Review of Economic Perspectives (Jun 2019)

Evolutionary psychology, economic freedom, trade and benevolence

  • Levendis John,
  • Eckhardt Robert B.,
  • Block Walter

DOI
https://doi.org/10.2478/revecp-2019-0005
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 2
pp. 73 – 94

Abstract

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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.

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