Is market liberalism adaptive? Rethinking F. A. Hayek on moral evolution

Filipe Nobre Faria ()
Additional contact information
Filipe Nobre Faria: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)

Journal of Bioeconomics, 2017, vol. 19, issue 3, No 3, 307-326

Abstract: Abstract Hayek’s social theory of evolution suggests that market liberal morality is adaptive for social groups. He justified the evolutionary superiority of market liberalism by asserting that groups operating under a market liberal morality would have a higher capacity to expand and reproduce than groups with alternative tribal moralities. Thus, market liberal groups would be favoured through cultural and genetic group selection. But in fact, market liberal morality reveals maladaptive tendencies and remains insufficiently powerful to create adaptive social groups. Hayek’s dismissal of moral tribalism in favour of market liberal morality is found to underestimate the importance of tribal goals in the evolutionary system.

Keywords: Moral evolution; Cultural evolution; F. A. Hayek; Market liberalism; Group selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10818-017-9251-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbioec:v:19:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s10818-017-9251-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10818/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10818-017-9251-1

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Bioeconomics is currently edited by Ulrich Witt, Michael T. Ghiselin and David Sloan Wilson

More articles in Journal of Bioeconomics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().