is a compulsion to non-hierarchical agreement, reciprocity, and commitment to fairness. This is the rule, not the exception.
This may, though, as Rousseau knew, be limited to small face-to-face closed societies where individuals either know each other, or have a common network and an economy of reputation.
Anthropologist Christopher Boehm has summed up his survey of 339 studies and said that ‘nomadic foragers’ have a natural aversion to inequality and ‘are universally – and all but obsessively – concerned with being free from the authority of others.’
All of the vein pretences that Hobbes argued would generate violence, in fact, on closer inspection motivate peace. When he said that competition leads to greed, he didn’t give enough weight to the observation that cooperation is more beneficial. When he thought that the desire for reputation would leave to a pursuit of glory he failed to see that reputation selects for kindness, cooperation, and conformity. The sharp tongue of gossip is the most powerful ostraciser. And when he argued that equality of strength would lead to endless war he forgot that equality of condition, of facultities, of the capacity for reason, leads to that most human of values: fairness.