Online Library of Liberty: Economics, vol. 1: Economic Principles

population. The birth rate is enormous, but few of those born arrive at maturity. It would be hazardous to tribal existence under these conditions to limit the birth rate. The custom of the adoption of captives from hostile tribes is wide-spread, because the efficiency—the very survival—of the tribe depends on keeping up its number of warriors.

§ 16. War and the pressure of population. War is the normal condition of most primitive tribes. Its cause usually appears to be standing feuds and ancient enmities, but the deeper and abiding economic cause is the struggle for hunting grounds, for pasturage, and for control of natural resources. When resorting to war as the rude remedy for overpopulation mankind is hardly above the animals, who fight for food against other species of animals or against their own kind. Hunting, fishing, or pastoral people, or those in the earlier stages of agriculture, require a large area for a small population. Distant excursions and frequent forays, when food fails, develop rival claims to favored districts, and war is the only settlement. Fighting under these conditions is an activity of such economic importance that much of the energy of the tribe must be strenuously given to it. The ceaseless loss of life in savage wars is almost incredible to modern minds. The successive invasions of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic tribes, and the later inundations of medieval Europe by the fierce pastoral tribes of central Asia, were undoubtedly due to the increase of population and the outgrowing of resources by these barbarian peoples, or to the failure of their food supplies because of seasonal or of climatic changes.

Note

Definitions. Statics (status, state, stationary) is that phase of a science which has to do with an equilibrium which must result in time from the existing group of forces, operating in unaltered magnitude. Dynamics (dynamic force, movement) is that phase which has to do with the changes in process as the result of new or stronger or weaker forces, which are more or less permanently unsettling the static equilibrium and are carrying the point of normal equilibrium itself to higher or lower levels. The terms static and dynamic in economics, therefore, may be applied to forces, prices, equilibriums, problems, situations, and economies (altho the forces may meet with increasing resistance that at length puts a limit to their effects, as the resistance of a spring balance checks the weight at a certain point). The change may be either progressive or retrogressive, and a higher or a lower level may be reached and maintained until some quite different force coming from another direction is operative. There are changes that in a brief view appear to be cumulative, which on longer study are seen to be rhythmic. Again and again men have been forced to revise their judgments, either hopeful or discouraging, of current tendencies, after time had enabled them to see a larger segment of the curve of change returning to its former level.

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