After explaining the real difference between the New Yorker and Yanamamo tribes, economist Eric Beinhocker summarizes 2.5 million years of economic history on pages 9-11 of ‘The Origin of Wealth’ —
The lifestyle of the Yanamamo is fairly typical of our ancestors circa 15,000 years ago. This sounds like a long time ago, but in terms of the total economic history of our species, the world of the Yanamamo is the very, very recent past. If we use the appearance of the first tools as our starting point, it took about 2,485,000 years, or 99.4 percent, of our economic history to go from the first tools to the hunter-gatherer level of economic and social sophistication typified by the Yanamamo. It then took only (15,000 years, or) 0.6 percent of human history to leap from the $90, 102 SKU economy of the Yanamamo to the $36,000 per capita 1010 SKU economy of the New Yorkers.
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
Economist Eric Beinhocker describes the real difference between the New Yorker and Yanamamo tribes on page 8-9 of his brilliant book ‘The Origin of Wealth’ —
Consider two tribes. First we have the Yanamamo, a stone tool-making hunter-gatherer tribe living along the Orinoco River on the remote border of Brazil and Venezuela. Second, we have the New Yorkers, a cell-phone-talking, cafe-latte-drinking tribe living along the Hudson River on the border of New York and New Jersey. Both tribes share the same thirty thousand or so genes that all humans do and thus, in terms of biology and innate intelligence, are essentially identical. Yet, the lifestyle of the New Yorkers is vastly different from the well-preserved hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Yanamamo, who have yet to invent the wheel, have no writing, and have a numbering system that does not go beyond one, two, and many.
The average income of a Yanamamo tribesperson is approximately $90 per person per year (this, naturally, is an estimate as they do not use money), while the average income of a New Yorker in 2001 was around $36,000 or 400 times that of the Yanamamo. Without any moral judgment on who is happier, morally superior, or more in tune with their environment, there is clearly a wide gap in material wealth between the two tribes.
I can almost see what you are thinking: if money is not the reason why I have gone off consumption, it must be ideology.
But I haven’t gone off consumption to correct the unequal distribution of wealth in the world. I have no left-of-center communist tendencies in matters related to money. I’m a liberal in every sense of the word; I’m left-of-center when it comes to religion and right-of-center when it comes to economics. In fact, if at all, my going off-consumption will increase the inequality of wealth; I can almost see my portfolio manager rubbing his hands in anticipation of my higher investment outlay.
I also have nothing against big multinational brands or the marketers who manage them. I work for a conglomerate that has a fast-growing global footprint and handle one of India’s biggest brands with revenues of $1bn plus. I know no other way of making money other than by selling things (products, services, ideas, whatever). In fact, I must tell you that I love brands and I’m proud to be a marketer. Someday, hopefully before I’m thirty, I’ll teach marketing at an IIM. Before I retire, I hope that I’ll write a dozen books on marketing, including this blog-as-a-book, my first one.
Filed in Uncategorized
|
Also tagged Brands, Capitalism, Capitalist, Communism, Communist, Distribution of Wealth, Environment, Free Market, Ideology, Multi-nationals, Sustainable Development
|
Permalink
|