Rethinking Economic Assumptions with New Understandings of Human Nature

Many thanks to Conversation Leader Adam Chefitz for passing along this fascinating brand new article from Scientific American called "Human Nature and the Moral Economy"

Author Eric Michael Johnson is an Anthropologist and Great Ape Ecologist who brings together recent anthropological and primate research to show how far our economics has become from our shared morality based on our human capacities for fairness and cooperation, and to argue for a revisioining of economics based on a more accurate set of assumptions about human nature.

Here's a teaser from Johnson's conclusion:  

"Since we now know that many of the assumptions about human nature that classical economics was based upon were either wrong or woefully incomplete, it is high time that other ideas be accepted around the table. With an economic system teetering on the edge of unprecedented inequality it would be immoral not to consider other options."

Amen.

The article has some other wonderful evidence and examples in it, too - so check it out!

- Sara