MICHAEL SHERMER is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and the author, most recently, of Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown.
Where goods cross frontiers, armies won’t. Restated: Where economic borders between two nations are porous, political borders become impervious to armies.
Data from the new sciences of evolutionary economics, behavioral economics, and neuroeconomics reveal that when people are free to cooperate and trade (such as in game-theory protocols), they establish trust, reinforced through neural pathways that release such bonding hormones as oxytocin. Thus, biologically they are less likely to fight and kill those with whom they are cooperating and trading.
My dangerous idea is a solution to what I call the really hard problem: How best should we live? My answer: in a free society—defined as free-market economics and democratic politics (fiscal conservatism and social liberalism), leading to the greatest liberty for the greatest number. Since humans are by nature tribal, the overall goal is to expand the concept of the tribe to include all members of the species, in a global free society. Free trade between all peoples is the surest way to reach this goal.
People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason that they have a hard time accepting evolution: It is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer—a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer—a Government. In fact, complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer.
Charles Darwin’s natural selection is Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Darwin showed how complex design and ecological balance were unintended consequences of individual competition among organisms. Smith showed how national wealth and social harmony were unintended consequences of individual competition among people. Nature’s economy mirrors society’s economy. Thus, integrating evolution and economics—what I call evonomics—demonstrates that an old economic doctrine is supported by modern biology.