If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-moral-molecule/200905/if-you-accept-evolution-you-must-oppose-over-regulation-the-economy

by noaharc • 17 years ago

14 32 17 years ago

blogs.psychologytoday.com

smhinsey2• 17 years ago

Does anyone actually advocate over-regulation?

tokenadult• 17 years ago

I listen to Robert Reich radio commentaries, and he seems to advocate over-regulation.

smhinsey2• 17 years ago

Can you give an example?

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Surely the level of regulation he advocates seems excessive to you, no? (I have no particular opinion RR's actual recommendations).

mkeblx• 17 years ago

I advocate over-regulation. It's not very hard: figure out the exact set of regulation you want, x, and then advocate x&y, where y is not the null set. Since the likelihood of x&y is logically less that of x alone you stand a better chance of getting x implemented.

TriinT4• 17 years ago

The problem with regulation is that for every set of rules there's a corresponding nonempty set of loopholes that can be exploited. Finance is now so complex that coming up with rules that can't be gamed is not as trivial as one might think...

pj2• 17 years ago

You can accept evolution -- and then conquer it.

If the premise of this article is true, then we would oppose medicine. We would oppose plastic surgery. We would oppose debt. We would oppose the police. We would oppose marriage and commitment to one individual.

All those things are contrary to evolution, yet, they are social institutions that have evolved to protect and further our species.

If you accept evolution, then you accept that it is the species that is important -- not an individual organism. We are fighting for the very existence of intelligence in the universe. We are fighting to preserve the most unique thing we know that exists -- life itself.

This word "over-regulation" and these arguments about government intervention are all bogus. It is because the government backed off what many called "over-regulation" that we are in the very mess we are in!

If you accept evolution then you must also accept that some individuals within a population are going to attempt to ensure their survival over the survival of our species. Some individuals do not understand that they exist in a fabric composed of threads between every living organism. They believe their individual success is of the prime importance -- but this is not what evolution teaches.

Darwin's theories of evolution are made in a world devoid of free will. We can choose how to proceed as a group. We can come together as a planet and make our planet better for all. We do not need to compete with each other to the deteriment of our opponent. We need to compete toward common goals: Survival for all, good health, longevity, eternal intelligence in the universe.

TriinT4• 17 years ago

"If you accept evolution, then you accept that it is the species that is important -- not an individual organism. We are fighting for the very existence of intelligence in the universe. We are fighting to preserve the most unique thing we know that exists -- life itself."

That sounds terribly naive to me. According to the gene-centric view of evolution, that is completely wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution

I like to watch documentaries about simians because they're the animals closest to humans. They live in society, share tasks, and generally do a lot of things humans do. Some male simians even pay for sex! It happens that the alpha male gets to impregnate most females of the group, and most males are left with nothing. These males obviously don't like being reproductive losers and rebel against the status quo. They will try to kill the alpha male and fight among themselves to see who the new alpha male will be. They will kill the former alpha male's babies so that they can impregnate the females and let these take care of their offspring, not someone else's offspring. They don't care a fig about the species, they care about fulfilling their biological role, which is to procreate with the best females of the pack.

Humans are not monkeys, but most of us aren't that different in terms of behavior. Given that there are limited resources such as food and fertile females, caring about the species makes little sense to most animals. Maybe it makes some sense to humans, but I personally think that's baloney. We have evolved beyong the basic primate level, but not as much as some people think.

plesn3• 17 years ago

We are more than our genes. Let's not be reductionists here. So yes, we have brains which can make some of us do things like die for others or even die for ideas. That's quite something for your uncaring individuals.

And I think your view of gene-centric evolution sounds terribly naïve: It has been explained a lot of times that the "selfish gene" has nothing to do with making us selfish ^^ Quite the contrary: it can make individuals do very altruistic things for their siblings (potentially carriers of the same gene).

And finally, in my opinion even if genes are fixed like hardware, their seems still to be some freedom left to software, memes...

ubernostrum• 17 years ago

Of course, this presumes one accepts a gene-centered view of evolution. The fact that we know of multiple species whose behaviors change faster than their genotype (not just humans -- see, e.g., apes which use tools and develop new learned behaviors) seems to suggest that there's more we should be considering (and no, that doesn't mean "take a copy of The Selfish Gene and replace 'gene' with 'meme' everywhere").

Dilpil• 17 years ago

Why worry about eternal intelligence in the universe?

splat• 17 years ago

"This word "over-regulation" and these arguments about government intervention are all bogus. It is because the government backed off what many called "over-regulation" that we are in the very mess we are in!"

This may be what some website with an agenda told you, but unfortunately reality is a little more complicated than that. This crisis has a number of causes and the economists who have been studying it from the beginning still don't fully understand it. True, the repeal of certain regulations was an important factor. But another important cause was excessive encouragement by the government for homeownership. This sort of "over-regulation" was certainly disastrous.

The point this article is trying to make is that the notion of "spontaneous order" is fundamental to both the theory of evolution and the free market. One would be hard pressed to design from scratch a working flamingo, and one would similarly be hard pressed to design from scratch a working economy. Both are extremely complicated systems and one cannot make a change to a single part without watching the consequences ripple out to affect seemingly distant parts of the system.

In the case of biology we can perform experiments so that we can isolate the specific effects of a particular action. This is what makes medicine work. A pharmaceutical company does not make the right drug on its first go--it tries thousands of chemicals before getting anything that works. Unfortunately, we cannot do this in the economy--it won't fit in a test tube. If Congress changes a certain regulation, the effects of this change will be felt in distant parts of the economy in ways that no one could have predicted. But because we can never have a "control economy," we will never be able to figure out what those effects were, exactly. In effect, we're hoping that we can come up with the right drug on the first go. This is nothing more than the Law of Unintended Consequences. Perhaps there exist certain regulations that would make the economy run more efficiently--but until we can apply the scientific method to the economy, we will never be able to definitively determine what they are.

hydralisk2• 17 years ago

"The point this article is trying to make is that the notion of "spontaneous order" is fundamental to both the theory of evolution and the free market. One would be hard pressed to design from scratch a working flamingo, and one would similarly be hard pressed to design from scratch a working economy."

But what good is a flamingo? If you're trying to solve human problems, spontaneous order from some sort of survival-of-the-fittest system is not good enough. Things that are useful to humans require conscious design. Spontaneous order gave us wood, but it took a human engineer to design the wheel. Evolution by natural selection never could have designed such a tool spontaneously.

Sure, the economy is a lot more complicated than that, and the precautionary principle is sound advice. All the same, there's every reason to believe that humans are capable of designing something better, as long we're not reckless about it.

unbannable• 17 years ago

Memo: Evolution is an explanation of fact and contains no moral (or religious, for that matter) position. Accepting evolution as an explanation of what happened does not require that one subscribe to so-called "Darwinist" social and economic ideologies.

^OP didn't get it.

knowtheory2• 17 years ago

This piece is so horribly fundamentally naive, that it's not worth even considering.

You want to use the evolutionary example? Fine, look at livestock or plant husbandry. We breed and select for animals which serve our needs. Cows that have more meat, which produce more milk. Ones which are more docile. Plants that produce more yield, which are less susceptible to poisoning us, or making us sick as vectors for diseases.

We control a great deal of evolution, because it makes us safer, and healthier.

============================

This is easily put another way.

There is an Economic fitness landscape, just the same way that there is an Evolutionary fitness landscape.

Just the way that we control the incentives, and conditions for how reproduction takes place in our livestock, we also control the incentives and conditions for economic growth and (re)production.

We must ensure there are sane incentives for how corporations and individuals behave in the economy. We must observe and shape the landscape that we live in or we risk becoming victims of evolutionary, or economic pitfalls, both seen and unseen.

knowtheory2• 17 years ago

An addendum:

Regulation is a tool to change the landscape and the conditions in which businesses and individuals operate.

You can regulate in a way that benefits certain types of business, i.e. breaking up a monopoly helps smaller businesses. Making the phone companies lease their lines to smaller competitors is a GOOD thing for competition and diversity.

The notion that regulation only ever stifles the economy, in that sense, is simply incorrect.

That is not to say that there aren't regulations that have a stifling/dampening effect, nor that there shouldn't be. Sometimes you do want to raise the bar across the board. We need banks to be sufficiently capitalized in order to be able to pay their customers back.

That may be stifling for banks, but it's in OUR best interest.

huangm2• 17 years ago

All of this also assumes that government can do its job well.

That breaking up a monopoly (and how do you define one, anyway?) is good is not obvious (economies of scale, etc). But even taking this as given, that sometimes monopolies are bad, it is far from clear whether allowing government to intervene will be better.

You have to weigh the costs and benefits. Anti-trust law is extremely subjective. It's existence incentivizes companies to use it against each other to gain a competitive edge rather than real value-added approaches. Anti-trust law creates uncertainty that can deter innovation (should we develop this technology if we can't fully profit off of it?)

Government institutions are like all other institutions - they want to survive. And to survive, they need to grow. Mission creep is inevitable. So even if you have identified a narrow area in which government intervention can help, it is not obvious that we should allow government to intervene.

pj2• 17 years ago

Just tonight on 60 Minutes, the chairman of the FDIC said she thinks it would be good if congress considered limiting the size of banks. She said it is not good when a bank gets so big that it can't be allowed to fail.

alex_c• 17 years ago

I don't follow the argument. It seems to claim that because there ISN'T a God involved in evolution, there OUGHT NOT be a God figure involved in the economy. Regardless of how anyone feels about each individual statement, I fail to see the logic that connects them.

ardit33• 17 years ago

"If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy " ... How about this: "If you accept evolution, you must oppose putting to jail murderers."

cellis• 17 years ago

Civilized society is perfectly fine with opposing jail for murderers, for several definitions of "murder".

barry-cotter• 17 years ago

Is does not imply ought.

vitaminj• 17 years ago

I don't think I've ever met anyone with a consistent perspective on everything (me included). People will accept contradictory premises, especially across different fields, all the time.

huangm2• 17 years ago

While the argument presented in this article is obviously nonsense, it is definitely not obvious that regulation is desirable. Have any of you touting regulation to 'correctly align incentives' considered how much regulation has existed already?

From the GSE's (Fannie and Freddie), the SEC, the mere existence of a central bank, to scores and scores of other existing government interventions in the economy, what we've seen in the past few decades cannot really be called free-market capitalism.

The current crisis clearly indicates that something is broken. That we have too much regulation is as plausible an explanation as that we have too little. And yet, very few people seem to even acknowledge this fact.

muddylemon• 17 years ago

So regulation interferes with the natural process of business evolving so they can consume more resources and grow larger and more powerful. It also protects the "weaker" (smaller businesses and actual people) by giving them unnatural advantages that allow them to survive and avoid being obliterated by the stronger "more fit" organizations. Vaccines interfere with the natural process of viruses evolving into more powerful organisms and giving their competition (us) an unnatural advantage that allow us to survive and avoid being obliterated by the stronger viruses.

pohl• 17 years ago

...may I breed dogs or plant hybrid tomatoes in my garden?

albertsun• 17 years ago

That assumes the purpose of regulation is to limit competition between corporations and prevent them from failing. The true purpose of most regulation is to protect consumers and small time investors from the worst side effects of a competitive market.

hydralisk2• 17 years ago

The author is confusing accepting biological evolution as a fact with belief in natural selection as an all-powerful optimizing agent. As most biologists understand (since Gould & Lewontin's 1979 "Critique of the Adaptationist Program", anyway), evolution makes mistakes and leads to nonoptimal outcomes. There is every reason to believe that conscious human design can construct better systems than some sort of anarchical survival-of-the-fittest scheme.

In fact, saying so is blisteringly obvious. Virtually every human accomplishment has required conscious design. Evolution by natural selection could never have designed a wheel -- but we did. It may be tempting to employ biological principles to everything, but it's a mistake.

If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy

Related Stories