Aging autocrats are bad for the economy, according to a newly published paper by Richard Jong-A-Pin and Jochen Mierauab entitled, "No country for old men: Aging dictators and economic growth." Jong-A-Pin and Mierauab developed a model of the relationship between the age of a dictator and economic growth. The model predicted that as a dictator got closer to death, the economic growth rate in their country would decrease. The model’s predictions, the authors claim, are supported by empirical evidence based on a large sample of more than 400 dictators from 76 countries. The bottom line: A one-year increase in the age of a dictator decreases economic growth by 0.12 percentage points.
What’s the evolutionary explanation for this problem with power? We think it’s something akin to the problem with sugar. In the natural environment, sugar was hard to get, and getting it could be dangerous. You had to climb cliffs, brave bees, and/or trek for miles through jungles where dangerous animals and plants awaited the unwary.
Today, it comes pre-packaged in cubes or rustling and flowing in crystal form. You can have it white or brown, light or dark, or concealed in packages of something else. Evolution had no need to build into us a limit on our appetite for sugar; the difficulty of getting it was limited enough. So today, we gorge on it until fear–of losing our teeth, getting diabetes, getting too fat to appeal to potential sexual partners–manages to limit our self-indulgence.
In the hunter-gatherer world, there was no institutional power, no police, government, or laws. There was only personal influence and custom. So, there was no need for evolution to build a more graceful response to the decline of a ruler’s ability to manage the affairs of the state. Contemporary humans have to find their own way, and one way is to try to protect one’s personal interest to the very end.
But on second thought, one could think of a simpler evolutionary origin for the behavior of aging autocrats: Prior to the appearance of the human species, males who wished to reproduce had always had to fight other males for the privilege. And age has always ended the reign of a dominant male. But such creatures tend to go down fighting.
Is the behavior of an aging autocrat, political or otherwise, simply the desperate, misguided struggle of an aging male in an evolutionarily unusual situation to hold onto power? Should we see him as analogous to an old, wounded chimp fighting off the bites of the young challengers?
https://www.tausiinsider.com/the-problem-with-aging-autocrats/?feed_id=405910&_unique_id=6495ab749c22d
Comments
Post a Comment