GEOG 352: Day 12
Chapter 13 of Daly and Farley
Housekeeping Items
• Any announcements? If anyone’s interested, the executive
director of Oxfam will be speaking in Imogene Lim’s class
on Wednesday at 4:00 (Building 356, Room 334) on solving
the global food challenge.
• Next Tuesday we will do a review for the mid-term.
• I hope you’ve all read Hardin and Ridley & Low by now. If
you have questions or comments, please share them.
• Today, we’re going to cover Chapter 13 of the text and
Jordyn will discuss “sustainable yield.”
• I will also hand out a sheet on the different forms of capital.
• I saw a film last year called “Milking the Rhinoceros” that
shed some interesting light on the selfishness debate. It
suggested that people’s views on issues are shaped by their
existential position.
Housekeeping Items
• The Masai, one of the oldest herding cultures in the
world, shares its pasturelands with wildlife, which also
occasionally predates on its herds. With the advent of
colonialism, they were not allowed to hunt at all, were
excluded from ‘national parks,’ and began to see
wildlife as nothing more than a nuisance.
• Now, in Kenya and other African countries,
experiments are being undertaken to give local people
a stake in wildlife conservation through tourist
operations and limited hunting, thus transforming the
relation between people and wildlife into more of a
‘win-win’ situation.
Chapter 13
• While something of a caricature, mainstream economists
tend to view humans as taking the form of homo
economicus, characterized by a)insatiability b)perfect
rationality, and c)perfect self-interest.
• The economy as a whole is seen as arising out of the
aggregation of the decisions of all of these utilitymaximizers. In the process, all this selfish behaviour
produces the greatest good, or what Adam Smith called
the “invisible hand.” [Some are more cynical.]
Chapter 13
• This perspective is expressed in such famous lines
as “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the
brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but
from their regard to their own interest. We address
ourselves, not to their humanity but to their selflove, and never talk to them of our own necessities
but of their advantages.”
• “…every individual necessarily labours to render the
annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He
generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the
public interest, nor knows how much he is
promoting it…. and by directing that industry in
such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest
value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in
this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible
hand to promote an end which was no part of his
intention (emphasis added).”
Chapter 13
• But the same Adam Smith who wrote The
Wealth of Nations also wrote The Theory of
Moral Sentiments, in which he emphasizes the
capacity people have for sympathy, their need to
be seen favourably by others, and the fact
competition works best in a context of overall
community and cooperation.
• There is no doubt that competition – where it
exists, as there are many barriers to it – has its
benefits: for instance, in the realm of
electronics.
• However, as the authors point out, it may not
yield the public good in such fields as health
care, and its value in agricultural technology is
questionable.
Chapter 13
• Mainstream economics draws a number of its analogies
from a certain interpretation of Darwinism (“survival of the
fittest” and “nature red in tooth and claw”). However,
Darwin also believed that cooperation played an important
role in evolution, as have a number of other theorists such as
Peter Kropotkin. Certainly, human groups would never have
survived without extensive and tight co-operation.
• While, initially, Smith must have felt that those who were
well off had earned their wealth through their superior
ability, after a visit to France he began to see the ‘gluttony’ of
the rich as unproductive and parasitic.
• There is also much debate about the role of the economic
and financial elite. The Marxist view is that the capitalist
class add no value to the production process, merely
creaming off the value created by the workers.
Chapter 13
• Others have sought acknowledgement for the organizing
talents and administrative and creative genius of the Bill
Gates and Steven Jobs of the world. Some, like Ayn Rand,
even reversed the Marxist paradigm and argued that, if the
elite went “on strike,” society would grind to a halt. (On this
score, has anyone seen “The Take” by Naomi Klein and Avi
Lewis?).
• Others would acknowledge the importance of their role,
while suggesting that their remuneration is totally excessive.
• The authors introduce the Easterlin paradox, that beyond a
certain threshold of income, people do not appear to become
happier, and that, globally, there is not always a strong
correlation between gross national income adjusted for
purchase power parity (PPP) – see graph on p. 237.
Chapter 13
• What does make people happy? What makes you the most
happy?
• The authors cite more recent thinking that, in addition to
utility from stuff, there is procedural utility – such as the
pleasure we get from good work, good friendships and
relationships, a positive community life, maybe sense of
place, freedom, opportunities for creativity, and knowing we
stand for certain values.
• A clear sense of individual and cultural identity is also
important. However, in consumer society, identity has been
commodified. We create an identity from a prefabricated kit
of parts – from having the right set of clothes, music,
vehicle, make-up, cell phone, etc. and – in the process – we
basically become identical to a million other “individualists.”
Or Lulemon perhaps?
The superficial differences
between products challenges
the notion of complete
rationality, as does ‘brand
loyalty,’ which is often based
on packaging more than
substance. And we have also
discussed the limits of viewing
people as completely selfinterested, or even of seeing
self-interest and altruism as
polar opposites.
Chapter 13
• The fact that people are so easily manipulated by advertising
challenges the notion of perfect rationality since their
purchases often have very little to do with value for the
money. What are some examples?
Chapter 13
• In terms of insatiability, that seems to be a cultural
characteristic of our culture – no sooner do we get or
attain one thing then we begin to crave something
else. In addition, it’s onot nly what we have or have
achieved, it’s what we have or have achieved relative
to our neighbours or peers.
• Towards the end of the chapter, the authors suggest
that humans as a species are not homogenous –
about 20-30% of people are “purely selfish,” about
50% are “conditionally cooperative” and about 2030% are “very prosocial” – i.e. altruistic. While some
of this may be genetic, as we discussed human
behaviour varies dramatically from culture to culture.
Chapter 13
• Trust and nurturance also seem to be associated
with oxytocin in the blood system.
• The authors cite lessons from biology such as
“selfishness beats altruism within single
groups,” while “[a]ltruistic groups beat selfish
groups.”
• Amongst rhesus monkeys, individuals who
discover fruit and don’t share are beaten by the
rest. Amongst Tamarin monkeys, ‘defecting’
monkeys are shunned until they once again
prove themselves to be trustworthy.
• p. 256- The authors’ propose to make
alternative energy technology a “club good”
which minimizes the ‘free rider’ effect. Are there
other analogous solutions that would help
nations and firms to collaborate in tackling
climate change?