Selfishness and Biological Drives

This post from Thinking Girl got me thinking. In it she expresses her annoyance with those who feel the need to procreate so strongly that they seek medical intervention to help. She also expresses her opinion that it is selfish to want to do so for various reasons. She asks why people do it, and includes in that her observation that it can't be about biology or rather, that biology isn't enough, because people overcome biological drives all the time. And that is what got me thinking...

First, I'm not picking on Thinking Girl here in particular, this is just where the thought originated so I give credit where credit is due. I have seen similar sentiments expressed about other biological drives in other contexts as well.

It seems there is often a subtext or unstated assumption that somehow following a biological drive is suspect or wrong and that we should overcome it. But that obviously really is unworkable as a general rule. And really, why should we overcome biological drives? Enjoying a beautiful painting is based on biological drives in our brains. Enjoying a good meal is based on a biological drive. Seeking out a good meal or nice music or pleasant company - those are all in part or almost completely based on biological drives. We are social animals. We eat. We make music and listen to it. We dance. These are the things that make life worth living in the first place. Why should we deny them simply because they are biological?

One could argue it is "selfish" to give in to our biological drive to have good, yummy food because it would be much better if we all ate flavorless bean-curd paste every day because then we'd do less harm to the environment and there'd be more overall food protien available cheaply to feed the people of the world. And after all, the desire for yummy, tasty food is just biological, so we should just suppress it like we suppress other biological urges, right?

And then what is wrong with selfishness? Obviously, it is not a virtue to be spread widely, but in a sense, it is what allows any society to function. To be selfish is to put yourself and your needs first (and thus take care of them) in a given context. But everyone needs taking care of. Society can't possibly take care of everyone. Therefore, the first, best thing you can do for society is actually take care of your own needs so that you don't need to tax society's resources. To be self-sufficient as much as you are able to is a virtue. In a sense, to not be self-sufficient and take care of your own needs is selfish, because then you end up draining the energies of others to take care of YOU. So in that sense, it is actually more selfish not to be selfish in some contexts.

This is what I think is at the core of libertarianism. It is not that we don't care about other people, it is that the most efficient and most moral way to have everyone taken care of is to have everyone take care of themself first. That is usually best for everyone. Think about it. Who knows your needs better than anyone else? You do. Who is the most qualified person to allocate resources to meet your own particular needs? You are. Therefore, the first, best, most efficient person to take care of your own needs is you. You won't need to explain your needs to yourself. You won't need to go fill out paperwork from some government form to show you qualify for some particular need. And collectively, the government or some other body, which by nature would have to operate on a mass scale, would likely get your needs wrong or in the wrong proportion anyway - that is just the nature of a bureaucracy.

Plus, you are the most motivated person to getting your own needs met. Thus, if you decide you have a need (or even just a desire) that is more expensive than society could ever afford to just give you, if you allocate your own resources, then you could give yourself something that you need that society at large never could. (For instance, if you are like me and love ot have a new "toy" in the form of a 5-7K computer every so many years (which are lengthening as I pay for day care and other things...) - well, it is clear that no welfare program would be able to give that much to everyone at that frequency - the government would go bankrupt. But for myself, I can marshall my own personal resources, save, and even seek a better paying job in order to give that to myself. Sure, there are tradeoffs. Perhaps I'll decide I like the quality of life from my current job, so I voluntarily sacrifice getting my computer in order to keep that lifestyle. That is my choice to make. If the computer was just supplied by the government, well, then I'd be demanding it because to get it doesn't cost me anything and requires me to sacrifice nothing.

Obviously, my level of motivation to get that computer (or anything else I need, like money to support my wonderful daughter, which is where all of my money seems to go these days) determines my choice of career and choice of job within that career. For instance, right now, there is an opportunity to work at a new job that would involve working for a very abusive boss. It pays more and could open some doors. So now I have to ask myself if I want to give up my wonderful job I have right now (which is only temporary in any case) in exchange for that. With a new baby on the way, I have to think really hard about that. Is the potential abuse worth the extra money and financial security for my family? Again, providing for myself, I'm in the best position to make that decision. On the other hand, if it were just welfare, I would have no reason not to just keep voting myself more money from the treasury.

Anyone who has read this far who is screaming at the monitor "what about those who can't earn enough to take care of themselves" - well, note that above, I very clearly stated that one should take care of oneself to the best of their ability. Unfortunately, there will be those who cannot do so for whatever reason. Even then, though, I think the first, best line of support is family. That's the way it has always been, in fact. That's the way it still is, primarily. That's a partial answer, even, to TG's original question - why have families? Families are where people find their first line of support. Children would also be in the category of those who cannot take care of themselves - in fact, parents are legally obligated to do so and can be penalized if they do not. That's why I think one should not have children unless you are financially and emotionally able to do that. (Though it is a tricky issue - how can you keep, for instance, someone dirt poor from having a dozen children that he or she cannot possibly support?) That's another reason why I have trouble with welfare, even for children. While it is not their fault, if there is no disincentive to have huge numbers of unsupported children, then that just makes the problem worse. I wonder how TG feels about someone who just goes out and has a lot of kids and then turns around and asks her to pay for them.

So families are the first line of support. Don't have kids you can't afford. Support the family you already have. Again, family would be the best way to do this - family members have a personal connection and care about what happens to you. That goes not for just children, but for the disabled. And plan ahead for yourself, so when you are old, you have enough resources saved so you don't burden your children or society.

I don't pretend that everyone will be able to do this. I realize it is hard, particularly for those who don't make much money. But every dollar one manages to take care of for oneself is one less dollar someone else has to spend to do so. And while there are many born into poverty, there are also plenty who have the opportunity to get out or who were born middle class but were never taught how to handle money responsibly or plan ahead and who end up in poverty because of that. Lack of education for birth control also contributes to that. There's an area where I think collective action can work the most good. Education. Education starts at home, but we have a public education system so we have an opportunity to teach real useful skills to everyone, including finances, reproductive health, retirement planning, and so forth. Every person who learns those and takes it to heart is one less person requring outside support - and perhaps even more than one less, if that person does well enough not only to take care of him or herself, but also of his or her family members who cannot take care of themselves.

Does this all sound selfish? Yes, I'm sure it does, but I think it is about sustainability. Think of it in environmental terms. If you have a forest where trees can't take care of themselves because of conditions, and so they die, eventually you run out of forest. If your solution is to keep brining in trees from the outside to replace those that die, then you really aren't solving the problem. On the other hand, if you change conditions so that each tree is responsible for taking care of itself, then pretty soon you have a full forest again and you don't need to do anything to keep it going but leave it alone. Obviously, an oversimplification, but the general idea is that it is easier to keep things going when a given component of a system is self-sustaining. That is true for societies as well. If you kept the dying trees alive by continuously sapping the strength of the healthy trees, eventually the dying trees will still die because the healthy trees could get so sapped that they stop growing as well, and then they have nothing left to give and then all the trees die.

That's a crude description of the problem with things like welfare. Taxing the productive to support the unproductive just discourages production in the productive and makes the unproductive less able to fend for themselves - why even try to work if you get your money for free? It is a tricky issue. I know that family support systems will not suffice for all of those who truly are unable to fend for themselves. The trouble again, though, is how do you differentiate between those who can't and those who simply won't because they are lazy? A bureaucracy won't be able to handle that. Anyone who thinks otherwise has obviously never spent much time dealing with a bureaucracy.

The ideal is to have as many people taking care of themselves and their families so as to minimize the number of people who cannot fend for themselves who also have no family to do so. From there, private charity could then step in. Even if there's no welfare, there's nothing stopping anyone from voluntarily giving their time or their money or anything else they can spare to help those in need, either directly or through an organization. Again, that is also the most efficient way to do it. Some people will have no resources to spare after taking care of themselves and their family. I don't right now - day care is an arm and a leg, for one thing. Then there's the money my wife and I send to her mother every month. And savings for our daughter's college fund, which is still woefully inadequate. So to take money from me through taxes right now to give to someone else, well, that just makes me not fulfill my own needs - not exactly a great trade-off. Robbing Peter to pay Paul I think that is called.

On the other hand, my mother, who is now semi-retired, and my father, who is now semi-retired, they have saved their whole lives for retirement and now have time to spare and so they both do a lot of volunteer work to help others and they also give money. (I guess it helps no longer having to support my sorry ass... ;) ) I know lots of other people who do similar sorts of things, some retired, some still in their working prime, but with more resources of time and money because their kids are older than my daughter and they have been working longer.

As a final note, I want to note that I realize that a lot of people pay lip service to what I mention above, particularly in the GOP, but who in actual practice, are even bigger welfare users than individuals - I'm talking about Corporate Welfare. I'm talking about those who live on the government teat, getting government contracts as political favors or special tax breaks, and who basically have a business model of getting as much taxpayer money as possible rather than actually producing something that would independently support a company. This also happens intra-company, with one large company giving contracts to another so both groups of executives can scratch each others' backs as opposed to doing business with the partner best suited to the endeavor. In that sense, large corporations are no better than big government. So I realize a lot of corporate and government reform is needed beyond just getting rid of individual welfare.

Ok, that was a nice, long, rambling post. Maybe later I'll get to my green grass post I've been itching to do for weeks now. (I'm getting tired of the privilege discussion that never seems to go anywhere, though I think a few interesting little nuggets have come out of it, so I may talk about that as well).