Anon - I'm not sure I'd consider "survival of the fittest" to be synonymous with God. Nature, as it applies to animals is "red and tooth and claw" and lawless and many progressives and conservatives quite rightly don't see it as a good model for our own behavior. It isn't exactly moral to hope for the weak to physically die off. A common progressive criticism of lassie faire economics by the left is that it is "Darwinian."

Thankfully, there's a big difference between business failure (which needs to be tolerated for a productive economy) and actual death. Being out of work is unpleasant, but not fatal.

Yes, in fact. Sorry! I had been reading the other page, noticed a very interesting comment, and then the guy apologized and said he was posting to the wrong page. Found the page he was referring to, and -- oh my! I simply couldn't believe Krugman really believed that.

Corrected! Thanks! Mea mea culpa!

The idea that a given system (in this case nature and free market economies) by their very nature are self-regulatory.

Well, I think that there are some very crucial differences that break the analogy.

Darwinian Evolution Free Market Economics

First off, free market economics works best when it's constrained by certain laws. Otherwise, you get a system like in modern Russia where you "have to enforce a contract with a contract." That situation is even more 'Darwinian'. Free market economics is not lawless anarchy and is only Darwinian in a very limited way. A free market economy is a "planned" economy, but it is planned much more diffusely and based on price signals (and other indicators of cost/value).

for them nature regulates itself just fine

But the process by which nature regulates itself is not moral and is sometimes catastrophic. It involves accepting numerous creatures being killed off and sometimes the extinction of whole species. It involves controlling population levels with starvation. It involves seeing murder and predation as morally neutral or even beneficial. It only regulates itself in that life continues to exist and adapt, but without particular regard for the individual.

It is for this reason that I've heard a number of leftists call free market economics "Darwinian" and mean it as an insult. They were not saying that such policies do not work, but that such policies were immoral. Which is why I'm a bit edgy about the term being used to describe free market economics.

Nature only regulates itself "just fine" if tragedies are morally acceptable. The majority of people, both "left" and "right", probably do not believe this.

Various responses...

Anonymous: There is a very real similarity to the concept of natural selection, evolution, "survival of the fittest", whatever you wish to call it, and the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith.

In fact, I'd argue that corporate life is the one of the few places we can clearly demonstrate "natural" (well, it wouldn't be natural, then, would it?) selection operating in a positive, Darwinian sense.

(I've been reading David Stove's critique of Darwinism -- he argues persuasively that many or even most species aren't at all involved in, nor regulated by, a fierce competition for food. Take humans: those with the most access to food often reproduce least. It seems to have been that way in other societies and times, as well. But apparently we're not alone in this regard.)

First off, free market economics works best when it's constrained by certain laws. Otherwise, you get a system like in modern Russia where you "have to enforce a contract with a contract."

I'm not sure that's always true, Ryan. If you read the bible or documents from other similarly-organized cultures, one of the things which comes through, culturally, is the importance of a good "name" (that is, reputation) and the importance of keeping oaths and vows. For example, in the story of Ester, even Xerxes cannot directly overturn his own decree (Ester 8:8) indicating the importance of keeping a king's word and thus reputation.* (And look at all the "face-saving" which is required in many other cultures, which is an indirect reference to this notion of a sort of "moral currency".)

(* Contrast this with modern Presidential candidates who consider all national treaties and promises to allies made under predecessors (NAFTA, promises to the Iraqi people, support for Taiwan) null and void once they take office. They do not care in the slightest for the overall reputation of trustworthiness of the US. Other nations will come to understand that our most solemn vows are only reliably valid for an average of half a presidential term -- or perhaps less, consider the way George HW Bush screwed the Iraqis previously.)

In such a system, people only choose to do business with reputable persons, and when word gets out that a person isn't reputable, their business prospects are severely diminished. This can work even in loosely-organized societies which afford no enforcement of contract law.

(I would point to the American West as another example: the majority of the people were generally personally moral, and there were enough guns to keep the peace otherwise.)

(I'm not saying man in his natural state is at peace. I don't believe that. I'm only saying that meaningful contracts can be made and effectively enforced in certain places and times even without a strong government to maintain property rights and contract law.)

Russia does not represent the behavior of capitalism in the absence of government. It represents the behavior of "capitalism" within a kleptocracy. Perverse incentives abounded.

For example, the Russian GOVERNMENT had created a number of monopolies and then handed them to rent-seekers -- and used the resources of the state to protect those favored sons. The GOVERNMENT presented the appearance of a system of property rights, which it selectively enforced or broke. The Russian GOVERNMENT required Western investors to have a "Russian partner" in every investment, and then repeatedly actively worked to screw Westerner investors out of their assets.

Had it been simple anarchy, Western investors would have been far more wary, and would have been able to protect their business assets in the usual way*: with guns (infrequently, at last resort) and a distrust of those with bad reputations (more often). Instead, the false appearance of a system of law and order made things far worse.

(* Look, lots of oil companies set up business with Sheiks and Sultans in the Mideast -- and generally kept their word and also made a profit.)

But the process by which nature regulates itself is not moral and is sometimes catastrophic. It involves accepting numerous creatures being killed off and sometimes the extinction of whole species.... Nature only regulates itself "just fine" if tragedies are morally acceptable.

I hate to break PC, but what's necessarily immoral or tragic about the loss of a species? True, no dinosaurs exist today, and it would certainly be fun, from our point of view, to see one. (And yes, we humans might feel "regret" that we'll never be able to see one, while not considering the trade-offs.)

But was it really immoral or bad for them to go out of existence and be replaced by, say, wolves, bears, people, badgers, and elephants? Do the souls of animals which never were protest this injustice? What could have been a dinosaur is now a lynx or prairie dog -- is that somehow tragic or regrettable?

And what's immoral (or even seemingly-immoral) about the sudden death of a species, even considering the impact of the extinction event itself? Doesn't every animal die in some fashion anyway? What makes one mode of death more "moral" than another, from our point of view? Is it more tragic to be killed by a meteorite blast, die slowly and painfully of old age, starve, or be eaten by a predator? Does it matter, really, if the animal is the last of it's kind or not -- if it's going to replaced by the same kind of animal or a different one? Is a gazelle which dies at the mouth of a tiger, as part of a stable predator/prey relationship, really happier somehow than the last triceratops to die by predation?

Look, if God doesn't exist, then we can't actually say nature (or anything, really) is moral or immoral -- it would be a bit like an artist trying to say a volcano or rock was pretty or not pretty. Stuff merely does what it does. Yeah, you can draw the judgment anyway, on aesthetic-like grounds (I like this, I don't like that), but it doesn't really ultimately mean anything. It's just your preference.

(In that case, my preference would be for all nature to serve humanity -- or at least me -- so I would be quite glad other species died out if it meant I could be here, but be sad if ours did. Or at least sad if the parts of it I loved did, while I was still alive. Explain why this wouldn't be a completely rational view, given that scenario.)

And if God does exist, then we have a number of other options.

In one view, animals are simply machines -- transient things with no souls. Do I cry if my PC malfunctions, even if it appears to "suffer" as it tries to read its crashed hard drive, over and over, in vain? Sure, it looks painful, but it's just a machine. (Likewise, someone recently discussed how unnerving it was that they could "torture" a popular dinosaur-robot toy (Pleo). But it's just an example of how convincing the illusion of mechanical suffering can be. Who hasn't mourned the "death" of a beloved automobile? My family sometimes did, even though we knew it was silly. My mom still remembers "Betsy", her '57 Chevy, quite fondly and wistfully.)

On the other hand, if we think some or all animals have some sort of "soul", something which makes at least some of them (and us) more than just meat-machines, then we also have to ask other religious questions. Who put the soul there? Why? Is there an afterlife for that soul?

If animals do have a soul, the question of suffering is not necessarily different for them than for us. If human suffer, and we believe suffering is immoral, one can pose the possibility of an afterlife to "balance the books". One dies and is judged and rewarded or punished in a fashion which makes things even. (Did you suffer unjustly? It will be made up to you.)

I don't see any reason ensouled animals couldn't be dealt with similarly.

So I don't really see a moral problem in any scenario: if animals are mere machines, their suffering is no different than the "suffering" of a paper shredder which no longer works. If animals have a "higher" existence, then "higher" forms of justice could, in theory, compensate or judge them just as humans are compensated or judged.

We could allege that God exists, but is just a wicked bastard (or would necessarily be, if he did exist) -- but there's no particular evidence for that view of which I'm aware. Suffering in nature? Again, that's only "wicked" if animals not machines, or if God doesn't make it up to them somehow. But to assume God doesn't make it up to them, as proof of one's argument that God is immoral, is circular.

(It would be equally circular to assume God DOES make it up to them in order to PROVE his goodness. But only atheists offer "suffering" as a PROOF of some sort. For a theist to make the same mistake, he'd have to offer a few instances of justice as an absolute non-inductive PROOF, or the alleged surety of justice in the afterlife, as a similar kind of proof. Which we don't. We just suggest that the atheist is overlooking a possibility, which he or she certainly is.)

So, yeah, that was a great discussion about capitalism. And while we're sticking rigorously with the subject: what kind ice cream do Random Observations readers like? ;-)

Russian Ice Cream anyone?

I hate to break PC, but what's necessarily immoral or tragic about the loss of a species?

Well, my point was not that species dying off is immoral. My point was that Darwinian processes involve blithe acceptance of catastrophes or lawlessness that we may not tolerate if applied analogously to a human society. A society can operate perfectly well while tolerating slavery, for instance. (Granted, there's been some argument that slavery is sub-optimal economically. But I haven't had the chance to read into it yet.)

Why not invade some weaker country and steal their resources or colonize them? Is the disapproval of other countries (or the inefficiency of that approach) a sufficient deterant?

he argues persuasively that many or even most species aren't at all involved in, nor regulated by, a fierce competition for food.

Raup supported a similar assertion in "Extinction" at the species level, where he sought to demonstrate that the number of species competing for food on land masses that had split from the main land mass was not a good indicator of which would still exist millenia later.

But then, what regulates population densities among animals? Disease? Predator populations? Something has to.

I know that extremely cramped rodents will stop breeding 'voluntarily', but they would have to be crawling over the forests to reach that density in nature.

one of the things which comes through, culturally, is the importance of a good "name"

I agree, it's possible to have a great deal of social stability with a sort of 'rule of honor.'

But then, you also have Pharoh sending out armies to prevent slaves from escaping after promising to free them, or China marching into Tibet, or American treatment of Native Americans (which didn't seem to affect their relationship with Europe after the French and Indian war, unless I'm mistaken) or all kinds of class hierarchies ingrained virtually into law by rules of 'honor'. I'm sure we could point to a wealth of them in traditional (Asian)Indian society.

I'm only saying that meaningful contracts can be made and effectively enforced in certain places and times even without a strong government to maintain property rights and contract law.

I agree entirely, people can make agreements without a government to back them up or come to an understanding of what is considered their fair lot within a particular group. I think that setup requires some 'balance of power' though. People avoid conflict if it might hurt them. If one person has his foot too firmly on another's throat, whether through the government or outside of it, that kind of moral balance seems less likely. Unless there's a chance the agressor could lose face somehow in front of his other allies.

Regardless of the source of the rules, I don't think that animals have a notion of 'fairness,' whether legal or instinctual, in the same way that people do.

Russian Ice Cream anyone?

The article notes that declining birth rates means fewer Russian children to enjoy the ice cream.

Well, my point was not that species dying off is immoral.

I was reacting to your opening statement that nature "is not moral", and then mentioning extinctions. So maybe you can see how I got the idea you were saying it was, um, immoral, and echoing the standard Darwinian arguments about nature progressing only through starvation, etc.

I agree entirely that we can't use nature as a model for human morals. As I've said before, people will argue: "Well, apes and mice practice homosexuality, therefore it's natural..." But that's silly: what happens in nature isn't a pattern for us. Male bears wouldn't hesitate to devour their own young, so should we apply the same argument? I hear pot is "natural" -- hey, it's a plant -- but I could also point out that so is hemlock and poison ivy. It's okay to sleep around promiscuously because, hey bonobo chimps do. But then we could point out that some geese mate for life. Whatever we think of these arguments, it's not enough simply to point out some animal does something, so we can or should too.

But, except in cases where someone or something I love is killed (this includes the Tsunami, as I care about such people, or ought to) I don't generally see nature so much as "tragic" or "not moral" as much as simply something which happens. Specific events aside, I would no more try to call nature itself "moral" or "not moral" then I would discuss the morality of the laws of physics. Attempting to graft a moral judgment onto natural laws makes no sense to me, except perhaps, in an explicitly religious context.

That said, I don't think nature is nearly as awful as Darwinist polemicists like to present it. Yes, it's true, gazelles die of predation. (Though is that worse than dying of old age?) And yet they generally live many relatively carefree years before that point. (I'm always told that human have much more stress than animals do in nature.) Yes, the occasional caterpillar serves as a living host to a wasp. But no, for each case like that, there are a thousand or more ants and flies who live and die a relatively disease-free life. (Or perhaps merely relatively pain-free, given their simplicity, even if they have some disability.) They just don't get as much camera time and sympathy, since they don't make the right philosophical/theological case.

Finally, it isn't at all clear to me that nature really moves ahead primarily (or much at all) though starvation, predation, etc. Did the trilobites and other forms appear as a result of starvation or predation? Or humans? It's true that species can become extinct through what we'd see as "tragedy", but extinction doesn't create new species. It doesn't create progress.

The Darwinian argument is always that nature progresses though "immoral" means, though suffering and tragedy and pain. That these processes are crucial, not incidental.

Yet this is the core of the blasphemy I am toying with these days: Perhaps a different mechanism entirely produces new species, and extinction at most clears a bit of a niche for the expansion for new ones. (And perhaps not even as often as we'd think -- perhaps it's often the other way around, with the humans more often eating the mastodons out of existence, rather than surviving only because something else starved and died.)

Again, the Darwinian view is that a slight modification occurs, and then this changed gene allows it's host to "starve out" (in terms of food and/or mates) the other members of its same species. So progress occurs basically by constantly screwing members of your peer group. Without the continuing ability to starve or otherwise prevent the breeding of those having less successful genes, each new minor modification would never achieve genetic prevalence in your group.

(Hence the linkage between the "progressives" and eugenics.)

Yet if large, more radical changes occur -- and if specie-producing changes could catch on by normal mating, being dominant, not recessive* or other means than competition -- this changes the picture considerably. (* This can apply to even smaller mutations too, though I increasingly suspect such changes cannot, even via aggregation, cannot produce new species.)

Americans are becoming, for example, darker-skinned and -eyed, but it's not because Nordics and Anglos are being eaten or starved to death by Hispanics and Africans. And it's certainly not because blondes can't attract sexual partners. It's because dark hair and brown eyes are dominant over (naturally) blond hair and blue eyes. The same might apply to certain sorts of larger-scale mutations.

If new species spring up though a short series of radical changes, that produces an entirely different philosophical picture of nature than a system which moves ahead though an endless series of minuscule changes which can propagate only via death, starvation, predation, and preventing otherwise-normal peers from mating.

I'm not saying this because I first object to the philosophical implications of Darwinism, and then am trying to tailor the mechanism to fit my morals. (I've already rejected such thinking above -- though perhaps, at its inception, Darwin and his disciples did. They certainly liked Malthus.) I'm just realizing that there are a lot of very serious holes, and the facts seem to fit much more closely to an alternative.

One, incidentally, that seems to tell another story, morally.