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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Here’s A Piece About Rich Asshole Misanthropes (Or Miscoenothropes) That Doesn’t Mention Howard Hughes

Here’s A Piece About Rich Asshole Misanthropes (Or Miscoenothropes) That Doesn’t Mention Howard Hughes

by Tom Levenson|  December 22, 20197:15 pm| 25 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

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There’s a metric fuck tonne of crap news — daily revelations of the evil (and I use that word in its full sense) lodged at the center of American power that continues to add to the tally of human misery.  But here I want to talk about assholes of a different stripe.  Or species:

Hermit crabs face a uniquely competitive real estate market. They need bigger and bigger shells throughout their lives, but can’t grow these homes themselves. So they rely on castoff snail shells, and are constantly on the lookout for better properties entering the market.

A study that will be published next month in the journal Physica A found that the distribution of these shells in one hermit crab population was surprisingly similar to the distribution of wealth in human societies.

Here's A Piece About Rich Asshole Hermits That Doesn't Mention Howard Hughes

That may make hermit crabs one of the first animals known to experience wealth inequality.

Hermit crabs, perhaps because of their socialist disdain for the possibility of inheriting wealth, do not display quite the extremes of wealth inequality that human societies now display:

The team used a number called the Gini coefficient to measure overall inequality among the crabs. It found a value similar to that in small human populations, though not as great as in today’s large countries. The top 1 percent of hermit crabs owned only about 3 percent of the total shell weight, Dr. Chase and his co-authors noted: “There are no Warren Buffetts or Jeff Bezoses.”

Still, there are similarities:

While smaller crabs don’t exactly inherit their wealth from bigger crabs, the largest shells are a scarce resource that only a few crabs are privileged enough to get their claws on.

Nice to know that we aren’t the only ones wrestling with privilege.

And with that detour into “Ain’t nature grand?” territory, lets have our way with the comments, shall we?

Consider this the Escargot Open Thread.

Image: Follower of Rembrandt, A Hermit Reading, c. 1630

 

 

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Reader Interactions

25Comments

  1. 1.

    Patricia Kayden

    December 22, 2019 at 7:16 pm

    Trump/GOP passed a massive tax break for the rich & now these same people claim they need to gut/eliminate OUR Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid to “save” our economy. Trump even gushed about their court win to kill the ACA and protections for pre-existing conditions https://t.co/Ukj2on9Pio— ENOUGH ♿️✊✊??️‍??? (@Enough212) December 22, 2019

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    December 22, 2019 at 7:21 pm

    Dammit, now I want crab cakes.

  3. 3.

    West of the Rockies

    December 22, 2019 at 7:26 pm

    Thanks for the post, Tom.  I miss your voice here.  But with the semester being done, perhaps you’ll appear more frequently.

    Years ago, my ex and I (in the bloom of our new relationship) collected shells at the beach.  Going over our bounty that evening back home, we encountered what we first thought was an insect.  No, it was a tiny, tiny hermit crab.  We went back to the beach and with flashlights found a promising pool.  We put him in the water, and sure enough, he swiftly found a suitable shell-home.  We named him Seymour.  My ex began (but never finished) a children’s story on the abduction and return home of the little creature.  We were so innocent and playful still.  We had a lovely daughter but did not make it as a couple.  Thankfully, we remain friendly.

  4. 4.

    West of the Rockies

    December 22, 2019 at 7:27 pm

    @NotMax:

     

    That’s what you take from this story?!?//

  5. 5.

    Baud

    December 22, 2019 at 7:29 pm

    Shells can’t buy you happiness.

  6. 6.

    germy

    December 22, 2019 at 7:31 pm

    Still thinking about people defending having fundraisers in wine caves like it’s the “First they came for” poem

    — Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) December 22, 2019

  7. 7.

    germy

    December 22, 2019 at 7:34 pm

    ??? from @AOC: "For anyone who accuses us of instituting 'purity tests' — it’s called having values. It’s called giving a damn." pic.twitter.com/AwuXSAG66y

    — Eric Blanc (@_ericblanc) December 21, 2019

  8. 8.

    Chetan Murthy

    December 22, 2019 at 7:34 pm

    @germy: A fundraiser in a wine cave is speech [since Citizens United].  Others get to “speak” right back.  Suck it up, snowflake [directed at this WATB Hall, not at you].

  9. 9.

    jeffreyw

    December 22, 2019 at 7:35 pm

    @Baud: Shells for nothin’, and chicks for free.

  10. 10.

    Spanky

    December 22, 2019 at 7:35 pm

    When I saw “assholes” I was thinking we were going to keep with the Judi Dench thread downstairs.

    Too much shell wealth becomes a liability, unlike our overlords’ wealth. Perhaps they should have to haul their billions on their backs.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    December 22, 2019 at 7:36 pm

    Now, I ain’t sayin’ she a shell digger…

  12. 12.

    eclare

    December 22, 2019 at 7:38 pm

    @Baud: Hahaha

  13. 13.

    chris

    December 22, 2019 at 7:43 pm

    Aww, now I want an owl.

    Mushroom roof over owl’s nest (Photo: Johnny Salomnonsson) pic.twitter.com/nN0cCoK8TK— 41 Strange (@41Strange) December 22, 2019

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    December 22, 2019 at 7:47 pm

    @Baud

    The road to shell is paved with good intentions.

    ;)

  15. 15.

    Aleta

    December 22, 2019 at 7:53 pm

    Tell me that you want the kind of things

    that snail shell just can’t buy

  16. 16.

    Yarrow

    December 22, 2019 at 7:55 pm

    Shello, is it me you’re looking for?

  17. 17.

    Aleta

    December 22, 2019 at 7:56 pm

    Do octipi compete for coconut shell shelters?

  18. 18.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    December 22, 2019 at 7:59 pm

    Really, that’s just simple economics. Sure, hermit crabs don’t think, but they have evolution, the world’s biggest brute force analog computer, working on problems for them, and an advantage that helps individual survival can easily be  implemented. And when you think about it, it’s also economics. If there’s an advantage that can be had, you expect something to try to seize it – just like you expect a lucrative business opportunity to have a swarm of players, or an especially attractive marketplace to fill quickly, etc.

    The difference is, of course, hermit crabs aren’t even expected to have a concept of “justice”.

  19. 19.

    trollhattan

    December 22, 2019 at 8:13 pm

    @NotMax:

    Better than me, I was thinking hermit cakes.

  20. 20.

    Aleta

    December 22, 2019 at 8:18 pm

    Two in love can make it
    take my shell and please don’t break it
    Love was made for me and you.

  21. 21.

    Steeplejack

    December 22, 2019 at 8:20 pm

    @Baud:

    I’m long in wampum.

  22. 22.

    JaySinWA

    December 22, 2019 at 9:21 pm

    @trollhattan:  They seem awfully rich to me: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7656/old-hermit-cake/

  23. 23.

    Jay

    December 22, 2019 at 9:25 pm

    The hermit crabs form a sort of conga line ordered from largest to smallest crab. As the largest crab enters its new home, the next crab in line takes the vacated shell, leaving an open shell for the crab behind him. The shell swapping continues down the line until everyone has upgraded.

    https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/hermit-crabs-line-up-by-size-to-exchange-shells

    It’s called a vacancy chain, and it’s more like hand me downs than billionairism and winner take all capitalism.

  24. 24.

    StringOnAStick

    December 22, 2019 at 11:29 pm

    @Jay: It’s a nice example of cooperation between creatures who are competing for the same food sources; fascinating.

  25. 25.

    Rand Careaga

    December 23, 2019 at 2:32 am

    San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll observed this phenomenon in a terrarium thirty years ago (one hermit crab dragging another out of its shell and appropriating the premises) and suggested that this was a paradigm in miniature of the Bay Area real estate market.

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