The Race to the Bottom and Human Nature

Let us examine the new anthropology via Riker's claim that a unitary state is more efficient in the creation and enforcement of policy than a federal state. His reasoning is a version of the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis that competi­tion for taxes in federal states leads to inefficient policies.

Thousands of studies have now tested the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis. John Kincaid (1991) shows that, when properly structured, intergovernmental competition can produce significant social and individual benefits. Supporting Kincaid's claims are three separate meta-analyses of the race-to-the-bottom studies. All three reached similar conclusions: first, races to the bottom are weak and rare; and second, interjurisdictional competition usually leads to positive results, which include efficiency, innovation, robustness, resilience, responsiveness and greater choice (Oates 2001; Schneiberg and Bartley 2008; Smith 2018).^[4] So, the benefits of top-down uniformity are lower than Riker pre­dicted, and the benefits of federalism are higher.^[5]

These are surprising results, given the intuitive logic of the race-to-the- bottom thesis. But that logic is based on the standard model's anthropolo­gies. The new anthropology helps explain why races to the bottom are rare. It teaches that humans are neither as power-mad nor as greedy as the standard model claims—‘Just as often as not, people's moral values are dearer to them than dollars. And they run deeper' (Tuschman 2013).

The criminologist, James Q. Wilson, wrote a book on humans' moral sense because he thought what needed explaining was ‘not why some people are criminals, but why most are not'.

The idea that humans have a moral sense that influences their behaviour is not entirely new. It fits Aristotle's claim that humans are social, political animals who possess an innate ability to cooperate and desire meaning and purpose. A similar line of thinking comes from the Scottish philosophers of the 18th century, who claimed that human nature contains moral sentiments that influence human behaviour more than reason. Those moral sentiments include benevolence, sympathy, compassion and a desire for approval from others. David Hume described it thus: ‘There is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for human kind; some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and the spider' (Himmelfarb 2001). Adam Smith argued that market econ­omies succeed because selfishness is ‘tempered by an equally powerful incli­nation toward cooperation, empathy and trust—traits that are hard-wired into our nature and reinforced by our moral instincts' (Pearlstein 2018).^[6]

This anthropology suggests, contrary to the standard model, that society and cooperation are, to a significant degree, natural. However, it also acknowl­edges that human nature may be temporarily repressed or redirected, but will eventually come roaring back either directly or in some black forms (Delsol 2003). Philosophers from this line of thinking also often recognize that govern­ment is artificial, created by the need to stop unjustified violence and coercion (Schelling i960). Once those harmful acts are constrained, humans may be freed to ‘pursue happiness' as they best understand it.

The idea that the ‘pursuit of happiness' is an individual right comes from the American Declaration of Independence. Its authors would not have thought it a right if they believed it would lead to selfish, rapacious, hedonistic or indolent human behaviour (Gregg 2019). The author of the phrase, Thomas Jefferson, had a Scottish interpretation of happiness. Happiness, he believed, came from ‘the personal commitment of one's faculties to purposes of enduring and jus­tifiable value'. The individual pursuit of happiness, Jefferson believed, would benefit society, because ‘good acts give us pleasure... [b]ecause nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their dis­tresses' (Jefferson [1814] 1975, pp. 540-4).

Some modern scholars who agree with Jefferson's anthropology claim that human happiness comes from ‘earned success' that means creating value in our lives or the lives of others (Brooks 2010). In other words, happiness comes not from avoiding but accepting responsibility and obligations, and fitting one's life and liberty to socially meaningful endeavours (Erikson 1968; Kekes 2002).^[7] If correct, there is reason to trust that individual freedom to pursue happiness can lead to creative and productive social benefits.

Much of modern society, however, holds a different notion of happiness. This notion requires both greater top-down control of society and the liber­ation of individuals from social obligations and responsibilities. It is based on Romanticism's ideal, championed by Rousseau, that individuals should be authentic, reject the norms and ideals of society, and blaze their own identity and path. This ideal encourages government policies that liberate individuals from all unnecessary and undesirable obligations and constraints, including social embeddedness, to choose their own path (Kekes 2002; Manent 2007; Milbank and Pabst, 2016).

One reaction to this extreme individualism and resulting loneliness has been for individuals to find society by fragmenting into sects of the like­minded. This is a form of tribalism and minority rights that can create positive, supportive associations and yet also inhibit the associations that would tran­scend differences (Hawkins, Yudkin, Juan-Torres and Dixon 2018; Sachs 2018).

The contrast between Romanticism's authentic individualism and the idea that happiness comes from ‘earned success that is embedded in social relations' for both government policy and individual choice is profound. For example, the blank-slate theory of human nature explains, and Romanticism justifies, extreme individual behaviour that gives little consideration to social convention and obli­gations and, hence, why competition and races to the bottom are expected to be harmful. The new anthropology, with its recognition that humans are social creatures with a moral sense, helps explain why races to the bottom are weaker than predicted and why freedom need not result in anarchy and chaos.

Yet, the new anthropology's claims of a human moral sense are insufficient to explain the weakness of races to the bottom, because the human moral sense is not determinative and can be overridden by individual choice.^[9] An additional piece of the puzzle is the new science of complexity's understand­ing of the nature of order, specifically, the concept of emergence, which vio­lates the standard model's assumptions of linearity.

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