In this interview with Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch, shot at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas, Shermer talks about the history of modern skepticism, the connection between evolution and market economics, and how President Barack Obama is better than his predecessor on science.
Shot and edited by Dan Hayes
With the market meltdown of the past year those of us who are long-time supporters of the freedom of markets have by now heard the refrain: “What do you say now?” or “So much for your mighty market economics” and especially “See, deregulation doesn’t work.”
Let’s dispense with the “deregulation” myth right here. The list of new regulations called the Federal Register averaged 72,844 pages during the Carter administration, 54,335 pages during Reagan’s presidency, climbed to 59,527 pages for Bush the First, escalated during the Clinton years to 71,590 pages, and set an all-time record during Bush the Second at 75,526 pages, supposedly the era of deregulated markets run amok. So much for the Republicans as the party of government nonintervention. (continue reading...)
In the midst of our financial crisis it was inevitable that there would be references to the 1987 film Wall Street, in which Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gekko explains what really drives market capitalism: “The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.” (continue reading...)
Michael Shermer discusses his new book The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and other Tales from Evolutionary Economics on Explorations KPFK FM.
Since 99 percent our evolutionary history was spent as hunter-gatherers living in small bands of a few dozen to a few hundred people, we evolved a psychology not always well equipped to reason our way around the modern world. What may seem like irrational behavior today may have actually been rational a hundred thousand years ago. Without an evolutionary perspective, the assumptions of Homo economicus — that “Economic Man” is rational, self-maximizing, and efficient in making choices — make no sense. Take economic profit versus psychological fairness as an example. (continue reading…)
