Will Wilkinson explains evolutionary psychology’s take on free markets in Capitalism and Human Nature:
What evolutionary psychology really helps us to appreciate is just what an unlikely achievement complex, liberal, market-based societies really are. It helps us to get a better grip on why relatively free and fabulously wealthy societies like ours are so rare and, possibly, so fragile. Evolutionary psychology helps us to understand that successful market liberal societies require the cultivation of certain psychological tendencies that are weak in Stone Age minds and the suppression or sublimation of other tendencies that are strong. Free, capitalist societies, where they can be made to work, work with human nature. But it turns out that human nature is not easy material to work with.
The main points:
- We are Coalitional
- We are Hierarchical
- We are Envious Zero-sum Thinkers
- Property Rights are Natural
- Mutually Beneficial Exchange is Natural
(Interestingly, despite the fact that we’re envious zero-sum thinkers, we’re wired for mutually beneficial exchange.)
F. A. Hayek anticipated evolutionary psychology’s analysis, noting that we live within two worlds, the “macro-cosmos” of society at large and the “micro-cosmos” of our friends and family:
If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed, rules of the micro-cosmos (i.e., of the small band or troop, or of, say, our families) to the macro-cosmos (our wider civilization), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet if we were always to apply the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of worlds at once.
Immanuel Kant remarked, “from the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing can be made.” Denis Dutton noted:
It is not . . . that no beautiful carving or piece of furniture can be produced from twisted wood; it is rather that whatever is finally created will only endure if it takes into account the grain, texture, natural joints, knotholes, strengths and weaknesses of the original material.