A Return to Yeomanry

A final reason to expect a return of yeomanry involves family. In the long run, perhaps the greatest failure of both communism and liberal capitalism has been an inability to reconcile the tensions of work and family life. For the majority of the world's population that no longer lives on farms or relies on home production, children are not an economic asset but an avoidable liability. And so, particularly in urban areas, we get fewer and fewer of them, with birthrates descending below replacement levels in large parts of the world.

A rise in home production would help restore the economic basis of the family. In agrarian settings as well as small businesses and craft shops, children can often earn their own keep from a young age without offense to the spirit of child-labor laws. Just as significantly, a parent who is his or her own boss and works in the home has the freedom and flexibility to combine work and family activities in ways that can make parenthood a joy, as opposed to a harried juggling act. The neo-yeomen won't only be more efficient laborers—they'll also be happier parents, giving their societies a clear Darwinian advantage.

Of course, without guaranteed healthcare, no computer programmer in Seattle can take the risks necessary to launch an independent career, just as without land reform in the developing world, would-be yeoman farmers won't be able to leap from tenant worker to landowner. Just as Jefferson used government to advance the Western frontier so that more workers could go toil the earth, for modern yeomen to achieve self-sufficiency, some protective government regulation may be in order. Forget your idealized past notions of man and plow; in the future, we'll all be tilling new kinds of fields.

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