Robinson Crusoe: The Inspiration for the Modern Man

Lewis Mumford writes that “the ideal man of the new order was Robinson Crusoe. No wonder he indoctrinated children with his virtues for two centuries, and served as the model for a score of sage discourses on the Economic Man. Robinson Crusoe was all the more representative as a tale not only because it was the work of one of the new breed of writers, the professional journalist, but because it combines in a single setting the element of catastrophe and adventure with the necessity of invention. In the new economic system every man was for himself. The dominant virtues were thrift, foresight, skilful adaption of means. Invention took the place of image-making and ritual; experiment took the place of contemplation; demonstration took the place of deductive logic and authority. Even alone on a desert island the sober middle class virtues would carry one through … “

Interesting to contrast this with the advice that Robison Crusoe was given by his father who tried to appeal to him to stay with him instead of going on an adventure:

“He asked me what reasons more than a mere wandering inclination I had for leaving my father’s house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortunes by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was from men of desperate fortunes, on the one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad, upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of the nature, out of the common road: that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the misery and hardships, the labour and suffering, of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by one thing that this was the state of life, which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean, and the great s that the wise man gave his testimony to this as the just standard of truth, felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty or riches. He bade me to observe it. I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully, and especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed. I was sincerely affected with this discourse, as indeed who could be otherwise.”

But despite the prospect of ease and the protection from hardship and misery …

“It was not until a year later that I broke loose … without asking God’s blessing, or my father’s, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill-hour, God knows, on the first of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London.”

Crusoe almost immediately encounters destruction. The story about how wreckage upon an island is well-known. But going back to the themes of Crusoe’s ‘thift, foresight and skilful adaption of means‘, it became an important economic metaphor.

“this metaphor about the solitary Islander, who devises a range of strategies for survival and scarcity runs deeper; it has become a quintessential economic parable used most notably by the Austrian School economists, who focused so much on the actions of the individual in exchanging one state of affairs for another.” Crusoe exchanged potential ease for high-risk strategy of seeking fame and fortune overseas. But the metaphor continues on the island as Mumford explained.

Crusoe’s simple act of making a crude fishing pole, and sacrificing the time to construct, a boat and net – tools, by which she becomes more productive – is integral to Spitznagel’s ’roundabout concept’. (i.e. as Spitznagel writes: Rather than pursue the direct root of immediate gain, we will seek the difficult and roundabout route of immediate loss, an intermediate step, which gets an advantage for greater potential gain.)

Building the tools are an immediate loss (an investment of time and effort). Even after the tools are made, there are economic decisions that need to be made.

Let’s say Robinson Crusoe discovers, after exploring various fishing holes around his lonely island home, that at some, perhaps where the water is rather shallow, he can catch smallest fish with some frequency, and has also discovered a few spots, perhaps where the water is very deep, where the fish are much larger but fewer number and that bite much less frequently.

There’s a natural trade of for Crusoe, then, between size and frequency. This is, of course ubiquitous, trade-off in nature, and when involving complex phenomena, is often described in terms of “power law” of frequency along the size continuum. Or in other words: “really small things are really common, really big things less so.”


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