"Kleptocracies"

I've mentioned:

One of the reasons we stopped paying attention to Jared Diamond after Guns, Germs and Steel was his false take on what happened to the Easter Islanders in his book, Collapse!*

More after the jump

From Delancey Place:

Today's selection -- from Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond.

Why do kleptocracies thrive?:

"The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman, between a robber baron and a public benefactor, is merely one of degree: a matter of just how large a percentage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistrib­uted tribute is put. We consider President Mobutu of Zaire a kleptocrat because he keeps too much tribute (the equivalent of billions of dollars) and redistributes too little tribute (no functioning telephone system in Zaire). We consider George Washington a statesman because he spent tax money on widely admired programs and did not enrich himself as presi­dent. Nevertheless, George Washington was born into wealth, which is much more unequally distributed in the United States than in New Guinea villages.

"For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask: why do the commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats? This question, raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx, is raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners or by upstart would-be replacement kleptocrats seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen. For example, Hawaiian history was repeatedly punctuated by revolts against repressive chiefs, usually led by younger brothers promising less oppression. This may sound funny to us in the context of old Hawaii, until we reflect on all the misery still being caused by such struggles in the modern world.

"What should an elite do to gain popular support while still maintaining a more comfortable lifestyle than commoners? Kleptocrats throughout the ages have resorted to a mixture of four solutions:

1. Disarm the populace, and arm the elite. That's much easier in these days of high-tech weaponry, produced only in industrial plants and easily monopolized by an elite, than in ancient times of spears and clubs easily made at home.

2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute received, in popular ways. This principle was as valid for Hawaiian chiefs as it is for American politicians today....

....MUCH MORE 

Professor Diamond was so set on using Easter Island as an example of his ecocide thesis that he regurgitated it despite huge flaws in the theory at the time he was writing. And then: 

It Wasn't 'Ecocide': What Happend On Easter Island

Jared Diamond has some explaining to do.*

From Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, August 13, 2018 via PhysOrg:

Easter Island's society might not have collapsed

More on how he twists facts to fit his sales pitch, here on how great hunter-gatherers have it vs. peeps who practice agriculture:

"The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race" – 1987 article by Jared Diamond

Diamond, at least since Guns, Germs and Steel, has struck me as lightweight, just coasting, trying to force observations into a prejudiced worldview. I know his impressive c.v. but it had gotten to the point where any time I read something of his I thought of Churchill's comment:

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

It turns out that he was like that a quarter century ago.
More spleen venting below....

*****

.....This neo-Rousseau-ish babble makes me want to grab a mongongo nut and crack it on his head.

Painting the image of hunter-gatherer superiority he makes no mention of the agricultural peasants of the middle ages who worked between 180 and 260 days per year, the rest of the time being taken up with Sundays, feast days, holidays, fair days etc.

Denigrating the division of labor he makes no mention of the benefits that he has personally derived. I would estimate his Sasquatch-sized ecological footprint to be equivalent to 500-1000 Bushmen.

In many ways the best thing he could do, if he truly believed what he writes, is join the Voluntary Human Extiction Movement instead of jetting off to his next book-signing.

In the meantime we have 7 billion people to feed.

[link to his paper rotted, substitute  http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/Thoc/Readings/Diamond_WorstMistake.pdf]

It appears I got sort of worked up.