How to Get the Rich to Share the Marbles – NYTimes.com
[Via NYTimes.com]
Suppose scientists discovered a clump of neurons in the brain that, when stimulated, turned people into egalitarians. This would be good news for Democratic strategists and speechwriters, who could now get to work framing arguments about wealth and taxation in ways that might activate the relevant section of cerebral cortex.
This “share-the-spoils” button has been discovered, in a sense, but it may turn out to be harder to press than Democrats might think.
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Taking away the political rhetoric, this article deals with this paper from Nature, Collaboration encourages equal sharing in children but not in chimpanzees.
It turns out that only humans will share unequal rewards after working together. That is, if they collaborate, they will share the marbles equally even if one initially gets more than the other.
This is a very key observation because other apes never do this. The one with more always keeps whatever they get.
But even human children will share if that is what seems fair after working together.
Fairness is a huge aspect of primate behavior. Yet only humans see sharing after working together as fair. This might very well be one of the reasons we survived amongst all the other hominids from 2 million years ago.
We work together as long as everyone sees they are getting their fair share. BUt we keep everything if we do not think anyone else was involved
For much of the last generation, we have provided incentives that play to the ape-brain part of our behavior. There no longer is any group effort for everyone to succeed.
It is every ape for themselves and if some end up with more, well, they will just keep it all.
We need to recreate collaborative community spirit again if we want to reduce wealth inequality. As long as some people think they alone are responsible for their wealth, we will have problems.
February 21, 2012 at 6:02 pm
The collaborative community spirit has always operated in churches. But giving was a volunteer effort and not forced by the government. Again and again, giving to those in desperate need has been done through churches. But government, again and again, have made regulations that make it difficult if not impossible for church volunteers to help anyone. (for example:most churches not longer hand out sandwiches to the homeless since government has decreed all sorts of regulations that must be followed) Humans may be very good at sharing, but not at the point of a gun.