The Darwin economy
"The premise of economist Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'--a tenet of market economics--is that competitive self-interest shunts benefits to the community. But that is the exception rather than the rule, argues writer Robert H. Frank. Charles Darwin's idea of natural selection is a more accurate reflection of how economic competition works... because individual and species benefits do not always coincide. Highlighting reasons for market failure and the need to cut waste, Frank argues that we can domesticate our wild economy by taxing higher-end spending and harmful industrial emissions."--Nature.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
3mentions
3people
2011–2020years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Subjectively, each person's relative economic position is at least as important as their absolute position.
That subjective need to be "better" than your neighbor is part of the reason we are all less happy even though we have much more than ever in absolute terms. I don't even think it's a "capitalist meme", in some sense it is a core tenet (and at times a major problem) with capitalism.
Bob Frank wrote a great book about this: http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Economy-Liberty-Competition-Com...
- This reminds me of "The Darwin Economy" by Robert S. Frank (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12035503-the-darwin-econ...) where he proposes a tax on super expensive luxury consumption precisely because its main utility is social signalling. For example, spending $6 million on a sweet 16 party would have exactly the same utility as spending $3 million and paying $3 million in taxes on it, if everyone had to do the same. Probably more useful as a thought experiment than workable policy, but interesting to consider.
- > The government's duty to protect your life does not extend beyond protecting it from the use of force by other people.
You are mistaken: http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Economy-Liberty-Competition-Har...
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