Were People More Altruistic in the Past? (2/4)
· Prof. Dr. Ömer DEMİR
The Function of Aid in Transferring What is Available to the Future Humankind has discovered or developed many mechanisms to use surplus possessions in different times or places. 'Surplus' does not always mean an abundance of what exists. Scarce items can also be surplus depending on time or place. The desire to distribute scarce resources evenly across time for use in other periods is one of the
The Function of Aid in Transferring What is Available to the Future
Humankind has discovered or developed many mechanisms to use surplus possessions in different times or places. 'Surplus' does not always mean an abundance of what exists. Scarce items can also be surplus depending on time or place. The desire to distribute scarce resources evenly across time for use in other periods is one of the most fundamental plans for a stable and secure human life, leading to the emergence of many institutional structures alongside individual methods. This is because distributing a produced or obtained valuable item in a balanced way for its potential lifespan, rather than consuming it immediately, is one of the most basic formulas discovered for human life stability. Therefore, generally, a portion of what is available is consumed, and a portion is saved for the future. The desire to secure the future in this way is one of the strongest motivations in both biological and social processes.
There are two basic ways to enable the use of a consumer good at a future time instead of the present. The first method that comes to mind is storing it for future consumption. Specifically for food items, many methods have been discovered besides packaging and storing in a safe place, such as drying, salting, canning, and preserving by freezing in cold environments. Storage (saving, hiding) has always been considered a method since the first humans, but today, storage is not always the best option for transferring what is available to the future, both in terms of the functionality of the tools and the costs of storage. This is not only because the processes required to safely preserve something valuable and useful today from aging, wear, or spoilage until it is needed in the future are costly. Such a problem exists, but there is a bigger problem: Services, in particular, are inherently non-storable. For individuals engaged in service production, transferring today's services to the future requires a two-step process: first converting them into a commodity through exchange, and then storing that commodity. For example, you can dry, salt, or freeze the fish you catch and store them, but you cannot store your ability to diagnose and treat diseases to use in future exchanges. Here, you need other mechanisms that we will discuss shortly.
We said the first way to transfer what is available today to the future is storage. Transferring value to the future through storage is both expensive due to storage costs and involves significant uncertainties and organizational difficulties due to the long duration of the actual time of use.
The second way to transfer what is available today to the future is to give it to someone who needs it today and receive back less, the same amount, or more at the time it will be needed. If there is an opportunity to give your surplus to someone else today and safely get it back from them in the future, this could be a preferred way to transfer consumption to the future compared to storing the goods under appropriate conditions. One might consider converting to money as a third way here, but in reality, money (gold, foreign currency, stocks, etc.) is just one method of giving what you have to others to use and getting it back later. In the first case (lending the goods to someone), the expectation is to receive back the tangible goods given to a specific recipient, while in the second case (converting to money), it is entrusting what you have to a community of people with common measures of value (using the same currency and attributing similar value to the same abstract assets) through trust. This is because a commodity converted to money today is actually being used by others today, and the person holding the money is given the assurance that they can obtain the goods they need from those who produce them when they need them. The certainty of this guarantee depends on the existence of a political and economic system that ensures zero inflation and the non-disappearance of book-entry money, and more importantly, on the ability to maintain a production capacity that will meet future needs. That is, the money will retain its value, and the production of goods and services that the money can buy in the economy will be guaranteed when desired. In fact, these two (money retaining its value and the necessary goods being produced) are two different expressions of the same situation. Because if there are no goods to meet the demand, money cannot retain its value.
In conclusion, we can talk about two main methods for transferring today's surplus to the future: direct storage for personal use, or giving to others today and receiving back from them in the future. Whether one receives back the same, less, or more when receiving from them is important in detail, but it does not change the fact that the nature of the matter is a relationship of reciprocity. If one unit of goods given today is used in an effective production process, it can become two units in the future, or conversely, if storage costs are high, two units given today can be received back as one unit in the future. For example, if you give two kilograms of cheese to a cold storage owner to keep for a year in exchange for receiving one kilogram back, this could be a reasonable future transfer cost. Or, giving your surplus hazelnuts to someone to establish a hazelnut orchard and receiving two sacks back after three years could also be a reasonable way to transfer to the future. In the first case, if you store it yourself, the storage costs might be higher than those of a cold storage facility. In the second case, while storing one sack of hazelnuts in a warehouse incurs both storage costs and losses due to spoilage, giving it to someone who can make it into an orchard benefits both the borrower as the orchard owner through increased production capacity, and you get two sacks of hazelnuts instead of one after three years. What the return will be in the future for what is given today can vary depending on storage costs, expected lifespan, future production capacity, and the productivity coefficient of production processes.
Both storage and giving to others for future return involve certain risks and costs. Giving a sack of hazelnuts to someone today and receiving two sacks back after three years is risky in terms of the possibility of non-return, but it is less costly in terms of creating a non-perishable environment and protecting against theft. The low cost of the second method (giving to someone now and receiving back later) depends on the strength of the bonds established between individuals. Strong bonds between individuals include trust in the existence of institutions that regulate rights and responsibilities, supported by strong sanctioning power, and provide legal protection, in addition to love and respect.
Ultimately, among the ways to transfer today's surplus to the future, transferring through others is one of the oldest discoveries. These 'others' were initially family members and close relatives. People have always trusted their biological relatives more, and this situation still holds true in many places. Generally, inheritance is left to children, and they are expected to care for their elders in the future. When they become unable to work, people expect other individuals with whom they have relationships, starting with neighbors with whom they have face-to-face interactions, to take responsibility after close relatives.
It is clear that giving to someone in need today and receiving back from them in the future is a form of mutual aid among people. Someone storing what you do not need today until you need it (or consuming it now and giving it back to you at that time) is a significant form of aid that fundamentally contributes to the continuation of your life. It is easier to understand how great this help is if you consider a situation where there is no one to meet your consumption needs when you need them. For example, let's imagine situations where all retirement rights are invalidated, everyone has money in banks, but there is no individual who can produce the goods and services needed for consumption as their surplus, or due to low production, only those currently in the production process are allocated shares. In each case, it is clearly seen that the stability of welfare depends on the contract of mutual aid among people. Title deeds, stocks, banknotes, even gold and foreign currency, cannot contribute to welfare increase on their own. All these non-commodity book values are useful only when goods and services can be obtained in return. What determines this availability is the amount of production carried out by those who are producing at that moment. If this amount is sufficient, book values, even promises, are useful; otherwise, they are not. Producers first meet their own needs.
In short, people share what they produce among themselves; especially, they engage in trust-based mutual aid when giving to others today with the expectation of receiving back the same, less, or more tomorrow. Taking what is available from someone today and giving it to them when they need it actually means helping that person continue their life. The different forms this aid relationship takes should not prevent us from seeing that it is essentially aid.
Trust is very important regarding receiving back what was given later. Therefore, trust is vitally important in establishing relationships where future returns are expected, even more so than in doing business with others now. For this reason, the value judgments and concrete rules that ensure adherence to these exchange contracts, both within and between generations, are the most fundamental building blocks of coexistence. Consequently, without trust, there is no division of labor, no borrowing, and therefore no aid.
To be Continued Next Week: The Role of Aid in Distributing Work and Opportunities Evenly