by From Blair Fix and RWER issue #90 Modern economics, I have come to believe, resembles pre-Darwinian biology. By this, I mean that economics is captivated by an ideology that is stopping scientific progress. Let’s look at the parallels. Before Darwin, biologists believed that life on Earth was created by God. This seductive idea stunted scientific progress for centuries. Much of the evidence for evolution – the fossil record, the similar anatomy of different species – was staring scientists in the face long before Darwin proposed his theory of evolution. But because life was viewed as God’s eternal creation, this evidence was mostly ignored. Darwin’s “dangerous idea”[1] – evolution by natural selection – gave meaning to this evidence. Life was not an eternal order, Darwin proposed.
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from Blair Fix and RWER issue #90
Modern economics, I have come to believe, resembles pre-Darwinian biology. By this, I mean that economics is captivated by an ideology that is stopping scientific progress. Let’s look at the parallels.
Before Darwin, biologists believed that life on Earth was created by God. This seductive idea stunted scientific progress for centuries. Much of the evidence for evolution – the fossil record, the similar anatomy of different species – was staring scientists in the face long before Darwin proposed his theory of evolution. But because life was viewed as God’s eternal creation, this evidence was mostly ignored.
Darwin’s “dangerous idea”[1] – evolution by natural selection – gave meaning to this evidence. Life was not an eternal order, Darwin proposed. Instead, it was an evolving system, driven by differential reproduction. The plethora of evidence for evolution suddenly made sense.
In hindsight, Darwin’s idea seems obvious, almost trivial. But it was not at the time. Most scientists were simply unable to imagine alternatives to their ideology of an unchanging cosmos. The situation is much the same in economics today.
Like biologists before Darwin, economists are captivated by an ideology that envisions a static cosmos. According to economic ideology, humans are selfish utility maximizers. In a perfectly competitive market, it follows from “natural law” that each person receives exactly what they produce. This is the eternal order.
Except it’s not.
Sitting before economists is a wealth of evidence for our evolved (and evolving) sociality. No more than 400 generations ago, humans lived in small tribes of a few dozen people. The first states formed 200 generations ago. The first empires appeared 120 generations ago. Nation states appeared a mere 10 generations ago. Now we live in states with millions (sometimes billions) of people
Like pre-Darwinian biologists who ignored the evidence for evolution, economists mostly ignore the evidence for the evolution of human culture. It simply does not fit with their static worldview. Economics awaits its Darwinian revolution.
What’s needed is a theory that gives meaning to the evidence for human cultural evolution, and applies this evidence to the study of resource distribution. Fortunately, evolutionary-minded economists don’t have to start from scratch. Sociobiologists have done most of the work already.
What puzzles sociobiologists is the capability of some animals (like humans) to behave both selfishly and cooperatively. This dual nature needs an evolutionary explanation. Sociobiologists think they have one. They call it group selection (or multilevel selection).
I propose we use this theory of group selection to create an evolutionary theory of resource distribution. read more
[1] Darwin’s Dangerous Idea is the title of a book by philosopher Daniel Dennett.