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🪵 The Threshold

Territorial protection policing fails as information and trade expand

Properties2
tagsja-picks, factual_claims, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@gambetta_sicilian_1993, loc. 2314

4 min read

Territorial protection policing fails as information and trade expand

Evidence

Goldsmith and Wu’s monograph on internet jurisdiction and the politics of cross-border digital regulation is essential reading for understanding the contemporary international IP environment. For IP candidates working on international IP, on the politics of jurisdictional conflict in digital regulation, and on the broader politics of the post-borderless internet, Goldsmith and Wu is foundational. — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 2314 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

If, instead, those same food resources were sparse, and especially if they were clumped into rare but concentrated patches, then the male would face a very different set of payoffs for guarding a territory. He would still pay a price for producing the weapon, and for expending time and energy fighting to keep rival males out of his territory. But now these territories would matter, and the benefits he could glean from guarding them might be significant. Females would be much more likely to visit him, since the resources they needed were few and far between, and one of the only places where they could access them was inside his territory. Indeed, lots of females might visit his territory and, if the resources were localized enough to be readily defended from rival males, he might be able to mate with a disproportionate number of these females—more females than other males who were not able to guard a territory, and possibly even more than males who were guarding a territory, if his territory were bigger or better than theirs or contained more of the limiting resources. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 202 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Imagine a food resource spread out uniformly across a landscape—grass, if you’re a grazer, extending as far as the eye can see. As a male, where would you stand guard? Even if it were absolutely necessary for females to visit places with grass to feed, and even if they were willing to mate with you if you happened to be there when they fed, where would that location be? For food resources broadly distributed in space, there is no obvious location that is better than any other. It would be impossible for a male to anticipate where females were likely to visit since they could find their food anywhere. A male could still invest in the production of weapons, and he could use his weapons to deflect rivals from a patch of turf. But why should he bother to guard one particular area if all of the surrounding areas are just as good? And why should he pay the price of producing a weapon and fighting, if other males without weapons or territories do just as well as he does? In the parlance of economists, such behavior would not be cost-effective. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 201 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Clumped scarce resources make guarding territories economically worthwhile — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 202; Protection markets depend on pre-existing networks and cannot be exported at will; Industrialized weaponry and fixed borders make territorial conquest obsolete — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 392 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

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