TY - JOUR
T1 - Evolutionary psychology, economic freedom, trade and benevolence
AU - Levendis, John
AU - Eckhardt, Robert B.
AU - Block, Walter
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 John Levendis et al., published by Sciendo.
PY - 2019/6/1
Y1 - 2019/6/1
N2 - Our thesis is that the reason many of us today are inclined toward socialism (explicit cooperation) and against laissez-faire capitalism (implicit cooperation) is because the first type of behavior was much more genetically beneficial during previous generations of our species. There is, however, a seemingly strong argument against this hypothesis: evidence from human prehistory indicates that trade (implicit cooperation) previously was widespread. How, then, can we be hard-wired in favor of socialism and against capitalism if our ancestors were engaged in market behavior in past millennia? Although trade which is self-centered and beneficial (presumably mutually beneficial to all parties in the exchange) did indeed appear hundreds of thousands of years ago, benevolence was established in our hard-wiring very substantially earlier, literally hundreds of millions of years ago, and is therefore far more deeply integrated into the human psyche.
AB - Our thesis is that the reason many of us today are inclined toward socialism (explicit cooperation) and against laissez-faire capitalism (implicit cooperation) is because the first type of behavior was much more genetically beneficial during previous generations of our species. There is, however, a seemingly strong argument against this hypothesis: evidence from human prehistory indicates that trade (implicit cooperation) previously was widespread. How, then, can we be hard-wired in favor of socialism and against capitalism if our ancestors were engaged in market behavior in past millennia? Although trade which is self-centered and beneficial (presumably mutually beneficial to all parties in the exchange) did indeed appear hundreds of thousands of years ago, benevolence was established in our hard-wiring very substantially earlier, literally hundreds of millions of years ago, and is therefore far more deeply integrated into the human psyche.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068417763&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85068417763&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2478/revecp-2019-0005
DO - 10.2478/revecp-2019-0005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068417763
SN - 1213-2446
VL - 19
SP - 73
EP - 94
JO - Review of Economic Perspectives
JF - Review of Economic Perspectives
IS - 2
ER -