Entitlements: An Economics Primer

By Douglas Patterson

In this book, I focus on economics at a very basic level. Using American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s triangle as a conceptual framework, I define wealth in terms of our physiological and psychological needs, and I attempt to explain why we value those things that we do.
I have employed the phrase territorial imperative, first introduced in the mid-20th century by German zoologist and Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz, as the title to the first chapter of this book. Lorenz pointed to acquisition of turf as one of the basic economic drives of all life forms – both animal and plant. Every living being, he suggested, needs a place to put down its roots. Landless plants and animals have difficulty surviving
My discussion of economics will no doubt offend some moralists, as I describe what can only be dubbed a survival-of-the-fittest approach to the acquisition and the defense of property. In the struggle for control of turf, the fittest individuals and tribes always have the upper hand.
I take issue, however, with the rugged individualist’s boast of self-sufficiency that has been so popular among libertarians in this country. No human on his own can possess and cultivate and defend a large territory. Neither can a small rag tag tribe of primitive people successfully control and defend the property that it claims, when they are invaded by more powerful and numerous forces.
Those tribes who allow their birthrate to decline, place themselves in jeopardy.
Those who fail to innovate may one day find themselves in trouble.
The importance of cooperation and interdependence within a human community cannot be overstated. In order to develop into an effective socio-economic unit its members must work together. The society is healthiest when all of its physically and mentally able citizens are actively employed and receive just compensation for their efforts.
A society really shows its strength when it provides on a reasonable level for of those who can not take care of themselves.
Since this book has been written with American teenagers and young adults in mind, I hope to impress upon them what a valuable asset their American citizenship rights are. For those who may not have probed very deeply on this subject, I hope also to increase their awareness of the debt that we moderns owe to those who built this country into the powerful and compassionate nation that it has become.
In addition to dealing with philosophical issues, I describe economic theories in as simple terms as I can; and I also provide some insights into the nature of money and the ways in which our economy actually works. Those who rail against government involvement in our economy apparently do not have the foggiest understanding of the operation of the Federal Reserve Banks or of the importance of tax and spending policies of the federal, the state and the local governments.
I do not hold myself forth as an authority in the field of economics. What I am offering are what I believe to be common sense observations about ways by which the wealth has been acquired and created and apportioned in human communities.
As a retired teacher, I always have teenagers and young adults in mind as I write.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas Patterson
• Release date: Jan 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301746248

Douglas Patterson

With the exception of a three year stint in the U.S.Army, I have spent my life in and around the public schools. My parents were both teachers, and I have taught language arts courses at the high school level for a total of 37 years. I was born during the great depressions and grew up in Southern Idaho (both literally and figuratively) just north of Poverty Flat. I lived in the very small town of Bellevue, Idaho, that had a population of some 500 people and an equal number of dogs. In this rural environment, I enjoyed a Tom Sawyer like life, not on the Mississippi but rather on the Woodriver where my friends and I fished an swam and roamed the riverbottom and the surrounding hills from morning til night. My parents never locked the doors to our house, and we never worried much about it being burglarized. (For you skiers,Sun Valley is seventeen miles north of this town.) After graduating from Hailey(now Woodriver) High School,I enrolled at the University of Oregon at a time when the school had a student body of 5,000 students and the football team rarely won a game. After graduation, I spent a marvelous tour of duty with the U.S. Army which took me to Europe. I was stationed in Germany for a couple of glorious years and became a dedicated Europhile. After I was discharged, I started my teaching career in the small town of New Plymouth, Idaho, near the Oregon border. After three years, I moved to Yakima, Washington, where I worked as an English and German teacher for the next 34 years. After retiring,I quickly grew bored and began writing books primarily for my own amusement. Four of the books that I am publishing with Smashbooks are language arts textbooks focusing on linguistics, critical thinking, and literal and literary composition. The other two deal with self-improvment and very basic economics. Because breaking into the traditional publishing business has always been such a long shot,I was very pleased to see ebook publishing develop into a platform for people like me who are looking for an inexpensive way to offer their materials to the public. Since they say that confession is good for the sould, I must admit that my picture was taken by a yearbook photographer at least twenty-five years ago. I have no defense except to say, "Vanity thy name is not woman alone!"

Book preview

Entitlements

An Economic Primer

Copyright 2012 Douglas D Patterson

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

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Preface

Part I – The Territorial Imperative

Chapter 01 – Wealth

Chapter 02 -Theories of Ownership

Chapter 03 - Successful Tribes

Chapter 04 - Governance

Chapter 05 - Belonging

Part II – Liberty

Chapter 06 - Defense of Person and Property

Chapter 07 - Religion/Conscience

Chapter 08 - Expression

Chapter 09 - Association/Privacy

Chapter 10 - Interdependency

Part III – Distribution of Wealth

Chapter 11 - Communal Ownership

Chapter 12 - Private Ownership

Chapter 13 - Discovery, Conquest, Harvest

Chapter 14 - Gifts and Inheritance

Chapter 15 - Labor

Chapter 16 - Creation/Invention

Chapter 17 - Trade

Chapter 18 - Investment

Chapter 19 - Dependency

Part IV – Pursuit of Happiness

Chapter 20 - Physiological Needs

Chapter 21 - Security

Chapter 22 - Companionship

Chapter 23 - Status, Authority, Esteem

Chapter 24 - Self Actualization

Preface

Give a dog a bone, and he will wag his tail. Offer him a second, and he will see it as an entitlement. The third will, of course, be his right.

Such feelings of ownership are easy to create, particularly when they are self- rewarding. Give a child a sweet, and he will soon be back for more. Compliment a friend, and watch him look for additional strokes. Increase a worker‘s pay, and he will not return to the old wage scale without serious protest.

Basic feelings of entitlement are responses that may come naturally or they may be inculcated at a very early age. The sucking response is a sign that babies have inborn expectations. If the food for which he seeks is not forthcoming, a child can become quite impatient.

Many feelings of entitlement, however, are learned responses. Children who are born into a particular social caste take what they are given for granted. If a child lives in a mansion and his every wish is fulfilled by his parents and the servants, he is unlikely to question whether he is entitled to the favorable position that he enjoys.

A child who is born into poverty, on the other hand, is less likely to develop feelings of entitlement to such luxuries. Unless he receives unfailing help and encouragement, he will likely learn his place and make no serious attempt to rise above it

Entitlements, once established, are durable. A child born into a family soon finds his place in its structure, and he owns that position and the perks that go with it. At the dinner table, each family member has his own place; in many families those positions rarely vary. Father has his easy chair and mother has her perhaps somewhat less comfortable one as well, and they respect their spouses’ territorial rights. Others in the family do the same.

In every social setting, people jockey for position; and in a short time each individual will have found his place. Someone will be the boss. Others will have their own roles that they guard jealously. The butcher, the baker and the cell phone maker establish their niches, and they soon feel entitled to make their way by plying that trade.

Each family establishes its place in the social order, and all of the members of that family enjoy the fruits of their family’s status. Those who have established themselves as bankers or stonemasons or teachers or members of the idle nobility often perpetuate those roles over many generations.

When people are deprived of what they consider to be legitimately theirs, they howl with self-righteous indignations. (Our dog may even nip at its master’s hand if he withholds that fourth bone.) Ranchers and sheep-men who have enjoyed free or inexpensive grazing rights on public lands are incensed by any suggestion that the government might impose higher fees or ban them from accustomed ranges. Slave owners, who had established this method of exploiting the labor of other human beings, felt entirely justified in reaping the rewards of their chattels’ toil. When the slaves in the USA were freed, many owners harbored great resentment over being deprived of their property.

Feelings of entitlement are powerful imperatives because they stem from very basic and by no means rational motivations: the will to survive and among humans and other highly developed animals the urge to establish and to maintain a satisfactory social position.

The Human Motivational System

Psychologists have described the human volitional system in a variety of ways. Freud divided it into three levels: the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego. The Id refers to our basic animal drives, the Ego to our defense mechanisms, and the Super Ego to our capacity for empathizing with and for caring for other people (and animals).

Whereas Freud saw man as a driven creature, his erstwhile friend Dr. Alfred Adler viewed humans in a more favorable light. Instead of depicting them as victims - as his colleague Freud did - Adler posited that man has freedom of will. He has the ability to make intelligent choices and to select his own paths in life.

American psychologist Abraham Maslow provided a more sophisticated – though perhaps not entirely complete - description of our motivational system. He pictured our needs as a five level hierarchy which he represented with a pyramid. Until our needs at the bottom are satisfied, we have difficulty focusing on the higher levels. We must find food and water and shelter and warmth without which we will perish. Only when we have satisfied these basic needs can we focus much attention on friendship or on social position or on developing our talents. (See a more extensive discussion of Maslow’s theories is at this website: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/maslow.html)

Physiological Needs

Our most immediate need is air. If we for some reason can no longer fill our lungs, we die within minutes. Water is the next most urgent requirement for life. We can survive without food for three or four weeks; but a starving person becomes progressively weaker. Eliminating both urine and feces must occur regularly; and we must sleep at regular intervals. Like Freud, Maslow placed great emphasis on our need for sexual gratification which is nature’s way of propagating the species.

The human body is an amazing apparatus which strives to maintain equilibrium and to survive even in a hostile environment; but it does require assistance. When the temperature drops below a survivable level, we must find ways of maintaining our body heat by seeking shelter and by building a fire and by wearing warm clothing. When the sun beats down too hot, we must shed excess clothing and seek shade and water.

In pre-agricultural times hunters and gatherers continually sought food. Because living off the land often yields sparse results, hunter/gatherers were seldom obese; they often had Shakespeare’s lean and hungry look. More recently, we have turned to farmers and to cattle ranchers who provide us with more regular meals.

Recently in the USA we have actually experienced an excess of available calories; and in our search for hemostasis, we have often overshot the mark. Many Americans eat and drink more of those things that give them pleasure than are needed for survival; and the results are often drunkenness and obesity and indigestion and constipation and diabetes and heart problem - to name only a few.

Safety

Threats to our physical and economic well-being require immediate attention. If we are confronted by a bully or by a dangerous animal, for example, we immediately go into a fight or flight mode. If we lose our jobs, we are forced to look for other ways of earning our bread.

We all need a place to live, and once we have found a home we must defend it. In primitive societies individuals and small tribes often challenged each other for the same piece of turf. Nothing has actually changed today, except that in many instances tribes have coalesced into nations that are less easily challenged by invading forces. The USA, because of its relaxed immigration policies, has developed into a multicultural society held together by ideals rather than by blood relationships.

In order to hold on to their place in the world, every group must rely on its warriors to guard its turf from others who would gladly assume control.

Policemen protect us against gangsters and firemen save us from conflagrations and from drowning – events which all too often are the result of our own negligence. Children, of course, rely on their parents to keep them safe - until they eventually learn to fend for themselves.

Love/Belonging

All newborns immediately attach themselves to nurturing adults. Normally creatures bond with their parents who are their natural protectors, but birds have been known to attach themselves to other creatures as well. In his story The Ugly Duckling, Hans Christian Anderson showed a young swan bonding with a family of ducks. One might be inclined to dismiss this story as fantasy, except that, as Austrian biologist/psychologist Konrad Lorenz and others have observed, geese and ducks sometimes do bond with other creatures including humans and even dogs.

Stories of children that have been reared by wild animals may be more fiction than fact; but children certainly do find friends among their pets. Dogs particularly provide positive companionship for their owners - if the humans but treat their furry friends well.

The need for friends is an overriding imperative in our lives. Being embraced by others in our social group is gratifying; being shunned is painful. Acts of caring and breaches of trust are the stuff from which romantic fiction is composed. Being mistreated by a trusted friend is, in Shakespeare’s ungrammatical words, the most unkindest cut of all.

Status/Esteem

That plants and lower forms of animal life vie for status is doubtful. So far as we are aware, they do not have conscious lives. That many animals do establish complex societies with hierarchal structures is, however, undeniable. Bees and ants are by no means all created equal, and those who occupy the lower rungs of their societies apparently have no opportunity for social mobility.

Birds form ordered societies in which dominant individuals rule the roost. In a chicken yard, there is said to be a pecking order. Each hen has her place in the hierarchy and can peck only those beneath her status.

The same is true for mammals. In wolf packs, alpha males exercise power and enjoy perks not available to females or less powerful males.

Among humans the situation is similar - though our social relationships may be more fluid and complex. Particularly in the USA, people are not locked in to a social caste quite as firmly as has been the case in class conscious societies such as those in Europe or in India.

The struggle to achieve and to maintain an esteemed position in our societies occupies more of our time and energy than we may care to admit. Those who were born into lush environments which satisfy their basic physiological and safety needs often have many hours each day for engaging in a social kabuki dance - which they often perform with great energy and devotion.

Maslow’s emphasis on esteem may be a bit too narrow. Some people appear to be less interested in being loved than they are in being feared. Rather than seeking relationships based on mutual respect, they prefer to dominate their associates. Environmental determinists may explain such unsocial behavior as a result of deprivation of love, affection and attention at an early age. Genetic determinists point out that even among very small children and animals, some individuals appear to be naturally aggressive and domineering.

Maslow must have been a very kindly fellow, as he seems to have averted his eyes from the darker side of human (and animal) behavior. Unlike Freud, he overlooks man’s sadistic bent, which manifests itself all too often in the ways that some individuals treat their associates.

Self-Actualization

Some who tire of social one-upmanship find meaning in their lives by developing their talents and by serving the needs of their fellowman. People who take these routes often enjoy more satisfying lives than those who try to eat and to drink their way to happiness or those who spend their lives vying for social position. As Dr. Freud’s might suggest, it is in developing a super-ego that we find our greatest fulfillment in this life.

President Kennedy called for Americans to develop a more muscular super-self when he urged, Ask not what your country can do for you! Ask rather what you can do for your country!

Maslow might add, however, that such selflessness can be achieved only by those who have dealt adequately with their physiological, safety, and social needs. When one is battling in the trenches, he may not have the leisure to pursue loftier goals.

The Promise of America

The most famous lines penned by Thomas Jefferson are found in The Declaration of Independence. They establish basic entitlements which all Americans are said to be guaranteed:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights - that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Writing these inspired words has proven to be a small matter compared with deciding exactly what they mean and putting them into force.

Without food and shelter and the other necessities, one has difficulty maintaining life; but Jefferson probably did not have an extensive social services network in mind when he wrote these words. He probably intended only that American citizens should be free to seek the material things that they need to survive and that they should not forfeit their lives except through due process.

No one can guarantee another person’s life. If he chooses to live recklessly, who can protect a daredevil from his own folly?

The right to liberty is a phrase that is debated day in and day out throughout the country. Some argue that the government should get out of their way and allow Americans to do whatever they wish. Others point out that one person’s freedom of action must be limited by other people’s rights.

Our right to pursue happiness must, of course, take into account our neighbor’s right to do the same. If John Doe enjoys nude sunbathing, his neighbor may prefer that he do so in the privacy of his own back yard – surrounded preferably by a very high and thoroughly opaque fence.

Back to the Table of Contents

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Part I – The Territorial Imperative

Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz focused on the drive to acquire and to control turf as a central imperative of life. Plants must find fertile soil in which to sink their roots; and those that fail to do so wither and die. Animals must establish zones in which they can graze or forage or hunt for food and water. If they are unable to find favorable Lebensraum, they cannot survive.

Life involves a continual effort to win and to hold on to those things that guarantee our survival and that provide the foundation for our quality of life. The territorial imperative is, of course, one of the most important motivating forces behind the Darwinian struggle for survival. Reproduction, another of life’s urgent imperatives, generally recognizes no limits. As Thomas Malthus pointed out, every species, including man, replicates itself without reserve. Even though women in the developed world now take birth control pills, the burgeoning human population in most areas of the world provides ample evidence that we humans, no matter how much we congratulate ourselves for being a super species, exercise very little rational control over this process.

The mindless urge to reproduce often pays little heed to the fate of its progeny. A turtle, for example, lays her eggs and leaves them to hatch and her offspring to fend for themselves. Their species survives by laying an abundance of eggs, so that a few will survive and produce another generation.

In a fertile environment, a population of plants or animals expands exponentially until its members have consumed the available resources. Then famine and/or conflict kick in to reduce its numbers to a more sustainable level.

The territorial imperative at its most basic level motivates humans’ to search for land and the life sustaining things that it produces; and when we have gained control of a desirable region, our need to hold onto it quickens our feelings of entitlement.

Turf, in human terms, must be broadly defined, as we often acquire and guard things that do not contribute directly to our basic survival. In an effort to satisfy our needs on all levels of Maslow’s triangle, we accumulate things – both tangible and intangible - in which we and our tribes invest value; and we call these things wealth.

In the pages that follow, we will discuss ways in which we humans strive to gain and to maintain control over enough wealth to satisfy our needs and desires - at least on a reasonable level.

Back to the Table of Contents

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Chapter 1 – Wealth

Broadly defined, wealth is anything that helps us to satisfy our physical and social needs and desires and that offers us a chance to pursue happiness. Whenever we develop feelings of entitlement, we do so because we see value in the object of our desire. If we possess it and if it brings the satisfaction that we anticipate, we are likely to feel enriched.

Those who believe that things have intrinsic value would, of course, argue with that definition. To them gold and silver and diamonds and great art have intrinsic worth – value that exists independent of human judgment!

These absolutists, however, may have difficulty explaining why the cost of precious metals and stones and works of art rise and fall so dramatically in the marketplace. If an ounce of gold has an absolute value of $100, why then does the price that buyers are willing to pay for it vary so much from year to year and from decade to decade. The notion that a gold standard will stabilize values is belied by the fact that the cost of this commodity has fluctuated so widely throughout human history.

In the market place, man is the measure appears to be the rule. The price that we pay for a commodity is determined by what willing owners under no compunction to sell and willing buyers under no pressure to buy agree to in an arms-length transactions. If a desirable commodity is readily available, the price falls. If it is scarce, it rises as those who wish to own it bid the price up.

Practical people divide the things that they want into necessities and luxuries. Necessities aid us directly in the struggle for survival. Luxuries fill needs and desires in the upper regions of Maslow’s triangle.

What we call wealth takes many forms, a few of which are discussed below. Some things that we value are tangible while others have no physical existence. Some are derived directly from the natural world while others are man-made. Natural assets are often essential or at least useful in fulfilling our survival needs. Products of human ingenuity may also help us to survive, but they are very often more important in fulfilling our social and self-fulfillment needs.

Some assets have universal and enduring worth while others are valued only by individuals or small groups, and the value they place on them may also be transient.

Tangible Assets

A tangible asset is, of course, one that we can perceive directly. We can see it and/or hear and/or smell it and/or taste it and/or touch it. It is not merely a human conception which, though it may be symbolized by a tangible object, actually exists only in our minds.

Turf

On the most fundamental level, all creatures need a place to call home. A tribe that has established itself in a secure and verdant region is certainly a wealthy and fortunate group. If the area provides food and water and fresh air and materials for building shelters, the group can satisfy its most basic survival needs with little effort. It does not take long after finding such an Eden before tribal members develop strong feelings of attachment and entitlement to their turf.

Some groups have lived in the same locations for many generations, and their emotional attachments become hoops of steel. Germans, for example, talk with religious devotion of their Heimat and their Vaterland. Americans sing, God bless America! and This land is my land; this land is your land! Tears often well up in a Brit’s eyes, when he talks of Jolly old England. The French are equally fond of their patrie; and the Russians personify their country with the affectionate name Mother Russia.

Even when a tribal homeland is not all that favorable, tribal members may develop strong attachments to it. The Inuit, for example, have eked out their livelihoods in what most people might consider an extremely barren environment; but these people of the frozen north have survived and generally have shown little desire to move to more favorable climes.

Air, Food and Shelter

At the very bottom of Maslow’s pyramid are those resources that are needed to assure our day to day survival. People who do not have adequate food or shelter or clothing are very poor indeed. Who is more pitiful than a refugee who has been evicted from his accustomed turf with nothing more than the possessions that he can carry on his back and who has no other favorable and welcoming place to go?

Those who have the basic necessities for survival, by comparison, are very well off; but they may not view themselves as wealthy. If their food or shelter or clothing is not envied by others, they may look upon them with shame. Those who have only a crust of dry bread or who are dressed in rags or who live in hovels, though they may have the means to survive, lack many other amenities that would help to make their lives secure and fulfilling.

Remarkably, people with an abundance of material goods sometimes also consider themselves poor, if their extravagant desires outrun the resources at their disposal. Such warped conceptions probably arise from unresolved feelings of insecurity.

Tools and Weapons

Humans are above all makers of tools and weapons; our minds are said to have evolved along with the development our devices.

The workman who has tools and knows how to use them may enjoy an enviable standard of living – particularly if he is able to create objects that others find useful and/or aesthetically pleasing.

A soldier who has weapons and knows who to use them is an invaluable member of the tribe in its struggle to take and to defend its turf and natural resources. In the USA, our founding fathers assured our citizens the right to bear arms so that they could defend their tribe and themselves and their wealth. Unfortunately in writing the constitution, the framers did not spell out any limitations to this entitlement that they may have intended.

Services

People are always looking for ways to lighten their load, and one way to do it is by using the service of others. One of the most important measures of personal wealth is access to other people’s labor.

Wealthy people generally do not clean their own houses or do their own laundry or cook their own meals. Instead, they find ways of shifting those burdens to the shoulders of others who are unlikely ever to become wealthy from the work that they perform as they are paid so poorly. Even though menial workers may be doing the most essential jobs, their employers are likely to pay them poorly and to treat them as inferiors

Transportation and Travel

The ability to travel has always been recognized as a form of wealth. When most people walked, a horseman was considered well off. If a knight had the best horse among his fellow crusaders, his followers who rode nags or donkeys or had to walk probably looked upon him as rich.

In modern times, people judge their neighbors’ wealth by the age and the size and the horse power of their cars. Really wealthy people fly their own jets.

Communication

During the middle ages, most people could not write and as a result their social intercourse was severely limited. Only aristocrats corresponded with friends in distant places.

The rise of the merchant class led to wide spread literacy, and gradually the means of communication improved as well. The postal service offered individuals and businesses a very efficient means of conducting their affairs. When telephones first appeared, only wealthy people could afford them; today most people around the world own computers and cellphones which make communication inexpensive and efficient. In fact, if one does not have