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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2016017681
ISBN: 978-1-4128-6325-4 (hardcover); 978-1-4128-6336-0 (paper)
eBook: 978-1-4128-6357-5
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Daly, Martin, 1944- author.
Title: Killing the competition : economic inequality and homicide /
Martin Daly.
Description: New Brunswick : Transaction Publishers, [2016] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017681 (print) | LCCN 2016022608 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781412863254 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781412863360 (pbk.) |
ISBN 9781412863575 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Homicide--Economic aspects. | Income distribution--
Social aspects. | Crime--Sociological aspects.
Classification: LCC HV6515 .D353 2016 (print) | LCC HV6515 (ebook) |
DDC 364.2/5--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017681
Contents
Preface vii
1 Why Homicide? 1
2 Homicide and Economic Inequality 19
3 Competition and Violence 31
4 Inequality, or Just Poverty? 59
5 Jockeying for Position 75
6 The Arena of Competition 99
7 Culture of Violence? 119
8 Lags and Lifetimes 143
9 Too Much Inequality 165
10 What Keeps Competitive Violence in Check? 197
References 215
Index 237
Preface
Income inequality is a correlate of homicidal violence, and I believe
that the evidence strongly favors the hypothesis that the relationship
is causal. Not everyone agrees with me on this point, however, and my
primary agenda in this book is to refute the counterarguments. I think
we have sufficient evidence that the inequality of wealth and income
that now prevails in the developed world has toxic effects, including
effects on violence, to justify political action to reduce it.
I have been studying homicide for more than thirty-five years, but
I began my research career in animal behavior, and the Darwinian
world view that I acquired studying other species continues to inform
my understanding of all living things, including human beings. Any
evolutionist would anticipate that whenever desired goods are dis-
tributed relatively inequitably, dangerous competition and violence
will be relatively prevalent. Analysts whose thinking is not informed
by Darwinism, however, often miss this point and misinterpret
self-interested aggression as pathology. Two secondary aims of this
book are thus to introduce an evolution-minded perspective into
discussions of human violence, and to counter the simplistic notion
that because violence is distasteful, it must be pathological.
Many people have contributed to the writing of this book, above all
my late wife Margo Wilson, who decided in 1978 that we should study
homicide; all my research on the subject was done in collaboration
with her until her death in 2009. Margo and I probably would have
abandoned homicide research were it not for substantial early support
from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and its high-spirited re-
search directors Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox. Subsequently, our research
was supported for many years by the Natural Sciences & Engineering
Research Council of Canada and by the Social Sciences & Humanities
Research Council of Canada.
Despite our strange backgrounds in animal behavior, many
sociologically trained homicide researchers welcomed us into their
vii
Killing the Competition
community, especially Becky and Dick Block, and Russell and Rebecca
Dobash. My education in economics began when Rob Boyd and Herb
Gintis invited Margo and me to join the Preferences Network, spon-
sored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, at whose
meetings we learned a great deal about how economists approach risk
and sex differences, especially from Catherine Eckel, and a great deal
about economic inequality, especially from Sam Bowles.
This book was written mainly during a three-year stint in 2012–15
as a Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri,
Columbia, which was made possible primarily by Mark Flinn and Brian
Foster. My education in anthropology began when Margo and I spent a
sabbatical year at Harvard University in 1985–86 under Irven DeVore’s
generous sponsorship, and was furthered during another sabbatical
year at the University of New Mexico in 1994–95, where Jane Lancaster
was an equally generous host. My primary academic affiliation is still
in psychology, and I am now back in the Department of Psychology,
Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University, which has been
my main home since 1978, and which is far and away the most collegial
university department that I have ever seen.
Four people deserve special thanks for providing a steady stream
of useful links and references, encouragement and critical discus-
sion, while I was writing this book. They are Danny Krupp, Karthik
Panchanathan, Gretchen Perry, and Adam Sparks. I have also benefited
from collegial input from Pat Barclay, Sam Bowles, Napoleon Chagnon,
Dov Cohen, Helena Cronin, Maurice Cusson, Angus Deaton, Robin
Dunbar, John Fox, Willem Frankenhuis, Daniel Hicks, Joan Hamory
Hicks, Sarah Hrdy, Arjun Jayadev, Ichiro Kawachi, Bruce Kennedy, Rob
Lynch, Michelle Mahnke, Sandeep Mishra, Paulo Nadanovsky, Richard
Nisbett, Michael Norton, Marc Ouimet, Josephine Pemberton, Kate
Pickett, Steven Pinker, Aubrey Sheiham, Mary Shenk, Seth Stahlheber,
Shawn Vasdev, and Richard Wilkinson.
Finally, I could not have written this book without the unflagging
support of my wonderful wife Gretchen Perry.
Martin Daly
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
September, 2015
viii
1
Why Homicide?
Crimes as serious as murder should have
strong emotions behind them.
—George Orwell, Decline of the English Murder, 1946
Inequality, Competition, and Homicide
Homicides are intensely interesting. When there’s a murder, anyone
who has even a remote connection to the case craves details. People
want to know exactly what happened, and why. This morbid fascina-
tion is healthy and normal. The natural habitat of the human mind is
a social universe of personal acquaintances, gossip, and hearsay. In
such a social universe, it has always been important to gather all the
information you can about who is dangerous, and in what situations.
Lethality is a big deal.
As fascinating as the stories behind individual murder cases may be,
homicides become even more interesting when we study their statistical
properties dispassionately. When they are appropriately aggregated
and summarized, the statistics of homicide provide us with a sort of
“window” on human passions. What are the sources of interpersonal
conflict that can induce someone to kill? The most important is appar-
ently inequality: the degree to which the things that men desire are
equitably or inequitably distributed.
Decades of research have shown that if you want to predict the
homicide rate of a nation, or a state, or a city, the best single piece of
information to help you make that prediction is the level of income
inequality. Unfortunately, the criminologists who have confirmed this
result again and again remain befuddled about what to make of it. One
reason for their befuddlement is that, like many other social scientists,
most criminologists believe that violence itself is a form of pathology.
This is a mistake. Although some killers are indeed insane, violence
itself is an organized, evolved capability of normal human beings,
1
