David Sloan Wilson and Dag Hessen — How Norway Proves Laissez-faire Economics Is Not Just Wrong, It’s Toxic

A surprisingly simple solution to the conflict between self-interest and mutual benefits at all hierarchical levels.…

The conflict between lower-level selfishness and higher-level welfare pervades the biological world.…

But goodness has its own advantages, especially when those who behave for the good of their groups are able to band together and avoid the depredations of the selfish. Punishment is also a powerful weapon against selfishness, although it is often costly to wield. Every once in a great while, the good manage to decisively suppress selfishness within their ranks. Then something extraordinary happens. The group becomes a higher-level organism.…

Only recently have scientists begun to realize that human evolution represents a similar transition....

In this essay, we have sketched a surprisingly simple solution to the apparent conflict between self-interest and mutual benefits at all hierarchical levels. We are suggesting that the social dynamics that take place naturally and spontaneously in villages can be scaled up to prevent the ethical transgressions that routinely take place at a large scale. Why is such a simple solution not more widely known and discussed? Although we immediately realize this solution when it comes to cell-organism relationships or individuals within villages, we do not realize that the same principles also hold for companies or nations.

One reason is because of an alternative narrative that pretends that the only social responsibility of a company is to maximize its bottom line. Free markets will ensure that society benefits as a result. This narrative makes it seem reasonable to eliminate social controls – precisely the opposite of what needs to be done. Governments have been under the spell of this narrative for nearly 50 years despite a flimsy scientific foundation and ample evidence for its harmful effects. We can break the spell of the old narrative by noting something that will appear utterly obvious in retrospect: The unregulated pursuit of self-interest is cancerous at all scales. To create a global village, we must look to real villages.

Evonomics
How Norway Proves Laissez-faire Economics Is Not Just Wrong, It’s Toxic

David Sloan Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, and Dag Hessen, Professor of Biology at the University of Oslo, Norway