Reciprocity vs wealth: A lesson from Papua New Guinea

Donald Trump increased his personal wealth by an astonishing $2.24 billion during the first year of his second term. How did we arrive at the point where a sitting president could do such a thing? For perspective, I want to tell you about an extraordinary thing my husband and I saw when doing anthropological and linguistic research in a small-scale pre-industrial society in Papua New Guinea.

Busa Hgaiteme, a man in his late middle age, stood beside a dirt road holding what, for his village, was an unimaginable fortune: one thousand Australian dollars, paid by the Australian government as compensation for the death of his son in a road construction accident. The money was all in small bills. Villagers crowded around him. Then, one bill at a time, I watched Busa give every dollar away.

He kept nothing.

Why would anyone do that? Most Americans would have considered this his one opportunity to get ahead.

Yet from Busa’s perspective, keeping the money would have seriously damaged his standing. In fact, his behavior, strange as it may seem to us, was the norm before the agricultural revolution around 12,000 years ago. Prior to that time, humans lived in small hunter-gatherer bands or temporary small-scale gardening communities. The Hua with whom we were living was one such gardening community.

Survival in these kinds of societies depended not on individual accumulation but on reciprocal generosity. There was no support or help other than that built through reciprocal exchange. Food, labor, shelter, and countless daily necessities moved among relatives and neighbors. This “economy” resembled the way families often treat one another today in the U.S.: more gift than bargain. But this “gift economy,” as it is sometimes called, was the main economic (and governing) structure that existed.

Anyone who had more was expected to share, especially food. Although we were comfortable “helping” our village mates with medicine, rides to the hospital, and clothes, we found it hard to share anything more than occasional modest amounts of food. We also found it hard to share our house. The Hua had no word for “privacy,” and in the end, we felt compelled to teach them the English word in the hopes that they would understand. The Hua also had no word for “individual.” Truly, this society was invested in the cooperating group, not the individual.

All this sharing, lack of privacy, and lack of focus on the individual—these were essential to survival in this small community and all the others like it throughout human history. Those communities that were good at sharing had an adaptive advantage. It is this long evolutionary history of cooperation that shaped our remarkable human capacities for empathy, sharing, and mutual aid. The Hua were as happy and emotionally healthy a community as I have ever experienced, not that they were perfect by any means. 

Modern industrial society brought extraordinary advances in innovation, education, health, and prosperity. But it also weakened many of the face-to-face relationships that once sustained reciprocal obligation. It gave rise to so-called “robber barons” like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt, whose vast fortunes were built on the exploitation of natural resources and labor, while millions of workers were left in poverty.

During the twentieth century, Americans tried to restore some balance. Progressive taxation helped finance Social Security, the GI Bill, Medicare, Medicaid, and eventually the Affordable Care Act. These programs did not eliminate inequality, but they reflected an older principle: those who benefit most from society have a greater responsibility to sustain it. They should share.

Sharing is not merely a moral ideal taught by parents or religions. It is part of how humans evolved and survived – one of our biological endowments. It also helped power the American Revolution. In the “New World,” colonists rejected a distant king who siphoned profits from their economy to enrich his own kingdom. Those resources belonged to the people, to be shared for their collective health, education, and welfare.

Not skimmed off to serve an autocrat.  

Anna Meigs lives in Lyndeborough. She is a retired professor of anthropology who did research in India and Papua New Guinea. She taught at Macalester College and gave up tenure to pursue a career in clinical social work. While in training at Smith College School for Social Work, she taught anthropology courses at Wellesley College and MIT. She has published extensively on the Hua people of Papua New Guinea. She currently serves on the Wilton-Lyndeborough School Board.