In the Ultimatum Game, one player is given $100 with complete discretion as to how much to share with a second player, whose only power is to accept or reject the division. While a strictly rational economic player would accept even a $1 share, in real life most people reject any share under $30. In so doing they harm themselves, but inflict even more harm on the greedy player, enforcing altrusim over the longer term.Rationality is not a simple as economists make it out to be because interests not merely economic. Moreover, interest involves not only reason but morals, involving sentiment. As contemporary cognitive-affective research shows, cognition is joined at the neurological level with affect, that is, reason with feeling.
"In so doing they harm themselves, but inflict even more harm on the greedy player, enforcing altrusim over the longer term."
This behavior is observed in primates, for example, suggesting that it is an evolutionary trait. Social animals depend on "morals" to function together as units, beginning with the family, since this requires in-group coordination as well as competition. Free riding is discouraged (punished) at much lower levels. The issue is not so much altruism as a choice as much as reciprocity as a requirement.
I do think Brexit and, to a lesser extent, the nomination of Donald Trump by the GOP are watershed moments, where the elites in powerful Western nations have been suddenly and utterly swept aside. I expect this to be a dominant theme in politics over the next 10 years or more, as the neoliberal centrist consensus is destroyed and the left and right offer competing visions of a New Deal 2.0 vs. neofascism to replace it.
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