Morality and Economy

In light of some of the dire news that is coming out about the likely future of the economy, I thought I would open up a new line of discussion.

I think sometimes, people lose sight of the difference between socialism and compassionate action.

Socialism is inherently violent, as force is used to coerce people into doing things for the alleged benefit of the greater good. However, this does not imply that is inherently wrong to take on unselfish actions. Indeed, when money works properly, it works because it facilitates co-operation amongst people, which leads to better results for all then everyone acting solely in their immediate shot term interest.

This principle finds support from both religous and secular perspectives. The religous perspective is probably plain enough. From the secular perspective, there is the concept of the evolution of altruism.

EDIT: Skip this part if it doesn't interest you. I'm a bit of a science nerd.

Altruism in ethology and evolutionary biology
Main articles: Altruism in animals and Evolutionary ethics
In the science of ethology (the study of animal behavior), and more generally in the study of social evolution, altruism refers to behavior by an individual that increases the fitness of another individual while decreasing the fitness of the actor.[citation needed] Researchers on alleged altruist behaviours among animals have been ideologically opposed to the social darwinist concept of the "survival of the fittest", under the name of "survival of the nicest"—the latter being globally compatible, however, with darwinist' theory of evolution. Insistence on such cooperative behaviours between animals was first exposed by the Russian zoologist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin in his 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.

Recent developments in game theory (see ultimatum game) have provided some explanations for apparent altruism, as have traditional evolutionary analyses. Among the proposed mechanisms are:

Behavioural manipulation (for example, by certain parasites that can alter the behavior of the host)
Bounded rationality (for example, Herbert Simon)
Conscience
Kin selection including eusociality (see also "selfish gene")
Memes (by influencing behavior to favour their own spread, for example, religion)
Reciprocal altruism, mutual aid
Selective investment theory [6] - a theoretical proposal for the evolution of long-term, high-cost altruism
Sexual selection, in particular, the Handicap principle
Reciprocity (social psychology)
Indirect reciprocity (for example, reputation)
Strong reciprocity[7]
Pseudo-reciprocity
The study of altruism was the initial impetus behind George R. Price's development of the Price equation which is a mathematical equation used to study genetic evolution. An interesting example of altruism is found in the cellular slime moulds, such as Dictyostelium mucoroides. These protists live as individual amoebae until starved, at which point they aggregate and form a multicellular fruiting body in which some cells sacrifice themselves to promote the survival of other cells in the fruiting body. Social behavior and altruism share many similarities to the interactions between the many parts (cells, genes) of an organism, but are distinguished by the ability of each individual to reproduce indefinitely without an absolute requirement for its neighbors.

Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health and LABS-D'Or Hospital Network (J.M.) provided the first evidence for the neural bases of altruistic giving in normal healthy volunteers, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In their research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in October, 2006,[8] they showed that both pure monetary rewards and charitable donations activated the mesolimbic reward pathway, a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food and sex. However, when volunteers generously placed their interests of others before their own by making charitable donations, another brain circuit was selectively activated: the subgenual cortex/septal region. These structures are intimately related to social attachment and bonding in other species. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.[9]

A new study by Samuel Bowles at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, US, is seen by some as breathing new life into the model of group selection for Altruism, known as "Survival of the nicest". Bowles conducted a genetic analysis of contemporary foraging groups, including Australian aboriginals, native Siberian Inuit populations and indigenous tribal groups in Africa. It was found that hunter-gatherer bands of up to 30 individuals were considerably more closely related than was previously thought. Under these conditions, thought to be similar to those of the middle and upper Paleolithic, altruism towards other group-members would improve the overall fitness of the group.

If an individual defended the group but was killed, any genes that the individual shared with the overall group would still be passed on. Early customs such as food sharing or monogamy could have levelled out the “cost” of altruistic behaviour, in the same way that income taxes redistribute income in society. He assembled genetic, climactic, archaeological, ethnographic and experimental data to examine the cost-benefit relationship of human cooperation in ancient populations. In his model, members of a group bearing genes for altruistic behaviour pay a "tax" by limiting their reproductive opportunities to benefit from sharing food and information, thereby increasing the average fitness of the group as well as their inter-relatedness. Bands of altruistic humans would then act together to gain resources from other groups at this challenging time in history.[10].

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Furthermore, not all actions that would be considered capitalistic are inherently moral. I'm sure many of us could make a great deal of money deceiving people who are of lower intelligence. In moral capitalism, one is motivated by one's self interest, but is bound by honesty and belief that one's self interest provides a general benefit to one's consumers or clients.

I mention this, because in economic hard times, there is the temptation to retreat into shells of "everyone for himself." Paradoxically, this will actually further the interests of the socialists and collectivists. If a hard economy decreases co-operative, productive economic behaviors, it will give more ammunition to the socialists who will argue that coercive force is necessary to get people to act against their own self interest and for the common good (of course, this is the bif lie of the socialists, in my opinion, that the two are separate, acting in one's true, long term self-interest is in fact in the best interests of the common good).

To put it another way, i would much rather work for free for the benefit of a neighbor, and do so of my own free will, then work under the barrel of a gun for the benefit of "all".