RULES AS PROXIES (2)
Posted on July 31, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
In 1991, the U.S. Congress issued federal sentencing guidelines to incent good corporate behavior.5 At that time, the Congress laid out a number of steps and programs corporations could adopt to mitigate their potential liability should they be found guilty of criminal violations. It was a rules-based solution proposed by a rulesbased organization: the U.S. [...]
Read More..>>RULES AS PROXIES
Posted on July 30, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Why do we employ rules as proxies? Because rules seem efficient, and modern society (and industrial age capitalism) was built on the foundations of efficiency. Most democratic societies, for example, confer the right to vote based on age. In the United States it is 18, in Japan it is 20, and in many other countries [...]
Read More..>>From Can to Should (2)
Posted on July 29, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
It’s difficult to instill values like fairness and respect throughout a population as large and diverse as the populations of most nations. Yet fairness is a powerful idea, and one most people would agree brings benefit to all. So legislatures create a tangled and inefficient set of rules they believe approximates the prevailing sense of [...]
Read More..>>From Can to Should
Posted on July 28, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Everyone loves tax time, that special time of year when we sit down with our loved ones and measure our financial commitment to society. Around the world, people throw joyous tax parties, where we celebrate our dedication to funding a fair, just, and honorable society. Feasts are made, wine uncorked, and people dance with gleeful [...]
Read More..>>BELIEVE IT
Posted on July 27, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
There is one last piece of the brain puzzle to touch on: belief. A belief occupies a very special place in the human intellect: It can exist in the absence of any objective proof, and often in the face of direct contradiction. We all have something of a system of beliefs. Religious doctrine, cultural myth, [...]
Read More..>>THE EVOLUTION OF WHAT IS VALUABLE (3)
Posted on July 26, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
“Benefits can accrue to the individual from acting in a moral way and thinking in moral terms,” Joyce explains. In other words, Ook, by acting in an altruistic, self-sacrificing way—sharing, cooperating, and helping others—engendered trust, which, as we know from Professor Zak’s work, would prompt his tribe-mates to reciprocate. Ook would reap the rewards from [...]
Read More..>>THE EVOLUTION OF WHAT IS VALUABLE (2)
Posted on July 24, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Below the surface of the societal norms, however, there are certain values that translate across sociopolitical boundaries. Historically, societal values have had evolutionary impacts on how human societies have flourished. Anthropologist Joseph Shepher, for example, studied people raised communally on kibbutzim in Israel, where children spend much of the day in a group. He discovered [...]
Read More..>>THE EVOLUTION OF WHAT IS VALUABLE
Posted on July 23, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Survival of the fittest is an evolutionary concept we take for granted. Yet, when it comes to humankind, what defines the fittest? Is it the strongest? When early man was walking around in animal skins and living in caves, did the biggest ones rule the littlest ones? Did they get more food or a reproductive [...]
Read More..>>LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER TWO (3)
Posted on July 22, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Zak ran this experiment a vast number of times, both in the United States and in developing countries, using various amounts representing, in some cases, a large percentage of the subject’s monthly income (to make sure that the significance of the amount involved did not influence the outcome). Amazingly, typically 75 percent of DM1s sent [...]
Read More..>>LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER TWO (2)
Posted on July 21, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
In light of some of this new thinking about the biological basis of trust and altruistic helping, Paul Zak, chair, department of economics at Claremont Graduate University and adjunct professor of neurology at Loma Linda University, School of Medicine, set out to learn, once and for all, whether maximum profit in fact flows from the [...]
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