"Why Don't Chimpanzees Like to Barter Commodities?"

Chimpanzees are reluctant to trade "a very good commodity (apple slices)" for "an even more preferred commodity (grapes)." This research attempts to explain why and in the process learn something about how barter might have arisen among humans:

Why don't chimpanzees like to barter commodities?, EurekAlert: For thousands of years, human beings have relied on commodity barter as an essential aspect of their lives. It is the behavior that allows specialized professions, as one individual gives up some of what he has reaped to exchange with another for something different. In this way, both individuals end up better off. Despite the importance of this behavior, little is known about how barter evolved and developed.

This study (published in PLoS ONE on January 30) is the first to examine the circumstances under which chimpanzees, our closest relatives, will exchange one inherently valuable commodity (an apple slice) for another (a grape), which is what early humans must have somehow learned to do. Economists believe that commodity barter is one of the most basic precursors to economic specialization, which we observe in humans but not in other primate species. First of all, the researchers found that chimpanzees often did not spontaneously barter food items, but needed to be trained to engage in commodity barter. Moreover, even after the chimpanzees had been trained to do barters with reliable human trading partners, they were reluctant to engage in extreme deals in which a very good commodity (apple slices) had to be sacrificed in order to get an even more preferred commodity (grapes).

Prior animal behavior studies have largely examined chimpanzees’ willingness to trade tokens for valuable commodities. Tokens do not exist in nature, and lack inherent value, so a chimpanzee’s willingness to trade a token for a valuable commodity, such as a grape, may say little about chimpanzee behavior outside the laboratory.

In a series of experiments, chimpanzees at two different facilities were given items of food and then offered the chance to exchange them for other food items. A collaboration of researchers ... found that the chimpanzees, once they were trained, were willing to barter food with humans, but if they could gain something significantly better – say, giving up carrots for much preferred grapes. Otherwise, they preferred to keep what they had.

The observed chimpanzee behavior could be reasonable because chimpanzees lack social systems to enforce deals and, as a society, punish an individual that cheats its trading partner by running off with both commodities. Also because of their lack of property ownership norms, chimpanzees in nature do not store property and thus would have little opportunity to trade commodities. Nevertheless, as prior research has demonstrated, they do possess highly active service economies. In their natural environment, only current possessions are “owned,” and the threat of losing what one has is very high, so chimpanzees frequently possess nothing to trade.

“This reluctance to trade appears to be deeply ingrained in the chimpanzee psyche,” said one of the lead authors, Sarah Brosnan ... at Georgia State University. “They’re perfectly capable of barter, but they don’t do so in a way which will maximize their outcomes.”

The other lead author, Professor Mark F. Grady, Director of UCLA’s Center for Law and Economics, commented: “I believe that chimpanzees are reluctant to barter commodities mainly because they lack effective ownership norms. These norms are especially costly to enforce, and for this species the game has evidently not been worth the candle. Fortunately, services can be protected without ownership norms, so chimpanzees can and do trade services with each other. As chimpanzee societies demonstrate, however, a service economy does not lead to the same degree of economic specialization that we observe among humans.”

The research could additionally shed light on the instances in which humans also don’t maximize their gains, Brosnan said.

Comments

[Fred]

Personally, I'd love to see our economy move towards the chimpanzee model, wherein the only things most people owned were their skills and reputations and social networks and similar non-tradeables. The tradeable goods would be owned by a small group of entrepreneurs and capitalist ephors--the geese that produce the golden eggs. Politics would then reduce to arguing about who has the best plan for managing these geese. The geese could certainly try to bribe the politicos, but with what? If politicos belong to the class of people who can't own anything tradeable, then with what can they be bribed?

This isn't all pie-in-the-sky utopianism, incidentally. Rather, it is Marxism brought up-to-date. And how do we bring about this Marxist dream? I say by raising interest rates to at least 3% real, thereby crushing asset values. Among other things, this would destroy the notion, for once and for all, that stocks are a safe investment and thereby put an end to all talk of "privatizing" Social Security. High interest rates will also crush housing values and thus destroy this reactionary adoration of the concept of home-ownership. Show me a Fascist, and I'll show you someone trying to give the maximum number of people a stake in the system by making them property owners. All the classic Fascist leaders understood this intuitively. And own modern-day conservatives also understand it intuitively, which is why they have come up with these IRA and 401K plans and all this emphasis on owning rather than renting, with the final result that the working class is now split between an upper middle class with a stake in the system and a lower middle class without, and the rich can exploit this split very effectively for their own interest.

The way forward involves crushing the faith of the upper-middle class in this ownership system. Not inflation, which merely props up the current system for another few decades, but rather a bonfire of bankruptcies and deflation that crushes asset values, and opens the door to truly progressive policies.

[Randy Kirk]

Interesting, this reminds me of studies that show that areas of the brain -- specifically, areas of the prefrontal cortex -- when deactivated, make people much less likely to feel empathy and plan ahead. Structuring a transaction such as barter requires some planning ahead -- it may be a neurological problem for the Chimpanzees -- they lack "executive functions" -- the ability to see ahead, plan and carry out detailed plans.

[Gil]

The point about law enforcement leading to greater trade potential was interesting as it is a reminder that growth potential is higher in countries with mediocre civil liberties and high economic freedom (e.g. Singapore) than in countries with high civil liberties and so-so economic freedom (e.g. the West?). Likewise it could show why many people are looking away from the West and more towards Asia, espeically China.

[donna]

If I had an apple slice, I wouldn't trade it for a grape, either.

says...

chimps bartering efficiency < human bartering efficiency =? optimal

[cm]

donna: Well, that would probably depend on the size of the slice.

But I see another problem here -- it's another instance of "I know best what's good for you" (trading in the apple slice for a grape.

[Ben Stein the Hack]

Gil:

I think you're missing the point. "Law enforcement" per se isn't the singular cause of barter (or by extension, highly developed financial structures); it's the RULE OF LAW, with the law enforcement being obviously a necessary ancillary.

The rule of law sets the background by which people (or chimps) can trade; they then respond according to those specific laws. To wit, if the human were allowed to give moldy grapes (or plastic grapes with grape perfume) in exchange for apple slices, the trading would soon end.

But the point is that you need to have a strong tradition of laws that make people/chimps feel secure that their trades won't result in them being ripped off. The more sophisticated the trading system gets, the more sophisticated the rule of law will need to be provide people/chimps with that security and belief in the system.

By that token, it doesn't necessarily seem to me that "high economic freedom" and "medium civil liberties" (which you describe only in the abstract) are necessarily more desirable than "medium economic freedom" and "high civil liberties"-- they just make people feel safer in different ways. To give just one example out of many, as a cultural observation, Americans (including first generation and immigrants) are clearly more risk-embracing than our Asian counterparts (and this difference is starkly noticeable between immigrants and first generation Asian Americans)-- one can at least make a good argument (at least as good as your argument) that this is a direct result of our strong tradition of individual civil rights.

Two observations to close: first, it seems to me that you are imposing your own normative beliefs here to try to explain a flight of capital away from America towards Asia, expressing a belief that more "economic freedom" (which I take to be less regulation and lower taxes) is better for investors.

Second, that imposition of your beliefs is not the best explanation. If it were true, then the flight of capital would have occurred far earlier than now, after almost a decade of severe deregulation and tax cuts. I think it's pretty clear, both anecdotally from talking with investors and banks, and from the evidence we're seeing as far as the timing and nature of investment flows, that the major reason for investors starting to look outside the US is a crisis of confidence in US securities and investments (much like chimps getting screwed by the researchers). And that, I would argue, is much more clearly tied to the absence of regulation (RULE OF LAW) than any "economic freedom" issues.

Of course, this may all be arguing against a strawman, since I don't know what you mean when you say "economic freedom". At a first and second read, it sounds like the same tired Ayn Randian tripe that Greenspan and his ilk regurgitate on a regular basis-- which explains nothing, defies logic, and leads to a regulatory culture of do nothing. But maybe I'm misreading you.

[Ben Stein the Hack]

Or to wit:

In the state of nature, there are no functioning markets. Quod erat demonstratum.

[bakho]

Sharing food is one of the traits that sets humans apart from chimpanzees. Food (especially meat) is shared by humans and particularly large animal kills that are too large for an individual and kin are shared by humans. We studied this in anthropology. I think the article in the link may have failed to cite key relevant research.

The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley discusses this issue in depth.

[evagrius]

Has anybody trained chimpanzees to run for political office?

[paine]

fred

"Personally, I'd love to see our economy move towards the chimpanzee model, wherein the only things most people owned were their skills and reputations and social networks and similar non-tradeables. The tradeable goods would be owned by a small group of entrepreneurs and capitalist ephors..."

process wise
isn't this what we get de facto anyway ???

you call for this prole ization of the producing class
to be turned into an estate system
without any back flow or up flow
thru skill aquisition

la mode among the merit high earners
becomes
"spend it all right now "
hedonic yuppies

maybe a heritary system with primo genture
will cement
the small class of barons of the golden goose eggs

" Politics would then reduce to arguing about who has the best plan for managing these geese."

fred i love your swift lite memes here
but haven't the geese "managed " us morlocks
too long and too ...well
to allow this power grab

imagine
"your money or your power bub"

short of ...civil war...

"The geese could certainly try to bribe the politicos, but with what? If politicos belong to the class of people who can't own anything tradeable, then with what can they be bribed?"

good times baby good times

" these tribunes of the people
these full powered leaders
are they chosen from among
the gaggle of proles and skilled plebs by lot ???
or merit ???
must they return
--without material reward beyond a state stipend --
to the common ranks
thru a rotation in office ??
in order to avoid post office rewards from the cap class
what
a monastic existence

[paine]

btw this is a massive cock up
huge numbers of gradients and distinctions need to be drawn

barter as a label worth its salt
refers to exchanges between different groups
not inside groups
its arms length exchanging
nor is it ...sharing
nor even
is it gift exchange

the spontaneous exchange of goods between say
naked ape siblings
is not barter its reciprical giving
perhaps a cultural product long evolved
where the empathic action enforces
fairness of intent ..
trust reigns thru ....charitas not law
in inter group swaps


in properly arms length quid pro quo bater situations
some prime eval
ur notion would arise
where now we market apes
have
caveat emptor

come to ponder it some

we have come some distant cultural wise
over the last 50k years
haven't we

[Gil]

I was pointing out that good law-enforcement and a relatively-free market society is probably going to outperform a society with ho-hum law-enforcement and quasi-Socialist economy. Perhaps there wasn't much flight to Asia before because the countries were rather Socialist and/or there weren't much laws safeguarding economic transactions. But if China (say) offers low taxes, low regulations (such as next-to-no health & safety laws, a general disregard for the environment), high transaction enforcement (workers are forbidding from striking or quitting at a moments notice) whereas the U.S.A. you (say) get higher taxes, complicated tax codes, many regulations, workers' rights, etc., then it's obvious that China would be a better place to do business. (Of course, I'm not well-travelled nor overly understand international business operations and I may be using simplistic nation vs. nation stereotyping, etc that may undermine my arguments. :\ ) Maybe it just do with when I read an article about 10 years about a Western diplomat who said that dictatorial Asian nations looking modernise are using Singapore as their model and not the West.

P.S. No, I'm not a Libertarian nor do I feel I'm arguing from a Libertarian standpoint.

[cm]

Ben Stein: I had it explained to me that the (supposed?) higher risk-taking of "Americans" comes from the phenomenon that you get more second/third/etc. chances when the previous efforts have not worked out, which is only possible when your nation is in prolonged secular uptrend, and thus able to issue new currency at high rates. The US has been having an edge over more stagnant societies in that regard, but it's time may have come to catch up to the "mature" society effect (the latter catching up to it), as previous growth paradigms appear to have become tapped out.

[hari]

After observing monkeys in Malay jungles, I must say this analogy is lop-sided because Chimpanzees are NOT monogamous and usually prefer to bargain for a real "harem". Either the fellow has never seen or met a monkey or he's simply day-dreaming about their behaviour.

[bakho]

Chimpanzees are apes, not monkeys.

[dWj]

Certain trained monkeys on Wall Street might be advised to pay more attention to counterparty risk than they do.

[btg]

i remember reading a book on anthropology a few years ago, and was surprised that not all human societies treat "property" the same way that we do.

there were some tribes that had similar rules to the chimps - in that possession was 10/10ths of the law - if you weren't using it, then someone else could take it and use it. oddly enough, those are the rules we often apply when involved intimately with people - namely family members - things like kitchen knives are "communal" property that only "belong" to people in limited situations ("hey, that's my desert fork - go get your own!").

i suspect that when certain goods are overly abundant (sand on a beach, air) and have little value, or are extremely rare (and hence have to be shared or else become a source of social conflict) that property rules will vary from society to society.

this whole topic has therefore been a issue for me when reading right wing economics texts - that it isn't soundly rooted in a knowledge of human social behaviour, but only on what has come to be "normal" in westernised societies.

[Dale S. Pearlman]

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