08.29.08
More nonsense on altruism gene
Capitalism, Darwinism and democracy share not only a reliance on competitive self-interest but a presumption that self-interest works – or can be made to work – for the common good. As America’s patron saint Adam Smith so memorably wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “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 self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
Now they want to corrupt the idea of democracy with Darwinism. The two traditions are very different. Democracy is about autonomous individuals and their freedom, about self-interest only secondarily, and not in a game of social darwinism. Its core ideas don’t sit well with this Darwinian nonsense about the altruism gene. Democratic thinking long predates biological theory, and in any case the reality shows how extreme self-interest in its classical liberal form can wreck a democracy.