Two things that degrade quality of life: The state and the market

Turtleneck wrote:Today, David Brooks made an observation that many have been making for quite some time: The way the state and the market rationalize society is a bad thing. They socialize us think and act instrumentally and incentivize selfishness. Self-interest can exist within any community. In fact, self-interest is often tied to community well-being. However, selfishness is the extreme of self-interest and we now live in a less cooperative, less trustworthy, and overall more harmful society. Part of the problem is that this country was founded on the idea that people, by way of human nature, are selfish and that we could use that selfishness against itself. That has not worked and now altruism is disappearing and it is being replaced by greed.

Since then, the institutions that arouse the moral lens have withered while the institutions that manipulate incentives — the market and the state — have expanded. Now economic, utilitarian thinking has become the normal way we do social analysis and see the world. We’ve wound up with a society that is less cooperative, less trusting, less effective and less lovely.

By assuming that people are selfish, by prioritizing arrangements based on selfishness, we have encouraged selfish frames of mind. Maybe it’s time to upend classical economics and political science. Maybe it’s time to build institutions that harness people’s natural longing to do good.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/opinion/the-power-of-altruism.html?_r=0