John Whitfield reviews “The Darwin Economy” for Slate

Slate “Libertarians with Antlers”

Although I have not read this book, I can still appreciate how smart this review is. I really like how Whitfield pulls no punches on the issue of group selection: any argument for the common good is certainly group selectionist in nature. But his understanding of group selection is appropriately subtle: human society is a confusing tangle of groups at different scales, partially integrated with each other in a way that makes it hard to figure out whose interest is being advocated. To understand how “the common good” is computed, we need to begin to untangle the many groups of human societies.

I do think that we can represent economies using theory borrowed from ecology and evolution. Of paramount importance to economies is stability, which is maintained by balancing the interests of competing actors and groups of actors. Destabilized economies fail, and with them goes their cultural practices.

In the end, to say that economics is best represented by group selection requires that we can identify groups and measure their differential success. Such a research program would be both exciting and important, but how to pursue such an endeavor remains an unmet challenge.