Descent Of Man Revisited

What Free Market?
The Clichés of Economic History
by WILLIAM E. SHAUB
Understanding economic theory, in law and in principle, requires a certain perception of the world. One perception requires an understanding of the world as one would like it to be. The other, which is perhaps more in touch with reality, demands an acceptance of the world as it actually is, and for that, one must look to cases and examples in history.

Similarly, a close look at the realities of economic history in the United States and elsewhere requires major adjustments to what is called ‘free market theory.’ These modifications lead to what should be called ‘really existing free market theory’, and this is the economic theory that is actually applied in practice.

For this, we can take a look at a rather perplexing example – a country that supposedly developed based on market principles and free enterprise – namely the United States. In the mid 18th century, the U.S was one of the richest societies (in terms of resources) in the world, yet it was pre-industrial.

Adam Smith, widely considered the father of modern economics, had surprisingly specific advice for the 13 colonies. Smith requested precisely what today’s economists recommend to many third world countries, advocating that the U.S maintain a commitment to its comparative advantages and sell what it’s best at producing. At the time, the U.S was most capable of catching fish and hunting fur, then exporting it to England, all while importing superior British manufactured goods.

Perhaps unpredictably in the eyes of Smith, the U.S gained its independence from Britain, and proceeded to completely ignore Smith’s free market advice. Under Alexander Hamilton, the liberated colonies immediately set up high protective barriers (such as tariffs) to try to bar superior British textiles, then later British steel. This allowed the new country to construct its own manufacturing base under specialized protective barriers and by other forms of incredible state intervention.

A staple in American manufacturing in the 19th century was cotton, which is often referred to as the fuel of American industrialization. The U.S produced cotton and became the world’s leading cotton exporter following its elimination of a massive indigenous population, which according to Howard Zinn, could have easily totalled “thousands upon thousands” of Indians.

The conquering of almost half of Mexico and annexation of Texas was also in order, which was land needed to monopolize cotton and “bring England to our knees,” to quote the Jacksonian Democrats. The U.S then ramped up production of this 19th century ‘fuel’ through its development of a slave society, which was followed by the criminalization of black life for the purpose of exploiting their labor.

Thus far, American society clearly industrialized in opposition, not supposed adherence, to market principles. It took radical violation of free enterprise undertaken to develop (change) its comparative advantages. Obviously, no small business or group of entrepreneurs could have conquered the northern half of Mexico; a publicly subsidized institution—the government—was the missing piece.

A brief look at the 20th century also reveals exactly this revelation, or the concept that the U.S did notdevelop and modernize because of a devout faithfulness to market principles.

Ronald Reagan is now considered a champion of free markets, and the 1980s a decade in U.S history in which entrepreneurial economics flourished. However, the Reagan administration’s efforts to protect American businesses from market discipline were unprecedented right up until their implementation. For example, the imposed 100% tariff on select Japanese electronics was done to “enforce the principles of free and fair trade,” according to President Reagan. His Treasury Secretary, James A. Baker, would later boast to the US Chamber of Commerce that the administration “granted more import relief to US industry that any of his predecessors in more than half a century.”

According to a comprehensive review of the Reagan era in Foreign Affairs by Clyde Sanger, a Senior Fellow for International Finance at the Council on Foreign Relations, “The postwar chief executive with the most passionate love of laissez-faire, presided over the greatest swing toward protectionism since the 1930s.” In a scholarly review by Patrick Low, a GATT secretariat economist, he estimates that the restrictive effects of Reagan’s policies measured at approximately three times those of other leading industrial countries.

Clyde Sanger notes some thematic irony, namely that advocation of market discipline is a tool used by those with power, who manage to avoid the ravages of the market as a result of astonishing state intervention. Those without power are then exposed to the free market discipline, and are therefore left with little, if any, protection from the subsidized structures of power. This theme is strikingly dominant in the economic history of the past three centuries.

The Reagan administration was following a common course of action that has been in practice in the U.S (and elsewhere) for its entire existence. However, modern neo-liberals have shed new light on the free market theory charade. Presidential candidate Michelle Bachman commonly extolls the victories of the free market and issues tough lectures about the immoral culture of welfare-dependence of American poor and working people. But an Environmental Working Group analysis points to evidence that her family farm received over $250,000 over eleven years.

A major piece of America’s dedication to ‘free market’ economics includes the massive transfers of taxpayer funds to private corporations, generally hidden under the masks of ‘defense’ or ‘security.’ However, pretending that these (purposefully) initiated transfers by the Pentagon to private industry hasn’t been economically effective isn’t, in fact, realistic. The U.S automotive, steel, high-tech, fiber-optic, airline and other industries would never have been able to survive international competition, innovate or develop through research without these fundamental violations of market principles, as MIT professor Noam Chomsky notes in Hegemony or Survival.

Whether this radical protectionism in a state-guided mercantilist system is a position worth advocating is perhaps a worthy subject for debate, but its usage is unquestionably in substantial defiance of any standard (classical) free market theory in principle. Since our analytical focus is centered on the world as it is, our attention should be focused on really existing free market theory, or the economic theory that is actually applied.

President Barack Obama, unlike his predecessor, hasn’t shied away from the belief and acceptance that protectionism is effective (and profoundly disguised). Of course, when his administration’s market interventions saved thousands of union jobs during the financial bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler in 2009, American media commentators eagerly termed them ‘free market infringements’ and ‘giveaways’ to undeserving corporations and the unions. However, when President Reagan subsidized an enormous amount of GM’s capital costs in the 1980′s to save the company’s management from a massive restructuring bankruptcy, that was simply necessary in the country’s effort to save American industry.

In 2011, President Obama handily announced a ‘new’ federal project that exemplifies exactly what U.S free market policy has always been: “a joint effort by industry, universities and the federal government to help reposition the United States as a leader…” In desperate need of economic growth before his re-election bid that’s just one year and half away, the U.S President turned to the application of what existing free market economic theory has always been: an incredibly confounding cliché.

William E. Shaub is a violin performance major at the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan and an active political journalist.

Patience: experimenting with some new WP themes…

Australopithecus Sediba Paved the Way for Homo Species, New Studies Suggest
ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2011) — Researchers have revealed new details about the brain, pelvis, hands and feet of Australopithecus sediba, a primitive hominin that existed around the same time early Homo species first began to appear on Earth. The new Au. sediba findings make it clear that this ancient relative displayed both primitive characteristics as well as more modern, human-like traits. And due to this “mosaic” nature of the hominin’s features, researchers are now suggesting that Au. sediba is the best candidate for an ancestor to the Homo genus.

The discoveries are casting doubt on some long-standing theories about human evolution, including the notion that early human pelvises evolved in response to larger brain sizes. And there is also some new evidence suggesting that Au. sediba may have been a tool-maker.

These new findings, which include the most complete hand ever described in an early hominin, one of the more complete pelvises ever discovered and brand new pieces of the foot and ankle, are detailed in five separate studies. The Au. sediba research also boasts a high-resolution scan of an early hominin’s cranium along with work that refines the date of this early hominin site in Malapa, South Africa, to nearly 2.0 million years ago, close to the emergence of Homo.

The five studies appear in the 9 September issue of the journal Science, which is published by AAAS, the international nonprofit science society.

Lee Berger, the project leader from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, explains what these new findings mean for modern humans. “The many advanced features found in the brain and body, along with the earlier date, make it possibly the best candidate ancestor for our genus — the genus Homo — more so than previous discoveries, such as Homo habilis.”

The age of these Au. sediba fossils has been constrained to about 1.977 million years, which predates the earliest appearances of Homo-specific traits in the fossil record. Until now, fossils dated to 1.90 million years ago — and mostly attributed to Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis — have been considered ancestral to Homo erectus, the earliest undisputed human ancestor. But, the older age of these Au. sediba fossils raises the possibility of a separate, older lineage from which Homo erectus may have evolved.

“Science is pleased to be publishing these papers, which add important new information regarding this species, who lived during an important time in human evolution and was first described in the 9 April 2010 issue,” according to Brooks Hanson, deputy editor of physical sciences. “Well-preserved and complete early human fossils are so rare, and Au. sediba now provides a detailed look at some key parts of the anatomy, such as the hand and foot which are rarely well-preserved.”

The caves of Malapa, nearly 30 miles northwest of Johannesburg, have provided a rich assemblage of early hominin fossils over the years. They are part of the Cradle of Humankind, which has been recognized as a World Heritage Site and set aside for its physical and cultural significance. Last year, Berger and colleagues announced the discovery of the remains of a juvenile male (MH-1) and an adult female (MH-2) Au. sediba that were found together in one of these caves.

Since the fossils are too old to be dated themselves, researchers turned to the calcified sediments that have kept the fossils so well-preserved. The fossils hadn’t moved since they were cemented into place, and researchers were able to identify flowstones above and below them. So, Robyn Pickering from the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, and colleagues used advanced uranium-lead dating techniques and something called palaeo-magnetic dating, which measures how many times Earth’s magnetic field has reversed, on the surrounding rocks.

“This allowed us to narrow the deposition of the Au. sediba-bearing deposits to one of these short geomagnetic field events, the Pre-Olduvai event at about 1.977 million years ago,” wrote Pickering.

The old age of these fossils somewhat surprised the researchers, given some of the apparently Homo-like features that Au. sediba was already displaying at the time.
[Read more →]

Humans Shaped Stone Axes 1.8 Million Years Ago: Advanced Tool-Making Methods Pushed Back in Time
ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2011) — A new study suggests that Homo erectus, a precursor to modern humans, was using advanced toolmaking methods in East Africa 1.8 million years ago, at least 300,000 years earlier than previously thought. The study, recently published in Nature, raises new questions about where these tall and slender early humans originated and how they developed sophisticated tool-making technology.

Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago, and ranged across Asia and Africa before hitting a possible evolutionary dead-end, about 70,000 years ago. Some researchers think Homo erectus evolved in East Africa, where many of the oldest fossils have been found, but the discovery in the 1990s of equally old Homo erectus fossils in the country of Georgia has led others to suggest an Asian origin. The study in Nature does not resolve the debate but adds new complexity. At 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus in Dmanisi, Georgia was still using simple chopping tools while in West Turkana, Kenya, according to the study, the population had developed hand axes, picks and other innovative tools that anthropologists call “Acheulian.”

“The Acheulian tools represent a great technological leap,” said study co-author Dennis Kent, a geologist with joint appointments at Rutgers University and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “Why didn’t Homo erectus take these tools with them to Asia?”

In the summer of 2007, a team of French and American researchers traveled to Kenya’s Lake Turkana in Africa’s Great Rift Valley, where earth’s plates are tearing apart and some of the earliest humans first appear. Anthropologist Richard Leakey’s famous find–Turkana Boy, a Homo erectus teenager who lived about 1.5 million years ago — was excavated on Lake Turkana’s western shore and is still the most complete early human skeleton found so far.

Six miles from Turkana Boy, the researchers headed for Kokiselei, an archeological site where both Acheulian and simpler “Oldowan” tools had been found earlier. Their goal: to establish the age of the tools by dating the surrounding sediments. Past flooding in the area had left behind layers of silt and clay that hardened into mudstone, preserving the direction of Earth’s magnetic field at the time in the stone’s magnetite grains. The researchers chiseled away chunks of the mudstone at Kokiselei to later analyze the periodic polarity reversals and come up with ages. At Lamont-Doherty’s Paleomagnetics Lab, they compared the magnetic intervals with other stratigraphic records to date the archeological site to 1.76 million years.

“We suspected that Kokiselei was a rather old site, but I was taken aback when I realized that the geological data indicated it was the oldest Acheulian site in the world,” said the study’s lead author, Christopher Lepre, a geologist who also has joint appointments at Rutgers and Lamont-Doherty. The oldest Acheulian tools previously identified appear in Konso, Ethiopia, about 1.4 million years ago, and India, between 1.5 million and 1 million years ago.

The Acheulian tools at Kokiselei were found just above a sediment layer associated with a polarity interval called the “Olduvai Subchron.” It is named after Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, where pioneering work in the 1930s by Leakey’s parents, Louis and Mary, uncovered a goldmine of early human fossils. In a study in Earth and Planetary Science Letters last year, Lepre and Kent found that a well-preserved Homo erectus skull found on east side of Lake Turkana, at Koobi Fora Ridge, also sat above the Olduvai Subchron interval, making the skull and Acheulian tools in West Turkana about the same age.

Anthropologists have yet to find an Acheulian hand axe gripped in a Homo erectus fist but most credit Homo erectus with developing the technology. Acheulian tools were larger and heavier than the pebble-choppers used previously and also had chiseled edges that would have helped Homo erectus butcher elephants and other scavenged game left behind by larger predators or even have allowed the early humans to hunt such prey themselves. “You could whack away at a joint and dislodge the shoulder from the arm, leg or hip,” said Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at CUNY’s Lehman College who was not involved in the study. “The tools allowed you to cut open and dismember an animal to eat it.”

The skill involved in manufacturing such a tool suggests that Homo erectus was dexterous and able to think ahead. At Kokiselei, the presence of both tool-making methods — Oldowan and Acheulian– could mean that Homo erectus and its more primitive cousin Homo habilis lived at the same time, with Homo erectus carrying the Acheulian technology to the Mediterranean region about a million years ago, the study authors hypothesize. Delson wonders if Homo erectus may have migrated to Dmanisi, Georgia, but “lost” the Acheulian technology on the way.

The East African landscape that Homo erectus walked from about 2 million to 1.5 million years ago was becoming progressively drier, with savanna grasslands spreading in response to changes in the monsoon rains. “We need to understand also the ancient environment because this gives us an insight into how processes of evolution work — how shifts in early human biology and behavior are potentially caused by changes in the climate, vegetation or animal life that is particular to a habitat,” said Lepre. The team is currently excavating a more than 2 million year old site in Kenya to learn more about the early Oldowan period.

I am going to be using this blog for a series of WP theme experiments (for another blog finally). Bear with me while I tinker with some ragged theme material/