The Nature of Economics: How Environments Create Moralities and How Technology Modifies Environments
Synopsis "The Nature of Economics: How Environments Create Moralities and How Technology Modifies Environments"
My Motive for Writing This Book was to Understand Economics through NatureIndividuals, organizations, and politicians (i.e., their agents) continually damage economies by obtaining unearned benefits. I felt by understanding economics through nature I could show how really damaging it is. I started with the Big Bang. Not surprisingly, I first encountered the laws of thermodynamics: Energy naturally flows to regions of lesser energy. Clearly, replenishing our continual loss of energy requires a healthy economy. True, but my search revealed so much more.Natural SelectionIn 1859, Charles Darwin published his seminal work, On The Origin of Species. He recognized the relationship between economics and ecology and borrowed some ideas from economics. The esteemed Harvard evolutionary biologist, Edward O. Wilson, believes that the social sciences and the humanities make sense only in light of evolution. I agree enthusiastically.Natural selection, the driving force behind evolution, designs individuals to conform to their environment. Additionally, many evolutionary biologists believe (as Darwin suspected) that in social species, such as humans, group selection also occurs. That is, members of a group (i.e., family and friends) would help a seemingly deficient member of the group survive because, doing so, might increase the probability that the group will survive. The degree of cooperation between two individuals tends to be inversely correlated with the genetic distance between them.Some Primary RevelationsMoralitiesNatural selection designs an individual to conform to its environment. A primary purpose of this book is to show that moral behavior for a society is simply its successful behavior with respect to natural selection. That is, our morality is designed by natural selection to conform to our environment - and there are countless environments. Free Market EconomyRealizing this inherent link between morality and survival should change how we view willful human manipulation and deformation of our economies. In fact, the implications of this inherent link are vast. This book shows that the free market economy is the moral economy because it is the economy in which individuals can most likely be successful. We define the free market in terms of accuracy.
