[ExI] 'capitalism' genes was breeding cats

Keith Henson hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Wed Jun 9 23:43:46 UTC 2010


On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 5:00 AM,   "spike" <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

snip

> Keith's notion of a capitalism gene is intriguing.  I buy it.  The
> implications are far ranging too.  Capitalism is a political notion,

It may be, but in this case Dr. Clark was considering it as an
economic system in which behavioral traits of hard work, willingness
to put off rewards, literacy, numeracy and the like were rewarded
biologically.

*******

The new world after the Neolithic Revolution offered
economic success to a different kind of agent than were typical in
hunter gatherer society: those with patience, who could wait to
enjoy more consumption in the future. Those who liked to work
long hours. And those who could perform formal calculations in
a world of many types of inputs and outputs of what crop to
profitably produce, how many inputs to devote to it, what land to
profitably invest in. And we see in England, from at least the
middle ages on, that the kind of people who succeeded in the
economic system – who accumulated assets, got skills, got literacy
– were increasing their representation in each generation. Thus it
is plausible that through the long agrarian passage leading up to
the Industrial Revolution man was becoming biologically more
adapted to the modern economic world.

**********

>so it
> seems reasonable to me that political leanings are to some extent genetic.
> No doubt political notions are influenced greatly by environment, but I have
> long suspected there is a genetic component to our political leanings.  If
> so, most political debate becomes racism.

Hmm.

Keith




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