The Cost of Success
Hutterites are a communist christian sect that live on isolated mega-farms in Canada and in the US. They are like the Amish in that they prefer 19th century clothing, but are unlike the old order Amish in that they make ready use of technology. Like the Amish, they are descendants of a small number of German-speaking immigrants, and they still speak a dialect of German in their daily lives. The fifty thousand American and Canadian Hutterites are descendants of about 400 immigrants. In other words, their population expanded by a factor of 125 in a mere 140 years. Compare this to population growth of Germany in that same time: less than 2. One might say, the religion of the Hutterites has thereby given them an unparalleled reproductive advantage.
That success has a cost: the lack of genetic diversity. The Hutterites are subject to genetic diseases that are vanishingly rare in outside populations.
I watched a Hutterite documentary last night. You have only to compare yourself as a teen-ager to any of these children at the same age. They seem so sluggish in their speech and in their actions — like they were 80 years old already.
Inbreeding has obviously devastating consequences for individuals (see footnotes), but works well enough for the colony because it fosters uniformity and dependence: The individuals have little hope of competing in the outside world, so they stay in the colonies. In order to stay, they must obey.
Hutterites avoid strife with outsiders, and this is due to a religious ideal. However, they arguably lack the wherewithal to prevail in strife with outsiders. They can be morally superior where they cannot be superior in any other way.
I realised that the survival strategy of the colony is to depend on the statistical likelihood that at least two men in a colony of 100 people are going to have the intelligence necessary to lead the colony (that is a very good likelihood), and then everyone else just obeys. Those men have a level of power that they wouldn’t have in the outside world, so they also stay.
It occurs to me that the same de-evolution is happening to non-Hutterites, due to lack of natural selection. (Our lives are no longer at risk due to decisions we make nor at risk from how fast we can run). The longer this situation lasts — and it is an ideal that it should never end — the more dependent we shall become on statistically smarter men: A very small number of smart people create technology and procedures — which we can neither understand nor control — then they advise us how to decide. Every government official making decisions based on what Palantir says is in this situation. Every bank regulator getting advice from bankers is in this situation. Each non-selected generation is less capable of managing its own affaires, and more dependent on heroes.
We have no hope of taking care of ourselves, and so we stay. In order to stay, we must obey.
This is a very good explanation for why billionaires exist and why people do not see them as usurpers. Billionaires solve problems that ordinary people cannot solve for themselves.
I can better understand why MAGA/AfD see the government/EU as the problem. The government/EU is composed of institutions that promote fairness (rule of law) and charity (social security). In other words, these institutions enforce good behaviour. Billionaires, on the other hand, pander to humanity’s lowest instincts: fear, hatred, anger, dominance, submission, greed, etc. Billionaires do not invite discussions or explanations that their followers might have to understand. They engage in marketing. Here, followers must decide only whether the marketing appeals or outrages (according to its purpose). There is nothing to understand. This is how AfD members ‘know’ that billionaires are on their side: billionaires speak their language.
However, that success has a cost. A civilisation cannot be cannibalised infinitely by its elites, or technically said, exponential debt is not sustainable. An economy based on consumption cannot expand 3% per year on a planet which does not expand.
I suppose that what is going to happen is that this shambolic circus should finally collapse due to utter mismanagement. In the aftermath of a collapse, people who cannot defend their own interests shall perish and the people with ‘common’ sense shall survive. It would not even be hard to survive. We are already at the level of de-evolution in which plastic bags must come with warnings that they are not to be used as helmets. An increasing number of people are drinking raw milk and eschewing vaccines. They do not want to wear face masks during a pandemic. One can hardly imagine what ideas would arise in the next crisis, but one can imagine that many would be deadly to their owners.
Nature can tolerate contempt for natural selection only for so long. The system ultimately resets itself, like a pendulum that has swung too wide and which must now swing back. It’s a natural process that is only problematic if one must live through it personally.
Footnotes
Inbreeding
- Genetic Drift and the Founder Effect
- Genetic disease is ravaging Lancaster County’s Amish, and helping to change medicine for all of us
- Health among the Amish
- Effects of inbreeding on cognitive performance
Afzal, M. Consequences of consanguinity on cognitive behavior. Behav Genet 18, 583–594 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01082310