Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches

This post gets its title from a fascinating 1974 book by anthropologist Marvin Harris. I will summarise his main points in my next few posts.

Cows: In India there are people who are starving, while apparently useless cows wander around causing a public nuisance. It seems like the Hindu doctrine of the sacred cow is costing the country billions of dollars, using up scarce agricultural resources, and effectively causing large-scale human suffering and death.

On closer look (including analysis of artificially induced gender imbalances in cow populations, differential treatment of cows by different castes, and the various ways in which cows are fed and used in different situations) it turns out the cows are integrated into the economy rather more efficiently than the farm animals and machines found in more developed nations. The practical reason behind the ban on cow killing is similar to the practical reason behind the bans on lying, cheating, and stealing: it counteracts the temptation to reap short-term personal gain at higher long-term societal costs.

It's easy to assume that the people with the highest standard of living are doing things right, and the people with the lowest standard of living are doing things wrong. Whereas in some cases the latter may actually be doing better, if we were to control for the diverse starting points and environmental factors.

The solution to poverty is not to get all the poor people to act the way rich people are now acting. The solution involves getting all people to act a little differently than they are acting now.