I have always been fascinated by crows. I can't say why. I did grow up with parents who were also fascinated by birds, and taught me lots of interesting things by watching them fly about our back yard, but for some reason crows in  particular were always a favorite. And they became more so when I was working in Washington many years ago, in a particularly boring job at the Department of Labor. Before that job all my computer programming experience had been in private companies where the problem was doing two weeks of work in on e week. There the problem was having two weeks of work to fill an entire year. I simply had nothing to do, but had to be physically present 8 hours a day. So I wrote programs to compile perl to binary executables, learned Ada, learned assembly language on three processor platforms, wrote an extension to perl for my compiler, designed my own language ... you get the idea. I wasted huge amounts of time, doing anything I could to kill time in front of my computer.

After a while I realized I didn't actually have to be in front of my computer, just in the building and "available". So I started spending time on the roof deck smoking, watching people come and go from the Starr hearings across the street and otherwise enjoying the media circus. But when I tired of that, I watched two small colonies of crows, one based on the roof of the Department of Labor, and one living, as far as I could tell, on the IM Pei abomination across the intersection. (For those who haven't visited DC, that is the East/New Building of the National Gallery.) 

As I had told my wife about this pass time, she picked up a book for me. It was an interesting book, an ornithologist detailing all his observations from a lifetime of observing crows and ravens. And it helped explain a lot of things I had seen, but not understood. For example, why I would see great swarms of crows sometimes and small clusters at others. Apparently crows form family groups of three to five, made up of a mated pair and one to three "helpers", who join and help with the young in exchange for the benefits of belonging. However, those not in such relatively settled groups tend to join great migratory flocks which move about, with members joining and dropping out as they enter and leave settled families.

But I am sure my readers are wondering why I am going on about crows. The title implies this all has some point, and, if you bear with me, I promise we will get there soon.

This weekend, while on vacation, I was reminded of all this by watching some crows chase a vulture away from their territory. Or rather, I was reminded of a question I once had, why the "helpers" would think joining a group in which they did not breed would seem beneficial. The answer was made obvious in the past when I saw crows chase a red tailed hawk, and the similar vulture event this weekend, when crows chased the vulture from "their" dumpster behind our hotel, reminded me of it.

Watching the crows fight off a much larger bird made clear why joining a group an be quite beneficial. One the surface, a vulture has all the advantages, it could easily kill even five crows, likely even if they attacked all at once. However, crows don't do that. Instead, one will harry the vulture while one watches the nest, another flies at a distance, and the rest rest on perches. When the vulture turns, the first will flee, and the other flier, or one that was resting will harry the vulture, to keep it away from the first. And should the vulture try to rest, the crows will not let it. It cannot effectively deny rest to all the crows, but they certainly can keep it in the air. And as active flight, rather than gliding, is more taxing for big predators than small crows, not to mention that the crows can rest periodically, eventually the larger bird must flee.

In some ways this is the vindication of the benefits of intelligence, as the clever plan of the crows clearly works to their benefit, but even were the vulture smarter, I doubt he would win. The true lesson is that cooperative action tends to produce results better than simply the sum of all the individual actions combined. That is, if you work as a group , you will see not only the benefits you would have working alone, but more, just as is postulated by theories of division of labor, economies of scale and a host of other economic theories often dismissed by those who would run down cooperative, and free, enterprise.

But, for once, my argument is not economic. I may write that later, but now I want to look at another question, one more basic and less remote from most people's thoughts.

When I was writing "Liberalism, Its Origins and Consequences - Chapter 1 - The Trinity and Its Necessity", there was a long section on the social contract theory of government, and the reason one would accept a restriction of his ability to violate the rights of others. And, even as I wrote it, I heard in my heard a hypothetical critic raising the argument against social contract one hears from time to time, what I call the "tough guy" or "Road Warrior" argument. As I said in the argument I wrote in "A Rational Approach to Punishment" (and "Symmetry and Asymmetry in Government"), government observance of rights must be symmetrical,, or else only those receiving benefit would agree to it. So all laws must work in both directions. That is, anything I give up, you give up as well. Which leaves us with a choice only between how protective or how indifferent the government will be. And, as I argued, it makes sense to allow for protection of all rights, as the opposite is more dangerous. I may benefit somewhat from being able to rob or kill with impunity, but, looking at the question objectively, my potential benefit from violating rights is less than my likely loss from others being able to violate my rights. Which is why government exists at all, to provide the benefits of mutual protection of rights.

But, every so often, some juvenile thinker, or some avid social Darwinist, will argue that this is a losing proposition for some, that "the strong" would do better to avoid government. From this hypothesis they draw absurd conclusions, such as historically government were formed by "the weak", or that government can't be based on social contract, as the strong would have imposed their rule instead, and so on. We need not worry about those arguments, instead I want to show that their initial premise is wrong, that "the strong" would still benefit from cooperation in a state.

Just as the crows demonstrated.

Let us start with a very simple mental image. Pick the toughest guy you can imagine. Bruce Lee trained by Chuck Norris after going through SEAL and Mossad training and a stint in Delta Force. Whatever. Imagine him as tough as the most absurdly tough guy ever seen in any action film. And arm him to the teeth. Give him the ludicrously improbably rifles from Robocop, or the equally silly ones from The Fifth Element. Or even a case of the notorious "atomic hand grenades" (so-called because of their absurdly exaggerated explosions) seen in every action film.

Clearly, having created such a "killing machine", you would be reluctant to attack him. In fact, you would probably do whatever he asked. So he is the perfect "tough guy" who would not benefit from collective action. He has nothing to fear from anyone, and so could rule on his own.

Until you consider him facing off against an armored division.

You don't need supermen to assemble tanks, or crew them. Our military takes average guys every days and turns them into skilled tank crews. So we could clearly take those "weak" individuals and, through cooperative action, take down even this super man.

But you don't even need an armored division. Unless this tough guy is endowed with Hollywood-style bullet immunity and absurd shooting skill, likely five or six moderately skilled men with rifles could eliminate any enemy, no matter his strength. For that matter, it could take only two or three men of no skill except the ability to run. One or two could distract him, lure him away from his camp, and the other could poison his food, or just steal it. Through clever collective action, even children and invalids could likely do him in.

And that is my point, and the lesson I learned from the crows. No matter how often the "heroic" theory arises, glorifying the bandit king, the tough man, it simply overlooks that a group  of average or even sub-par men can easily defeat a single man. And they don't even need to fight. As Ghandi showed, and others as well, simply refusing to act is often enough. If every subject requires direct supervision to accomplish anything, then slavery or even simple subjugation becomes far too expensive.

Perhaps another historical lesson is appropriate here. The Spartans were historically the prototypical "tough guys". They rule over a subject kingdom covering much of the Peloponnese. They were preeminent warriors and allowed their subjects few rights or freedoms. However, there is an interesting fact pointed out by historians. The Spartans, for all their military skill, were reluctant to use it, and had to form a series of alliances to provide allied armies to replace theirs. Why? Because if their army left home for long, the subjects would rise up and destroy their empire. And so the Spartans, for all their strength often could not use it.

In fact, Pericles almost won the Peloponnesian War exploiting this fact. While the Spartan army ravaged Attica, he sailed to the Peloponnese and established a series of coastal forts to provide shelter for fugitive slaves and create centers around which rebellions could grow. It so scared the Spartans they gave up plundering Attica and raced home. The scheme worked for some time, but the outbreak of plague, financial struggles and, eventually, the death of Pericles ended it, and the Peloponnesian War took a very different turn.

Still, it does demonstrate once again how a band of even very weak individuals can threaten a strong man, or even a small group of strong men. And, as a result, it makes clear that the social contract theory makes sense, especially by showing why individuals would surrender "freedoms" of dubious value (the "freedom" to violate the rights of another) to receive the benefit of mutual protection. Given the fact that a group of relatively weak men can face down a much stronger man, the benefits are obvious.

Then again, most of us have realized this for a long time, and had no problem accepting the social contract theory. But as some have not, and a few have periodically made modestly persuasive arguments, I thought it best that I (and the crows and the Spartan helots) demonstrate that there really is a clear benefit to collective action.

And, of course, this also provides a nice preface to an argument in favor of voluntary collective action. (That is, the free market.)