Evolutionary psychology, economic freedom, trade and benevolence

Levendis John, Eckhardt Robert B. and Block Walter ()
Additional contact information
Levendis John: Associate Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans, USA.
Eckhardt Robert B.: Professor of Developmental Genetics and Evolutionary Morphology at Pennsylvania State University, USA.
Block Walter: Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans, USA.

Review of Economic Perspectives, 2019, vol. 19, issue 2, 73-94

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Benevolence; capitalism; evolutionary psychology; hard-wiring; profit and loss; selfishness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z1 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/revecp-2019-0005 (text/html)

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:vrs:reoecp:v:19:y:2019:i:2:p:73-94:n:1

DOI: 10.2478/revecp-2019-0005

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economic Perspectives is currently edited by Antonín Slaný

More articles in Review of Economic Perspectives from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().