Ive here. On the one hand, these animal behavior comparisons are interesting, but human societies already exhibit a range of behaviors about sharing and hoarding wealth. Literature also suggests additional ideas, such as the extreme anti-ownership society in Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed. On the other hand, anything that gets people to acknowledge that wealth inequality is a problem and to look for a different way to deal with it is helpful.

By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst, Institute for New Economic Thinking.Originally Posted in New Economic Thinking Institute website

Can we live on the values ??of mutual aid and resource sharing, or are we doomed to deeply stratified inequalities? As long as there have been economies – and 1 percent of people have benefited from their designs – there has been a debate about the “naturalness” of unequal conditions. We are selfish creatures, so the argument goes that some of us are naturally better off. inhale.

A series of articles about a December 2021 Research in Journals behavioral ecology New insights into intergenerational wealth and inequality in the animal world have sparked a new round of debate on this age-old topic.

Among the beasts, it’s worth being born privileged, researchers have found. For example, some mother squirrels who hoard nuts and pine cones end up leaving food reserves to some of their offspring, increasing their chances of survival. “Red squirrels are born with a silver spoon in their mouth,” joking New York Times. Advanced hyenas are able to pass status to their daughters (they are matrilineal, those smart hyenas) who inherit the right to the best meat, while some monkeys get nut-cracking tools from their parents, giving them extra .. Advantage.

This era The article is quick to point out that researchers were prompted to study the topic out of concerns about rising inequality during the pandemic, and simply wanted to see what humans could learn from nature, not justify intergenerational wealth.

but it Yes Interestingly, this particular study has demonstrated Well-received by the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum), this majestic global elite gathers every year at the Tony Ski Resort in Davos (this year’s brick-and-mortar gathering has been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic) to tell how the world economy is doing. An article sponsored by the agency asked readers to consider clownfish. It turns out that clownfish can inherit hiding places from their parents, allowing them to avoid predators that feed on their less privileged companions.

Could it be that clownfish taught the wisdom of the proposition, “I have privilege, so nature must be intentional”? Let’s investigate.

Bees did it. or them?

In the early days of the Enlightenment, when strict To get intellectuals to come up with theories about how and why things are, Anglo-Dutch philosopher and political economist Bernard Mandeville started thinking about animals. He finds himself agreeing with René Descartes (very wrongly) that animals are nothing more than physical machines: cuckoo birds and cuckoo clocks are much the same, except that you don’t have to feed them. They are unconscious automata.

Turning his attention to the bees, Mandeville wrote a satirical poem called “The Bee Fable: Or, Private Vices, Public Goods,” in which he described the collapse of a bee community when its members suddenly stopped taking their The greedy ego acts when acting – interested, becomes honest and virtuous. Moral lesson: Personal vices turned into public good.

Mandeville advises people to stop working for the benefit of others or controlling their passions, as this will only hinder business and intellectual progress in the state. After all, the flow of capital requires people to continually buy things they don’t need, so it’s vital that people are greedy and selfish if you want to have a thriving economy. “Luxury employs a million poor people,” asserted Mandeville, “and a million odious prides.” Without vices, one falls into a stupor of indifference. Greed is a good thing, the more vicious the better.

Mandeville’s Bee Poems Created a Sensation. He has since been revered by the most extreme free-market fundamentalists, though the author actually knows very little about the species he touts as role models for humans. It turns out that bees are highly cooperative creatures, and if they are unable or unwilling to help each other, their communities collapse. Quite the opposite of what Mandeville said.

Mandeville’s view of humans as deceptive, vile hoarders has drawn quite a few critics. Even Adam Smith felt that the philosopher had gone too far.Smith in his Moral Sentiment Theory “No matter how selfish a man may be, it is evident in his nature that there are principles which interest him in the fate of others, and regard their happiness as necessary to him, though all he derives from it is the pleasure of seeing it .” Smith also believes that without regulation, corruption and vices can destroy economies rather than help them thrive.

Smith intuitively thinks that reducing all human motivations to ego drives ignores our complexity — and many of the things that allow us to thrive, like empathy for our fellow citizens. Modern researchers point out that as early as infancy, Humans show empathy for others in distress. A six-month-old baby gets upset to see someone being bullied – it’s clearly not a blow to your ego for showing caring, which, as some cynics believe, is the only reason we show caring for our neighbors.

The researchers also found ample evidence of the advantages humans enjoy living in communities characterized by mutual support and shared resources.One recent books The late anthropologist David Graeber, dawn of all things, provides numerous examples of such societies dating back to the Stone Age.

Nature is full of all kinds of survival strategies – some we might want to imitate, some we don’t. For example, the famous ichneumon fly has found an ingenious way to ensure the survival of its offspring. It lays eggs on the body of another creature and paralyzes it, making it immobile while slowly being eaten alive. Hey, no reviews for ichneumon, but we probably don’t want to emulate it.

Researchers have also found many animals in nature that survive by cooperating and sharing, not bees. For example, some parrots, Share knowledge about available food with other parrots.vampire bat club Share food with hungry bat companions By spitting in its mouth (rude, but effective) and bonobos, monkeys beloved for their hippie preference for sex over violence — and also matrilineal — will be delighted share their food with friends.

Some animals even die to protect group members, like beesOn the other hand, female praying mantises will eat their mate’s head after mating, so again be careful when choosing your example!

Even if you single out a hundred animals to hoard resources to privilege themselves and their offspring, you still have to be careful to extrapolate this behavior to human society. That’s because in animals we can actually choose how we organize ourselves. We can decide which lifestyle is best for us.

No matter how hard you search, you won’t find something in the animal world – completely destroying your own community by hoarding. Researchers have yet to identify the golden pine cones and furry robber barons of the Gilded Age of squirrels. That’s because squirrels don’t have access to two things that humans have: an army and a legally protected engine of infinite capital accumulation.

In the human world, the wealthy are often able to control the political system and use force to protect their privileges, leading to severe economic inequality that threatens everyone’s existence. In the Gilded Age of Humanity, we are not just a few parents passing advantages to some of their children. Next to the lavish castle built by industrial billionaires, we have a complete, systemic mess, these rundown apartments and children huddled in the dirt. result? The Great Crash was followed by the tragic circumstances of the Great Depression, and even these billionaires fell. This is the opposite of Mandeville’s bee model.

The truth is that when humans act on the principle of greed for good, they usually end up creating extremely unstable economies that are vulnerable to disruption and collapse. As Thomas Piketty has shown, when the rich are able to keep getting fat through unregulated capitalism, they will drive inequality higher and higher, until eventually some kind of bloody catastrophe takes place that will put the whole Things blow up, or a sane government steps in to create more equality and stability. We’re currently thinking about which path we want to take this time: violence or a peaceful transition to something fairer. (See Thomas Ferguson, Director of Research at the Institute for New Economic Thinking Co-authored a recent paper to see what’s going on here).

Fortunately, there is good news: Unlike squirrels, humans can and often do create societies in which there is a limit to how much a person can hoard and limits how bad one can be to their neighbors. We’ve changed our world so that we can beat disease, and we can arrange it so that anyone can skip going to the doctor. Man is a work worthy of Shakespeare’s praise: noble in reason, infinite in ability. We don’t talk nonsense in public, and we don’t need to throw each other at the wolves. Mandeville’s bees are far from what free-market fundamentalists think they are. Beasts make some choices; humans can make more.