Peter Richerson, et al, write,
Economic competition is an important and typically peaceful form of CGS.
CGS is “cultural group selection.” Pointer from Joseph Henrich in comments on a Tyler Cowen post.
In my view, cultural group selection fits well with Austrian economics but poorly with Chicago economics. Hayek and others pay attention to cultural norms, while Chicago economics is more purely individualistic. See Erwin Dekker’s book.
For example, if you take the Chicago view that focuses on atomistic optimization by individuals, then racial discrimination seems to be unlikely in a market economy. Someone who is willing to hire blacks seems likely to out-compete someone who only hires whites.
However, suppose that you have a group norm in which refusing to hire blacks is considered cooperation and hiring blacks is considered defection. Also, suppose that groups that are more effective at rewarding cooperators and punishing defectors tend to be more successful. In that case, racial discrimination could persist because of cultural group selection.
The theory of cultural group selection can create discomfort if you like to believe that social outcomes are purely deterministic. Instead, with group selection a wider range of outcomes becomes possible, with the potential for norms and practices to survive that seem arbitrary or even counter-productive. While one might object that this makes the theory messy, I think it is realistic.
I believe that one of the important limitations of what in Specialization and Trade I disparage as MIT economics is that it ignores cultural context. Instead, I believe that the fact that economies are embedded in cultures is very important.
It would be easier to see Erwin Dekker’s book (The Viennese Students of Civilization: The Meaning and Context of Austrian Economics Reconsidered) if the cheapest price at amazon wasn’t $73.87 + $3.99 shipping.
A good post, but I don’t think you’re using the word “deterministic” (“The theory of cultural group selection can create discomfort if you like to believe that social outcomes are purely deterministic”) properly. You seem to mean something like “The theory of cultural group selection can create discomfort if you like to believe that social outcomes are relatively easy to predict from a set of very simple and well-known rules”. Things can be both deterministic and beyond our current understanding.
By the way, I have to thank you for your list of Books of the Year (2015) — I’ve read three of them and they’re all great, especially the one by Joe Henrich.
Following more of the links from MR leads to interesting issues, like the fact a typical human has 30 trillion human cells, but 39 trillion microbial cells.
http://bigthink.com/errors-we-live-by/each-of-you-is-a-multitude-heres-why
Dawkin’s iconic Selfish Gene is, at the cell level, already inadequate.
“Nature (genes)” vs “Nurture” is also inadequate, because non-genetic environmental microbial influences are becoming more known to be important.
I liked this post, especially the discussion of racial discrimination and how the axiomatic base of models influences conclusions.
1. Granovetter discussed “network effects,” calling it “The strength of weak links,” in terms of how ones overall social network influences employment, job search.
2. Something researchers have mentioned more than once in research on Brazil is the finding that people who live in the big urban favelas in Brazil frequently lie about it to employers, because living in a favela seems to “signal” something bad. I don’t know if this is a robust finding or merely anecdotal and spurious, basically non-reproducible.
3. de Tocqueville called the USA a “nation of joiners.” Many of the organizations we can join are ones that bring no immediate financial reward, and impose a cost in time and energy and perhaps in money–though if you like to socialize there is a social reward. They all allow people to get to know each other as individuals, and to establish some sort of reputation.
4. Getting back to norms–a body of research I’ve not seen come up here is Robert L. Trivers work on “reciprocal altruism.” It’s not hard to find–there is the classic article, and I best like his reprinted articles with further commentary.
very sorry for the big ugly link.
https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Selection-Social-Theory-published/dp/B00Y4QWZTA/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473513027&sr=1-2
Unfortunately it’s expensive. I read it from Interlibrary loan when I was a grad student.
You can also look to see what is here. The web site front end seems sensationalistic, but YMMV.
http://roberttrivers.com/Welcome.html
What is interesting (besides his wit and vivid examples) is the systematic development of social mechanisms to keep track of “parasitical human actors” who refuse to follow norms–and the hard wired impulse in most human beings to remember slights and betrayals, and to seek to “punish” “defectors.” Or at least to ban them from one’s in group.
I believe this is discussed as the “cheater detector mechanism.”