Do Guns Contribute to America’s Economic Success?
How is this for a bit of counter-conventional wisdom "shots fired!"? Pun intended, of course.
There is a relationship between risk and return. Return is the compensation for risk taken. Actually more correctly stated expected return is the compensation for expected risk. There is no guarantee of return but there is also no guarantee that the risk is actually being taken. It is however more likely or easier to have confidence in the expected risk than the expected return, generally speaking.
One measure of risk is volatility. There are a lot of ways to add volatility to a system. Additional volatility through, say, reckless driving, slot-machine gambling, starting a new line of unrelated business, or frequenting dance clubs alone could and likely would in most cases reduce expected return if not risk total system collapse when considering, say, one’s health, personal financial wellbeing, a company’s future, or one’s marriage, respectively.
But volatility added to an otherwise very successful, thriving system could actually stress the system in a way that leads to greater returns simply as compensation for that additional volatility. This is congruent with a concept of antifragile. Doing jumping jacks regularly stresses bones, joints, and muscles initially yet it builds their strength long term.
So what about guns in America?
America is a society of extremes among many dimensions. It could be said that Americans are like all people only more so. One unfortunate example of this is that America is a very surprisingly and consistently violent society. That is true with and without guns. Yet America has not just survived it has thrived despite this violence. Could it be that the violence is a bit of a byproduct of American risk-taking and at the same time a good strength builder in an antifragile sense?
I am not in this suggestion considering the idea that guns in historic American society including frontier society was a contributing factor to development; although I would probably have more conviction in that theory. In that case some virtues that might be conjectured would be creating a support structure for stability and protection of common law principles among other effects. That is more a story of fragility with guns serving as a means of reducing exposure to volatility as well as leveling the inequities between conflicting parties—with the help a small firearm a small, frail, older person can close the gap greatly that exists between them and a big, strong, young attacker.
I am also not in any way saying that “economic” success is the only good to be pursued or that it, fuzzy concept that it is, helps us much in thinking about what society we want to live in. There may be and likely (hopefully) is a better way.
This conjecture, which I will suggest with modest confidence just consideration is that in modern American society the prevalence of firearms is a contributor to higher expected returns as measured perhaps by growth rates, resiliency, or some other returns to scale.
In this way the additional volatility that is created by having the hundreds of millions of guns exist in America along with a culture and a legal system that is very much supportive of firearms for citizens has actually allowed for greater returns than would otherwise would be enjoyed in America. This is not to take anything away from horrific tragedies such as the big, chronic problems like suicides and guns used in the commission of crimes as well as rare events like mass shootings and accidental shootings. Rather it is more akin to how perhaps America’s relatively extreme weather probably makes for a lot of successful byproducts as Americans adapt to that weather and learn how to succeed despite it.
This comes in two forms that feedback upon each other:
Guns and the implied violence they are coupled with put society on a path that requires resiliency and accommodation to said violence sine qua non and things head in the opposite direction toward stagnation at best and collapse at worst.
The violence in particular tests society and strengthens it—this is the antifragile case.
Take the first point. In effect this is a normalization of guns. Society builds a structure that makes room for guns and what they imply. This is not at all outlandish as we see many analogous forms of the same thing all around us from weather to geography to aesthetic tastes to recreational preferences.
How fortunate is it that in Norman, Oklahoma the traffic and parking laws, noise ordinances, and conflicting event schedules were all naturally built to make a conducive environment for college football. Heck, there was even an 85,000-seat stadium here to host the games. What luck!
Some would argue we are actually in the situation of stagnation slumping toward collapse. However, the data do not support this. Any reasonable analysis has to grapple with the fact that American society is clearly succeeding despite the presence of guns and the violence.
Now to the second point: With every gun tragedy and terrible event comes both a hardening of sensitivity and an adaptation to prevent another. Some of these are indeed counterproductive or all gesture and no substance. Banning “assault rifles” is an empty gesture. Gun-free zones are rearranging the Titanic’s deck chairs. And we should not neglect the downside of becoming immune to tragedies of any kind. I gravely fear a society whose people are not emotionally stricken at the mere thought of murdered children.
Yet weightlifting builds callouses and muscle even though it starts with pain and tissue destruction. Without meaningful struggles we grow too soft to endure lower and lower thresholds of hardship. Sacrifices that should be tolerable become unbearable. Again, I am NOT saying the tradeoff is or should be gun deaths for greater gains. I am saying gun deaths imply the gains to society must be higher as compensation for the risk and loss. This an explanation theory for why there is thriving despite the awfulness.
And of course there are limits. As Taleb points out if you fall 33 feet, you would likely be very injured and might die. Yet if you fall just 3 feet ten times in a row, you will very likely not even be injured and likely strengthened by the experience. Just as society must be resilient to violence to endure violence, any test of its mettle cannot be beyond its own capacity.
Guns are very likely not a necessary condition for American success. They are doubtfully a best-world condition for thriving American society. Yet it is possible if not likely that guns in America are in fact a causal factor increasing American economic success.