Catching up with the newspapers that piled up while I was away, I found myself drawn to Andrew Cassel's article with a title as intriguing as the subject: "Revealed: Why understanding economics is hard." If there's one thing I like, it's having something revealed of which I am woefully ignorant, and I have no training in Economics.

But when I read the piece, I found it was about culture! Imagine, economics being affected by things like culture. I tend to think of freedom as being something that people (er, at least most Americans) naturally want, which accounts for my tendency to dismiss Marxism and socialism as abnormal systems which have to be imposed by external authorities (generally called "the government") upon people who only desire to be Left Alone.

According to the article, there might be people who find the idea of being left alone to be culturally repugnant:

all relationships are built from exactly four kinds of interactions.

[University of Pennsylvania Professor Alan] Fiske labels these communal sharing, equality matching, authority ranking and market pricing.

When there are conflicts, moreover, Fiske maintains it's often because we aren't all using the same model.

For example, you might see housework as a communal-sharing function, while your spouse approaches it as equality-matching. Neither is wrong, yet you still end up angry or guilty when the laundry isn't done.

The same problem can afflict whole societies, as Fiske described to me recently. "The Danes pride themselves on being fair," he said. "They can't understand why they don't get along with their Middle Eastern immigrants."

But Fiske does: "The immigrants expect authority ranking. The Danes expect strict equality matching. Each side sees people constantly violating the models."

As to "Authority Ranking" systems, the concept itself begs the question of the nature of authority. In a meritocracy, authority is supposed to be earned. But then, how is it to be earned? By popular recognition of merit? Or by seizure of power by those whose merit inheres from superior strength or firepower? Under many circumstances and for many people, strength is merit. Might makes right on the athletic field or the battlefield, although the former is governed by rules. Biting off your opponent's ear is generally not considered meritorious in an athletic event. But according to the Taliban view of culture, mayhem can be a virtue.

According to Fiske, Market Pricing was the last of these types of human interaction paradigms to evolve:

...[W]hat is particularly interesting is the role of market pricing, which Fiske speculates might have been the last to evolve in our prehistoric ancestors' brains.

It makes sense. For hunter-gatherers in small bands, sharing, matching and ranking were probably as fundamental to survival as eating and breeding. But market pricing involves complex choices based on mathematical ratios.

"It's the difference between addition and subtraction on one hand, multiplication and division on the other," Fiske says.

Commerce and global trade, of course, require a finely honed version of the market-pricing model. But if humans developed this model relatively late, it might well be less than universal, even today.

In other words, to have an intuitive grasp of economics, you might just need to take a step or two up the evolutionary ladder.

Even now, the word "progressive" is often used in praise of backward economic systems. Not just Communism, but even economic (and cultural) primitivism, like slash-and-burn style technologies, subsistence farming, opposition to genetically engineered food, and the nonsense called "living economies" (to which I devoted a long blog post).

Not that long ago, it was "against God's laws" to charge interest on a loan. These days reasonable people see that view as backward, and interest makes the world go 'round.

But doesn't my use of the term "reasonable people" indicate a cultural bias in favor of that which I consider reasonable? Yes. I think market economics accounts for most of what we call human progress, and I think human progress is eminently reasonable by any rational standard. Others don't, and while I'm not necessarily stuck on any view that there are only four paradigms, clearly something has to account for the persistent view that progess must be abandoned -- in the name of "progress."

A recent illustration of how this backward mindset works (via Glenn Reynolds link) can be found in David Bernstein's post about a student who is "a math prodigy and received a perfect 2,400 score on her SATs." Nonetheless, "progressive" questions are being raised about her merit. Says a leading admissions expert:

"Her perfect SAT score is truly outstanding but not a free ticket. She is applying to many technical colleges, so she will be competing against a lot of other high-achieving math/science kids (and a lot of other Asian students in particular). While she may be admitted to MIT early, I am not convinced she's a shoo-in--I'd want to see more evidence that she's giving back to the community."

The idea that Ms. Luo may not be worthy of admission because she hasn't proven herself sufficiently altruistic is the kind of thing that makes Objectivism look almost reasonable.

It's a small step from saying that a person should "give back" to saying that "we" should "take it back" from him.

If the most progressive people are those with a concept of market economics, one of the great tragedies of the modern age has been their systematic destruction by less progressive people who call themselves the most progressive.

If Professor Fiske's cultural paradigm theory is correct, I'm wondering whether there might be a basic, persistent inability to distinguish forward from backward.

I used to think that "progressives" imagined themselves to be forward in their thinking, but I'm now thinking that "scientific Marxism" might have been grounded in an unacknowledged need for primitivism.

Might this explain why the failure of Marxism ushered in the rise of raw primitivism?

If "progressivism" was actually primitivism in drag for all those years, perhaps the demise of Marxism opened the door to the primitive closet.

AFTERTHOUGHT: While I linked to China's "Great Leap Forward," I forgot about the more recent Khmer Rouge and the "Year Zero" -- articulately described by Jonathan Wilde at Catallarchy:

The "Year Zero" was declared, a new start to history. Private ownership, money, and religion were banned. Family relationships were eliminated. Cities were abandoned, schools and factories closed. The goal behind the massive restructuring was to "make socialism in the fields". Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot developed a "Four Year Plan" to increase rice production to triple its peacetime levels. Workers were made to work the fields for 12 hours a day without adequate food, rest, or water. Many fell ill and died due to the Khmer Rouge's refusal to use Western medical methods, instead relying on traditional, ineffective remedies. Foraging for food was a capital offense, even in the face of meager food rations.

Many of the "New People" resorted to pretending to be one of the "Old People". Yet, if any person was found to have been one of the "New People" - educated, a former government official, a monk, a business owner, a French speaker, or a former soldier - he would be killed.

Might the Khmer Rouge have been ahead of their time?

MORE: I wrote this post before I read (via Glenn Reynolds) about the Coalition to Preserve Civilization:

This is primarily an information war, fought via the television screens and computer networks across the entire globe. The enemy is very adept at it, and has a head start. But the Islamists lack our major advantages: originality, flexibility, technical innovation, and a tradition of free enquiry. These are the skills we will use to build our networks and destroy theirs.

Make no mistake: this is a civil war within the heart of the West, between those who would appease Islamic tyranny and those who want to eliminate it; between those who would censor themselves and restrict their own rights rather than steadfastly resist any encroachment on them; between those who believe in the values and heritage of the West and those who are ashamed of them.

And once again, because some aspects of Western Civilization are less than perfect is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.