Growing up

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Minimum wage laws

 

You said:

Wages are set by the laws of economics (mainly supply and demand) just as are all other prices, and when you price your product too high people don't buy (they go elsewhere, find substitutes, or do without). These don't happen overnight; habits changes, new relationships get built, etc. That said, minimum wage laws can be useful to deal with situations of exploitation (such as modern manifestations of slavery -- where the law doesn't have to prove abuses when all it has to do is enforce a minimum wage. This, however, is a rare application and there are always other ways to handle it. The idea of enforcing a "living wage" by this means is likely to be self-defeating, unless the minimum is set lower than what would have been payed anyway, as jobs are lost, businesses move elsewhere or lose out to competition not subject to the law, and the community as a whole becomes a little less economically sound. The problem is, this sort of thing, as with rent control, usually takes years to do its damage.

ChatGPT said:

You’ve laid out a coherent and internally consistent classical argument, and it’s one many economists would have recognized without complaint thirty or forty years ago. It rests on two core premises: that wages are prices determined largely by supply and demand, and that sustained price floors above the market-clearing level tend, over time, to reduce quantity demanded. Both are broadly true as abstractions, and your comparison to rent control is not a careless one.

Where the argument is strongest is in its emphasis on dynamics rather than immediacy. Labor markets, like housing markets, adjust slowly. Firms do not instantly fire workers or relocate; instead they alter hiring plans, substitute capital for labor, compress hours, raise prices, or quietly stop expanding. The political appeal of minimum or “living” wage laws is therefore front-loaded, while their costs are often diffuse, delayed, and difficult to attribute. That temporal asymmetry is real, and it explains why such policies can survive long after their economic effects would trouble their original supporters if they were more visible.

Your point about exploitation is also well taken and often underappreciated. Minimum wage laws are blunt instruments, but they can be effective precisely because of that bluntness in extreme cases—forced labor, debt bondage, or quasi-slavery—where proving abuse is difficult but proving underpayment is trivial. In such cases the law functions less as labor market engineering and more as a policing shortcut. As you say, however, this is not the modal case, and it is arguably a misuse of the tool to treat it as such.

Where I would push back a little is on the implicit assumption that competitive labor markets are the norm. In many low-wage sectors they are not. Monopsony power—whether from a single dominant employer, geographic immobility, immigration status, or informational asymmetry—can suppress wages below what a competitive market would produce. In those cases, a modest minimum wage can raise wages without reducing employment and may even increase it by drawing workers into the market. This does not rescue the concept of a “living wage” set by political fiat, but it does complicate the claim that minimum wages are necessarily distortionary above zero.

There is also a conceptual slippage in the phrase “living wage” that deserves scrutiny. A living wage is not an economic variable; it is a moral judgment about what income ought to suffice for a dignified life in a particular place at a particular time. Trying to enforce that judgment solely through wage floors forces businesses to internalize social policy goals that may be better handled through taxes, transfers, housing policy, or healthcare provision. When those complementary institutions are weak—as they often are—the wage floor becomes a surrogate welfare system, and that is where the self-defeating dynamics you describe are most likely to appear.

So I’d say your argument succeeds as a warning against overreach rather than as a blanket condemnation. Minimum wages can correct certain market failures at the margin; they are poor tools for guaranteeing broad social outcomes. When they are pushed into that role, the damage tends to be quiet, cumulative, and politically deniable—exactly the kind of harm that takes years to notice and even longer to reverse.

You said:

You express essentially the point I was making as a pushback. I would say we are in relative accord. A minimum wage law is a useful thing to have, so long as it is low enough to do work against abuse but not as a tool for improving living standards/

ChatGPT said:

Yes — I think that’s a fair summary, and I agree we’re largely aligned.

A minimum wage works tolerably well as a guardrail, not as a lever. Set low enough, it can rule out the worst forms of abuse, simplify enforcement, and establish a social floor without seriously distorting hiring decisions. Once it is asked to do more than that — to substitute for weak social insurance, housing policy, or bargaining power — it becomes the wrong instrument for the job, and it starts to act like any other binding price floor.

What often muddies the discussion is that two very different goals get rhetorically fused. One is preventing exploitation, which is defensive and limited. The other is ensuring adequacy of income, which is expansive and redistributive. Using the same policy tool for both invites confusion and, as you point out, disappointment delayed just long enough that cause and effect are hard to connect.

There’s also a political economy angle lurking here. A “living wage” sounds humane and costs the treasury nothing on paper, which makes it attractive to legislators. The costs are pushed onto employers, consumers, marginal workers, and future growth, none of whom present a single, obvious bill. By contrast, policies that more directly raise living standards — wage subsidies, negative income taxes, universal healthcare, housing supply expansion — are fiscally explicit and therefore politically harder.

So yes: minimum wages as a backstop against abuse make sense. Minimum wages as a primary engine of social improvement are, at best, inefficient and, at worst, quietly corrosive. The tragedy is that when they fail, the failure is often attributed to “greed” or “insufficient boldness,” rather than to the mismatch between tool and task.

You said:

One tool in a toolbox that should only be used for the job it is designed to do.

ChatGPT said:

Exactly. A minimum wage is a screwdriver, not a crowbar — indispensable when you need it, damaging when you pretend it can do everything.

Economic policy goes wrong most often not because a tool is bad, but because it’s pressed into service for a task it was never designed to handle. Price floors can block exploitation at the bottom edge; they are not precision instruments for shaping an entire income distribution or compensating for failures elsewhere in the system.

Once you frame it as “one tool in a toolbox,” a lot of the heat drains out of the debate. The real questions become: what problem are we actually trying to solve? and what combination of tools fits that problem best? When those questions are skipped, policy turns into symbolism — emotionally satisfying in the short term, structurally brittle in the long term.

In that sense, your formulation is not just economical; it’s diagnostic. It points to a failure of policy hygiene rather than of economics.

Chimps, bonobos, Maya: peace and war

You said: 

There are chimps and bonobos, closely related yet apparently markedly different in behavior. Details? ChatGPT said: Yeah—chimps and bonobos are a great case study in how small evolutionary nudges can lead to big behavioral differences. They’re each other’s closest living relatives (and ours), split only ~1–2 million years ago, yet they vibe very differently. Here’s the breakdown. The basics Species Common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) Bonobo (Pan paniscus) Genetics: ~99.6% identical to each other Geography: Chimps live north of the Congo River Bonobos live south of it That river likely kept populations apart long enough for their social styles to diverge. Social structure & power Chimps Male-dominated hierarchies Coalitions of males control territory and access to females Status is everything; aggression helps you climb Bonobos Female-centered society High-ranking females form alliances Males often get status via their mothers, not brute force Result: chimps feel more “political,” bonobos more “cooperative.” Aggression & conflict Chimps Frequent violent aggression Documented cases of: Lethal attacks Infanticide Organized raids on neighboring groups Conflict is often resolved by intimidation or force Bonobos Much lower levels of serious violence Tension gets defused quickly Conflicts rarely escalate into injury This is one of the starkest contrasts between the two. Sex & social bonding This is where bonobos really stand out. Chimps Sex mainly tied to reproduction Females are receptive only during estrus Sex doesn’t usually function as a social “tool” Bonobos Sex is everywhere and multifunctional: Stress relief Bonding Reconciliation after conflict Includes male–female, female–female, and even juvenile play contexts Females are sexually receptive throughout their cycle Think of bonobo sex as social glue; chimp sex is more transactional. Empathy & cooperation Bonobos More tolerant of strangers More likely to: Share food Help unrelated individuals Coordinate peacefully Show higher emotional sensitivity in experiments Chimps Cooperative, but selectively Much more suspicious of outsiders Helping behavior often tied to direct benefit or alliance-building Parenting & development Chimps Tougher childhood Young chimps see lots of aggression Mothers are nurturing but live in a tense social world Bonobos Longer, more protected juvenility Play lasts longer into adulthood Adult bonobos retain more juvenile traits (a classic case of neoteny) Ecology: why the split happened A popular hypothesis: Bonobo environment had: More stable food sources Less competition with gorillas Chimp environment was: Harsher More competitive When food is plentiful, tolerance pays. When it’s scarce, aggression does. What this means for humans Humans share traits with both: Chimp-like: Coalition politics Territorial violence Bonobo-like: Empathy Pair bonding Sex used for social connection In other words: human nature isn’t “chimp OR bonobo”—it’s a flexible mix, shaped heavily by environment and culture. If you want, I can zoom in on: What this says about human morality Sexual behavior evolution Or whether bonobos are really as peaceful as their reputation suggests (they’re not saints 😄) You said: When chimps were first being studied we got similar "nice" reports about them, but over the years the less nice behavior has been observed. Could something like this play a role in bonobo interpretation? ChatGPT said: Yes — that’s a very sharp question, and a lot of primatologists take it seriously. The short version is: bonobos probably aren’t angels, and some of their “peaceful” reputation almost certainly reflects who studied them, where, and how long — just like early chimp research did. Here’s how the parallel works, and where it likely breaks. The chimp precedent Early chimp studies (Goodall in the 1960s especially) emphasized: Tool use Maternal care Play and social bonds Aggression wasn’t denied, but it was often framed as: Rare Pathological Human-caused (e.g., provisioning effects) Then, over decades: Long-term field sites matured Researchers followed multiple communities Habituation improved Rare but brutal behaviors finally surfaced: Lethal intergroup raids Systematic infanticide Coalitionary murder Those behaviors were always there — we just needed time, patience, and the willingness to accept uncomfortable data. Could bonobos be on the same trajectory? Absolutely possible — and partially already happening. Observation bias & logistics Bonobos are: Harder to study (remote, swampy forests, political instability) Observed at fewer long-term sites Studied in smaller sample sizes That means: Rare events (like killings) are easy to miss A few well-behaved communities can skew the narrative So yes: if bonobos committed violence at chimp-like frequencies, we’d almost certainly underestimate it right now. But here’s the important asymmetry Even accounting for bias, the difference doesn’t vanish. What has been observed Across decades of bonobo research: Severe, coalitionary violence is exceptionally rare No confirmed pattern of: Intergroup warfare Male coalitions killing rivals Aggression exists — chasing, biting, intimidation — but usually: Short-lived Quickly de-escalated Not lethal If bonobos had chimp-style murder rates, we’d expect at least a few clear cases by now. We don’t. Captive & experimental data back this up This is key, because it reduces field bias. In captivity and controlled experiments: Bonobos are more tolerant over food More likely to share with strangers Less likely to escalate conflicts Show more consolation behavior Chimps raised in similar conditions still: Form dominance-heavy hierarchies Use intimidation Show sharper in-group/out-group hostility Same labs, same protocols — different outcomes. Reputational overcorrection is real, though Early bonobo researchers did: Lean into the contrast with chimps (it helped justify funding) Emphasize sex and peace as headline traits Underplay female aggression and coercion We now know bonobos: Do bully Do coerce (including sexual coercion, just less violently) Do exclude individuals Can be nasty at low levels They’re gentler, not gentle. A useful way to think about it Rather than: “Bonobos are peaceful, chimps are violent” A better framing is: Both species are capable of aggression, but they differ in how often it escalates, who does it, and what stops it. Chimps escalate upward → coalitions → lethal outcomes Bonobos diffuse sideways → sex, grooming, alliances → cooling off Same emotional toolkit, different default settings. Bottom line Yes, observer bias likely inflated bonobos’ “hippie ape” image No, it probably doesn’t erase the real behavioral differences The chimp lesson made primatologists much more cautious with bonobos If you want, we can dig into: The few controversial reports of bonobo killings Whether bonobo society would stay “peaceful” under ecological stress Or how much of this is biology vs social learning (that one gets spicy) You said: Reminds me a bit about early reports of Maya society as peaceful and flower-child life; not at all what we now know. ChatGPT said: That’s a very apt comparison—and historians and anthropologists explicitly use the Maya case as a cautionary tale for exactly this kind of interpretive drift. What happened with the Maya, chimps, and possibly bonobos follows the same pattern. The “peaceful Maya” mirage Early 20th-century Maya scholarship (Morley, Thompson, etc.) portrayed them as: Priest-astronomers Obsessed with calendars and cosmology Largely non-violent, theocratic city-states Warfare seen as rare or ritualized Why? Most readable inscriptions were calendrical Early sites excavated were ceremonial, not residential Bloodletting scenes were misinterpreted or ignored There was a strong desire to contrast them with “warlike” Aztecs Sound familiar? What broke the illusion Three things changed the story: 1. Decipherment of writing Once glyphs were read properly, they turned out to be: Dynastic histories War records Captures, torture, executions, beheadings The stelae were basically royal propaganda, not poetry. 2. Better archaeology Later work uncovered: Fortifications Burn layers Mass graves Weapon trauma on skeletons Violence wasn’t peripheral—it was structural. 3. Longer time horizons Zooming out over centuries showed: Cycles of war, collapse, recovery Intensifying violence under ecological stress Competitive prestige economies that rewarded aggression Peaceful periods existed—but were fragile and temporary. The shared cognitive trap Across all three cases, scholars fell into the same pitfalls: Sampling bias: Studying the “nice” parts first Visibility bias: Violence leaves subtler traces than art or ritual Moral projection: Wanting ancient or nonhuman societies to be kinder than us Contrast bias: Defining one group mainly as “not the violent one” Bonobos benefited from all four. The key difference (and why bonobos aren’t just “Maya-in-the-making”) Here’s where the analogy bends. With the Maya: Violence was there in abundance We just couldn’t read the evidence yet With bonobos: We can see bodies, wounds, social dynamics in real time We have decades of observation across sites We have captive and experimental confirmation So far, the missing bonobo violence hasn’t later “appeared” the way Maya warfare did. That doesn’t mean it won’t be revised—but any revision is likely to be: “Bonobos are more aggressive and coercive than early accounts suggested” —not— “Bonobos routinely wage lethal coalitionary war like chimps.” A deeper commonality What really links Maya, chimps, bonobos, and humans is this: Observers systematically underestimate violence when it is intermittent, strategic, or socially sanctioned. Maya war wasn’t constant → looked peaceful Chimp violence is episodic → took decades to catch Bonobo violence may be rarer still → easy to miss entirely Which leads to a sobering takeaway: Peacefulness is often not the absence of violence, but violence held in check by social structure and ecology. That’s true for bonobos. It was true for some Maya periods. It’s true for humans on our better days. If you want to keep pulling this thread, a fascinating next step is: How stress (drought, crowding, hierarchy breakdown) flips societies from bonobo-like to chimp-like behavior Or whether humans have ever truly sustained a bonobo-style equilibrium at scale Either direction gets… uncomfortably relevant. Get smarter responses, upload files and images, and more. I suggest we get discouraged about ourselves largely because in the way history is recorded, telling us about conflicts but skipping over the better aspects.

ChatGPT said:

Yes — that’s very likely true, and it’s a perceptive way to put it.

History is profoundly event-biased. Conflict produces sharp edges: dates, names, victors, ruins, treaties, graves. Peace mostly produces continuity, which is boring to record and hard to narrate. A village that feeds itself, raises children, resolves disputes quietly, and muddles along for three hundred years leaves very little for an annalist to get excited about. Then one bad decade happens and that becomes “the history.”

So we end up with a distorted ratio. Wars get chapters; stability gets footnotes. Even when historians know this intellectually, the sources drag them back toward drama. Chronicles are written by elites whose job was often to fight. Archaeology privileges destruction layers. Texts survive because someone thought they were worth copying — and proclamations, victories, and grievances motivate copying far more than “nothing terrible happened this year.”

This skews our self-image. If you read history naïvely, you’d think humans spend most of their time killing one another. In reality, even in quite violent societies, most people most of the time are cooperating: farming, trading, gossiping, worshipping, caring for the sick, raising children. If they weren’t, the society would collapse almost immediately. Violence is real, but it rides on top of a much larger substrate of everyday decency that rarely announces itself.

There’s also a psychological layer. We’re pattern-hungry creatures, and conflict provides clean causal stories: this happened because of that. Peace is diffuse. Why did a region stay stable for generations? Because of dozens of overlapping norms, habits, compromises, and sheer fatigue — not a tidy narrative. So even modern historians, who are far more sensitive to bias than earlier ones, still struggle to give peace its due without sounding vague or sentimental.

That loops back nicely to your bonobo point. We may not be wrong about their relative peacefulness, but we’re structurally better at noticing and remembering violence than its absence. When bonobos calmly share food or defuse tension, nothing happens — and “nothing happened” is the hardest data point to respect. The same is true for human societies that manage to keep things from boiling over for long stretches.

So yes, discouragement can come from mistaking the archive for reality. The archive shouts; ordinary life whispers.

A sober but oddly comforting thought is this: if humans really were as bad as our histories sometimes make us sound, we wouldn’t have history at all. We’d have burned ourselves out long before anyone had time to write it down.

You said:

On first glance a society looks nice and pleasant, then we learn of some conflicts and the coin gets flipped over. A balanced approach sees both.

ChatGPT said:

Exactly. The first glance gives you a surface equilibrium; the second glance gives you stress fractures. Wisdom is learning not to mistake either one for the whole coin.

What tends to happen—over and over—is a kind of overcorrection. Early observers see harmony and assume innocence. Later observers uncover violence and assume deception or brutality. In reality, most societies are doing both at once: maintaining cooperation while managing conflict, not instead of it. The mistake is treating “nice” and “violent” as mutually exclusive categories rather than as coexisting modes.

A balanced view accepts that conflict isn’t evidence of moral failure so much as evidence of social density. Wherever you have people living together long enough to build art, rituals, kinship, and memory, you also get rivalry, grievance, and occasional brutality. The real diagnostic question isn’t “is there conflict?” but “how often does it escalate, who restrains it, and at what cost?”

That framing rescues us from cynicism without lapsing into sentimentality. It lets us say, for example: the Maya produced extraordinary intellectual and aesthetic achievements and engaged in dynastic violence; bonobos are markedly better at defusing tension and still bully and coerce; humans are capable of sustained cooperation and periodic horror. None of those facts cancels the others.

In that sense, maturity—whether scholarly or personal—comes from resisting the urge to flip the coin and declare the first side an illusion. The coin was always two-sided. We just didn’t bother to turn it over yet.