Podcast appearances and mentions of Samuel Bowles

How can tempting kids with an extra allowance for extra chores cause them to lose interest in helping out at all? How do incentives work and fail on each level from knave to king? What can be learned from examining the intersection of economics, preferences, and morality?Samuel Bowles is an economist, professor, and the author of several books on economics and related topics. His latest work is called The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens.Samuel and Greg discuss how our modern service and information economies pose unique challenges to traditional market principles. Sam shares studies that illuminate the intricate relationship between intrinsic motivation and external rewards. They also debunk misplaced beliefs in equilibrium and Sam emphasizes the need to align economic education with the challenges of climate change. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:A mistake economists make when it comes to the functions of law28:59: Here's a mistake that economists sometimes make: When we think of people acting, we think that we're acting to get stuff. When we make a decision about saving, investment, getting a job, working hard, whatever, shopping, we're getting stuff. Now, we know, you and I, that when we act, we're acting to get stuff, and we're also acting to be something. So, it's not just getting we're talking about; it's becoming. Now, we know, you and I, that when we act, we're acting to get stuff, and we're also acting to be something. So, it's not just getting we're talking about; it's becoming. Now, yes, we want to be someone. We want to be a particular kind of person. Now, if you add becoming to getting, then you have a better view of what humans are like. Now, what is this becoming? Are we just being generous so as to impress other people? Yes, probably; that's part of it. But, speaking for myself, but also on the basis of a lot of psychological research, we're also signaling to ourselves,  we're reaffirming to ourselves that we're that kind of person.Do we treat people as selfish when it comes to policy-making?05:12: If you design policies that treat people as if they're self-interested, you're more likely to get people to act in self-interested ways. So, it's not only that these policies are going to be misguided; they may even be counterproductive and backfire. And they may produce a citizenry which requires increasing regulation and increasing coercion. Because if you generate an increasingly self-interested population by treating people as if they're selfish, well, then you're going to end up with a very, very authoritarian society or chaos.Exploring the relationship between markets, generosity, and rule of law in European history51:52: One of the ways you transact goods when you don't have markets is gift, but another way is theft. Now, I think that the really key idea and my explanation of why Europeans tend to be more generous than people who have less contact with markets, historically talking about Western and Northwestern Europeans most. I think the reason for that is that we've had markets under the rule of law for a long period of time. In a rule-of-law society, you can actually take a chance on trusting somebody. And the reason is the worst possible outcome isn't so bad. They're not going to take your kids. They're not going to burn down your house. Maybe you're going to get cheated once or twice.Embracing incentives, constraints, and community to create change10:46: We'll never solve the problems facing us, whether it's economic injustice, how to handle new innovations, or how to handle climate change. We have to have a combination of incentives and constraints of the traditional kind and appeal to people's desire to be members of the community and to actually do something that they'll be proud of because they're good human beings.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Adam SmithCeteris paribusDavid HumeJohn Stuart MillAlexander HamiltonFriedrich HayekArrow–Debreu modelThomas SchellingWendy CarlinVoltaireJeremy BenthamAlbert O. HirschmanCORE EconGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Santa Fe InstituteFaculty Profile at UMass AmherstProfile at The Institute for New Economic ThinkingProfile on CEPRWikipedia ProfileHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good CitizensAfter the Waste Land: Democratic Economics for the Year 2000Notes and Problems in Microeconomic TheoryA Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its EvolutionThe New Economics of Inequality and RedistributionMicroeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and EvolutionUnderstanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and ChangeGoogle Scholar PageMoral economicsMachiavelli's Mistake: Why Good Laws Are No Substitute For Good Citizens

Hello Interactors,Cued by shifting hues comes a call for the leaves to fall. Which means Interplace, like the weather, turns to the tumultuous territory of economics. Economics, like fall weather, is not all that predictable — both systems morph in response to layers of interconnected webs of complex systems that adapt, respond, and influence social, environmental, and political interactions.I recently heard Sean Carroll, an influential theoretical physicist known for his work in quantum mechanics, interview Samuel Bowles, an influential economist specializing in economic inequality. They covered an array of topics including the history and future of economics, and physics, in response to growing attention to complexity science.They harkened back to the industrial age and a time when physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, and newly emerging economists were collaborating — building theories, models, steam engines, looms, and calculation machines. It was a complicated time, rich with invention, but also relatively simple by today's standards.Hearing this history in the context of the current U.S. United Auto Workers strike made me wonder if perhaps Biden's fascination with ‘building back better' America's industrial past is rooted in a nostalgic yearning for a simpler past.This labor action arouses a sense of nationalism and nostalgia for the 'good old days' that Trump ignited but Biden just may have usurped. But the industrial sector, however romanticized, now represents a small fraction of jobs in America.Humans have a penchant for simplifying complex narratives, yearning for an era where gears of industry moved in predictable cycles much like the changing seasons. But these two scientists highlight how the economy in which we exist has advanced in complexity and is ripe for evolution.Now let's go.FROM CLASSIC TO COMPLEX: THE ECONOMIC SHIFTIn the interview, Bowles talks of the history of economic thought, beginning with Adam Smith, an intellectual pillar of the Industrial Revolution and an acclaimed father of economics. Adam Smith's notion of the 'invisible hand,' lauded for its portrayal of self-regulating markets, is heavily scrutinized today.This famous metaphor has long been the cornerstone of classical economics and conservative politics, purporting that individual self-interest inadvertently contributes to the overall good of society in ‘invisible' ways. Bowles explains how Smith could observe, amidst the new factory economy in Scotland — complete with newly built cotton mills and shirt factories — how the shirt buyer and seller both acted according to their self-interest. And then, almost as if by magic, an efficient allocation of resources emerged and along with it a social contract.In simple transactions, like buying a shirt, Bowles illustrates how Smith's model functions well. The seller sets a price based on the costs of production and a desire for profit; the buyer accepts this price based on their valuation of the shirt. The transaction is smooth, the contract 'complete,' and market forces work to adjust supply, demand, and pricing in a seemingly natural order.He offers another historical example that perpetuated the illusion of simple economic models of physics in economics. One of the early influential neoclassical economists, Irving Fisher, built a physical hydraulic model in the early 1900s as part of his dissertation. He used interconnected tanks and pipes to simulate supply and demand. It provided a visceral example of a 'complete contract' where the variables are manageable and the outcomes somewhat foreseeable.Reflecting on this, Bowles offers,“Now, there are all kinds of models like that in economics in which the metaphor really is transportation, things moving from here to there.”However, this 'invisible hand' stumbles when confronted with the complex market forces of the labor required to manufacture a good like a shirt. Bowles believes it wasn't until 1972, when the Nobel prize winner in economics, Kenneth Arrow, complicate the image of the ‘invisible hand' as it relates to the labor market.His work, particularly his Impossibility Theorem, mathematically demonstrated the challenges inherent in collective decision-making and the limits of market efficiency. Whereas the transaction of buying a shirt can be fully described and agreed upon by both parties, making it a 'complete contract,' labor contracts often can't offer this level of specificity and predictability.Contracts in labor markets become fuzzy. They're incomplete abstractions that only offer one guarantee — that an employee be present on the job. Their performance is harder to guarantee. Without constant observation of performance, the employer has no guarantees a worker is working hard or hardly working.But the employer, capable of paying more than the minimum wage to ensure good performance, holds sway over the employee's behavior. So, if an employee wants to keep their job, they'd better work as hard as possible — until, sometimes, it becomes impossibly hard.Labor unions, like the United Auto Workers, exist to even this power imbalance by bargaining for fair wages and working conditions. How do they bargain? By choosing to not do the one thing their contract requires – be present on the job. This forces a negotiation, a conversation.And this is where Bowles, and other economists, are looking to take the field of economics, stating,“…in recent years, some economists, myself included, have been more attracted to the idea that economic interactions are more like a conversation. So, we should really be thinking about linguistics. That is, I'm having a conversation with you, and in saying what I'm saying now, I'm anticipating your response. And very often I'm having a conversation with somebody with some intention that I would like this person to agree to go to see a film with me, or to agree to work on a paper, and so on. But I'm anticipating what that person's intention is too, of course, in endless regress.”COMPLEXITY OF COOPERATION: GAME THEORY AND THE REAL WORLDFinding common ground, coming to agreement, typically requires both parties to have to give something up — to compromise. Economists often lean on a branch of mathematics to model these interactions called Game Theory. Game Theory offers methods to analyze scenarios where the outcome for each participant depends on the choices of all involved.One experiment used to explore game theory is called the Prisoner's Dilemma. In this scenario, two prisoners must decide whether to cooperate and remain silent upon interrogation or betray each other to the authorities. Although cooperation would yield a better outcome for both, the rational choice for each individual, given the uncertainty of the other's action, is to betray, often leading to a suboptimal result for all involved.Bowles has spent a good chunk of his career using this dilemma in experiments worldwide to explore issues of trust, collaboration, and the challenges that emerge when incentives may not align with collective well-being. He's gone so far as to explore whether the human species is genetically predisposed to selfishness or altruism. His conclusions are published in the book "A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution."Bowles concludes in the interview that there is“strong experimental evidence that we are generous in many circumstances. We have models and data which suggests that there might even be a genetic predisposition. And of course, we know there are many cultural reasons why we'd be taught to be that way.”Of course, every critic of altruism will bring up free-loaders — people who contribute relatively little but aren't shy about taking their fair share. In Bowles experiments, he's found “free-riders” are routinely punished even at the expense of self-interest.In a multi-round public goods game resembling an expanded Prisoner's Dilemma, initial contributions to a shared good start off high but dwindle as players notice others free riding. When a punishment mechanism is introduced, like allowing participants to spend some of their earnings to penalize free-riders, contributions to the public good surge back up, eventually rendering punishment unnecessary.This dynamic suggests that human behavior in such systems is nuanced: while people are initially willing to cooperate, they adapt to avoid being exploited. Moreover, when given the chance, they actively invest to punish free riders, even at a personal cost.Bearing this in mind, Bowles believes “if you're thinking of a new economic paradigm, you have to come down on that somehow.” Bowles believes there's enough evidence today to say it's wrong to believe humans are purely rational, intelligent actors who act in their own self interest. In his words, “You can't say we're selfish and really smart.”Instead, he says “The bumper sticker for my paradigm is ‘People are a lot dumber and nicer than economists think.'”I like Samuel Bowles use of a linguistics lens to explore economic systems. It's a compelling touchpoint where natural and social sciences converge around interactions. The nuances of real world economics, he suggests, can be explored but not defined by sterile, mathematical models. We need methodologies that unravel those nested webs of complexities influenced by cultural narratives, historical and political context, and social relationships. These dynamics are exemplified in the ongoing negotiations between the United Auto Workers and their employers and politicians — talks that encapsulate more than mere contractual details but a convoluted and ever-changing web of expectations, intentions, and power dynamics.As society evolves, Bowles advocates for a commensurate evolution in our economic models, one that can accommodate these rich human interactions. It signifies a shift from seeking objective certainties to acknowledging the inherently uncertain, dynamic, and complex landscape of the intricate systems that define our world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/21/247-samuel-bowles-on-economics-cooperation-and-inequality/Economics, much like thermodynamics, is a story of collective behavior arising from the interactions of many individual constituents. The big difference is that in economics, the constituents are themselves complicated human beings with their own goals and limitations. We can still make progress by positing some simple but plausible axioms governing human behavior, and proving theorems about what those axioms imply, such as the famous supply-and-demand curves. The trick is picking the right axioms that actually do apply to any given situation. Samuel Bowles is a highly regarded economist who has helped understand the emergence of political hierarchy and economic inequality, often drawing on wide-ranging ideas from game theory and evolutionary biology. We talk about how people evolved to cooperate, and why nevertheless inequality seems to be ubiquitous.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Samuel Bowles received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of Siena, and he is currently Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Leontief Prize, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is one of the developers of the CORE Econ project.Web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaAmazon author pageSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

REVISITING EPISODE 033:   Dr. Herbert Gintis is an American economist, behavioral scientist, and educator known for his theoretical contributions to sociobiology, especially altruism, cooperation, epistemic game theory, gene-culture coevolution, efficiency wages, strong reciprocity, and human capital theory. He's currently External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and carries a PhD in economics from Harvard University.   Throughout his career, he has worked extensively with economist, Samuel Bowles. Their most recent book, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, was published by Princeton University Press in 2011.   EPISODE SUMMARY   In this conversation we talk about: Why pandemics change everything. Why people have entangled minds, and what this means for fighting misinformation. Why conspiracy theories operate like religions. Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, as a curious and science-minded kid. The five powers of human beings. His journey through math, economics, the social sciences and sandal making. The risks of becoming a single discipline thinker. The contradictory models of human behavior in the humanities. Why people vote despite the fact that their individual vote doesn't determine the outcome. His model of social rationality. What does it mean to be conscious? The explanation of altruism as a phenomenon. And many, many other topics.   Herbert is a remarkably prolific researcher, writer, and thinker. And this conversation is packed to the brim with insights and fascinating questions. It's one of a dozen or so weekly conversations we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and impact investors who are working to change our world for the better.   So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe so you don't miss them.   And now, let's jump right in with Dr. Herbert Gintis.   TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS   [3:45] Life During Covid [6:27] Entangled Minds [10:29] Early Childhood Curiosity  [13:17] Mathematics and Spirituality  [17:43] A Transition to Economics [20:38] A Lesson in Marxism  [22:24] Models of Human Behavior  [33:21] Altruism and Strong Reciprocity  [37:05] The Rational Actor Model and Game Theory [52:00] Entanglement and the Internet [55:58] Physics and Consciousness  [1:05:15] A Short Sermon   EPISODE LINKS Herbert's Links

“Among these central ranges of continental mountains and these great companion parks…lies the pleasure-ground and health-home of the nation,” wrote journalist Samuel Bowles in 1869. “Mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life,” mused naturalist John Muir in 1901. “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst,” opined writer Wallace Stegner in 1983. North American and European traditions of conservationism, especially those in the U.S., are endlessly celebrated in Western media, with figures like Teddy Roosevelt and John James Audubon placed at the forefront. They're not without their merits, especially at a time when some of the world's most powerful countries refuse to take action on climate change. What often goes underexamined or ignored, though, is the deeply racist, settler-colonial history–and very much still the present– that has informed the “conservationist” movement in the US and much of the North Atlantic. What have been and still are the ecological and human costs, particularly for Indigenous and Black people in the US, of this settler-colonial ‘conservation' movement? Why, in the American collective memory, is the ‘conservation movement' often credited to powerful white figures of the 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the extreme environmental and social destruction that they helped caused? And why should there be a need for a settler-driven conservation movement when the original inhabitants of, what we now know as the US and Canada already very often already had systems of ‘conservationism' in place? On this episode, we study the racist origins of Western conservation movements, primarily in the United States; how the conservation movement and romanticization of nature have served the settler-colonial project; how these histories continue to inform certain currents of the mainstream climate activism of the present; and what an inclusive, decolonial understanding of environmental conservation can look like. Our guest is UConn professor Prakash Kashwan.

Ep 75: How to Improve Brain Power with Daniel Gallucci (founder, Nurosene) “If I die tomorrow or in a year, it is the same – it is the message you leave behind you that counts.” — Rita Levi-Montalcini Want to improve your brain performance and turn bad habits into good habits? This is the episode for you! Daniel Gallucci is an acclaimed functional neurologist, osteopath, and brain researcher. His clinical experience ranges from elite athletes, like Olympians, NHL players, and baseball star Alex Rodrigeuz, to those with neurodegenerative disease, and virtually everyone in between. Daniel is Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Nurosene, a mental health wellness tech company known for its app that offers exercises and a personalized approach to not only sharpen cognitive skills and prevent diseases like Alzheimer's, but to also support mental health. Join the Win the Day group on Facebook:

TODAY'S GUEST   Dr. Herbert Gintis is an American economist, behavioral scientist, and educator known for his theoretical contributions to sociobiology, especially altruism, cooperation, epistemic game theory, gene-culture coevolution, efficiency wages, strong reciprocity, and human capital theory. He's currently External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and carries a PhD in economics from Harvard University.   Throughout his career, he has worked extensively with economist, Samuel Bowles. Their most recent book, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, was published by Princeton University Press in 2011.     EPISODE SUMMARY   In this conversation we talk about: Why pandemics change everything. Why people have entangled minds, and what this means for fighting misinformation. Why conspiracy theories operate like religions. Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, as a curious and science-minded kid. The five powers of human beings. His journey through math, economics, the social sciences and sandal making. The risks of becoming a single discipline thinker. The contradictory models of human behavior in the humanities. Why people vote despite the fact that their individual vote doesn't determine the outcome. His model of social rationality. What does it mean to be conscious? The explanation of altruism as a phenomenon. And many, many other topics.   Herbert is a remarkably prolific researcher, writer, and thinker. And this conversation is packed to the brim with insights and fascinating questions. It's one of a dozen or so weekly conversations we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and impact investors who are working to change our world for the better.   So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe so you don't miss them.   And now, let's jump right in with Dr. Herbert Gintis.   TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS   [3:45] Life During Covid [6:27] Entangled Minds [10:29] Early Childhood Curiosity  [13:17] Mathematics and Spirituality  [17:43] A Transition to Economics [20:38] A Lesson in Marxism  [22:24] Models of Human Behavior  [33:21] Altruism and Strong Reciprocity  [37:05] The Rational Actor Model and Game Theory [52:00] Entanglement and the Internet [55:58] Physics and Consciousness  [1:05:15] A Short Sermon   EPISODE LINKS Herbert's Links

Some people say we're all in the same boat; others say no, but we're all in the same storm. Wherever you choose to focus the granularity of your inquiry, one thing is certain: we are all embedded in, acting on, and being acted upon by the same nested networks. Our fates are intertwined, but our destinies diverge like weather forecasts, hingeing on small variations in contingency: the circumstances of our birth, the changing contexts of our lives. Seen through a complex systems science lens, the problem of unfairness — in economic opportunity, in health care access, in susceptibility to a pandemic — stays wicked. But the insights therein could steer society toward a much better future, or at least help mitigate the worst of what we're left to deal with now. This is where the rubber meets the road — where quantitative models of the lung could inform economic policy, and research into how we make decisions influences who survives the complex crises of this decade.Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I'm your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we'll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on Complexity, in a conversation recorded on December 9th 2021, we speak with SFI External Professors Kathy Powers, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico, and Melanie Moses, Director of the Moses Biological Computation Lab at the University of New Mexico. In the first part of a conversation that — like COVID itself — will not be contained, and spends much of its time visiting the poor and under-represented, we discuss everything from how the network topology of cities shapes the outcome of an outbreak to how vaccine hesitancy is a path-dependent trust fail anchored in the history of oppression. Melanie and Kathy offer insights into how to fix the vaccine rollout, how better scientific models can protect the vulnerable, and how — with the help of complex systems thinking — we may finally be able to repair the structural inequities that threaten all of us, one boat or many.  Subscribe for Part Two in two weeks!If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe to Complexity Podcast wherever you prefer to listen, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/give. Please also be aware of our new SFI Press book, The Complex Alternative, which gathers over 60 complex systems research points of view on COVID-19 (including those from this show) — and that PhD students are now welcome to apply for our tuitionless (!) Summer 2022 SFI GAINS residential program in Vienna. Learn more at SFIPress.org and SantaFe.edu/Gains, respectively. Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInRelated Reading & Listening:A Model For A Just COVID-19 Vaccination ProgramLegacies of Harm, Social Mistrust & Political Blame Impede A Robust Societal Response to The Evolving COVID-19 PandemicHow To Fix The Vaccine RolloutModels That Protect The VulnerableComplexities in Repair for Harm (Kathy's SFI Seminar)How a coastline 100 million years ago influences modern election results in Alabama @ Reddit

If you're honest with yourself, you're likely asking of the last two years: What happened? The COVID-19 pandemic is a prism through which our stories and predictions have refracted…or perhaps it's a kaleidoscope, through which we can infer relationships and causes, but the pieces all keep shifting. One way to think about humankind's response to COVID is as a collision between predictive power and understanding, highlighting how far the evolution of our comprehension has trailed behind the evolution of our tools. Another way of looking at it is in terms of bottlenecks and reservoirs — whether it's N95 mask distribution, log-jammed shipping lanes, or everybody looking up to Tony Fauci, superspreader events or narrative rupture, COVID is a global crash course in how things flow through networks. Ultimately, the effects go even deeper: How has COVID changed our understanding of individuality — the self and its relationship to other selves?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I'm your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we'll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.In this special year-end wrap-up episode, we speak with  SFI President David Krakauer and former SFI President and Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West about The Complex Alternative, a new SFI Press volume gathering the perspectives of over 60 members of the complex systems research community on COVID-19 — not just the disease but the webbed and embedded systems it revealed.Complexity Podcast will take a winter hiatus over the holidays and return on Wednesday, January 12th. If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe wherever you prefer to listen, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and/or consider making a donation at santafe.edu/give. Please also be aware that PhD students are now welcome to apply for our tuitionless (!) Summer 2022 SFI GAINS residential program in Vienna, Austria. Learn more at santafe.edu/gains.Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInRelated Reading & Listening:The Complex Alternative: Complexity Scientists on the COVID-19 PandemicSelected contributions from that volume:David Kinney - Why We Can't Depoliticize A PandemicSimon DeDeo - From Virus To SymptomOn Coronavirus, Crisis, and Creative Opportunity with David Krakauer (Transmission Series Ep. 3)Bill Miller on Investment Strategies in Times of CrisisCristopher Moore on the heavy tail of outbreaksSidney Redner on exponential growth processesAnthony Eagan - The COVID-19-Induced Explosion of Boutique NarrativesCarrie Cowan on the future of educationMelanie Mitchell - The Double-Edged Sword of Imperfect MetaphorsDanielle Allen, E. Glen Weyl, and Rajiv Sethi - Prediction and Policy in a Complex SystemAdditional Media:John Kaag - What Thoreau can teach us about the Great ResignationKyle Harper - The Fall of the Roman Empire (SFI Talk)Niall Ferguson's Networld, Part 1 “Disruption” feat. Geoffrey WestNeal Stephenson, SFI Miller ScholarThe Limits of Human Scale - David Pakman interviews Geoffrey WestSamuel Bowles, Wendy Carlin - The coming battle for the COVID-19 narrativeJonathan Rausch - The Constitution of KnowledgeLaurent Hébert-Dufresne on Halting the Spread of COVID-19Sam Scarpino on Modeling Disease Transmission & InterventionsScaling Laws & Social Networks in The Time of COVID-19 with Geoffrey West (Part 1)Geoffrey West on Scaling, Open-Ended Growth, and Accelerating Crisis/Innovation Cycles: Transcendence or Collapse? (Part 2)New Directions in Science Emerge from Disconnection and Discordby Yiling Lin, James Allen Evans, Lingfei WuScaling of Urban Income Inequality in the United Statesby Elisa Heinrich Mora, Jacob J. Jackson, Cate Heine, Geoffrey B. West, Vicky Chuqiao Yang, Christopher P. Kempes

How human beings behave is, for fairly evident reasons, a topic of intense interest to human beings. And yet, not only is there much we don't understand about human behavior, different academic disciplines seem to have developed completely incompatible models to try to explain it. And as today's guest Herb Gintis complains, they don't put nearly enough effort into talking to each other to try to reconcile their views. So that what he's here to do. Using game theory and a model of rational behavior — with an expanded notion of “rationality” that includes social as well as personally selfish interests — he thinks that we can come to an understanding that includes ideas from biology, economics, psychology, and sociology, to more accurately account for how people actually behave.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Herbert Gintis received his PhD in economics from Harvard University. After a long career as professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, he is currently a professor at Central European University and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His book Schooling in Capitalist America, written with frequent collaborator Samuel Bowles, is considered a classic in educational reform. He has published books and papers on economics, game theory, sociology, evolution, and numerous other topics.Web siteSanta Fe Institute pageGoogle Scholar publicationsBooks (Princeton University Press)WikipediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Amelia Davenport joins Samuel Bowles for a short discussion on his life-long research on global poverty and education. They discuss Bowles's history and how this led to his orientation, his work on education "Schooling in Capitalist America", including what he has changed his mind on, his thoughts about markets, incentives, central planning and capitalist economies, as well as other theories such as the value-form abolition, neo-liberal economics. He also talks about teaching economics to undergraduates and what thinkers socialists should engage with even  if they're outside the Marxist tradition. Make sure to check out the CORE project and their completely free undergraduate level coursebook on economics.

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter SubscribeStar: https://www.subscribestar.com/the-dissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT Anchor (podcast): https://anchor.fm/thedissenter Dr. Herbert Gintis is External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He and Professor Robert Boyd (Anthropology, UCLA) headed a multidisciplinary research project that models such behaviors as empathy, reciprocity, insider/outsider behavior, vengefulness, and other observed human behaviors not well handled by the traditional model of the self-regarding agent. Professor Gintis is also author of several books including Game Theory Evolving, The Bounds of Reason, A Cooperative Species, Game Theory in Action, and Individuality and Entanglement and also coeditor, with Joe Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, and Ernst Fehr, of Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-scale Societies, and with Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr of Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: On the Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life. This interview is based on Chapter 3 (Game Theory and Human Behavior) of The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences. In this episode, we talk about altruism and self-interest, as revealed through lab and field studies of human behavior. First, we discuss what is rationality, the literature on human biases and heuristics and why that does not show that humans are irrational. We talk about the difference between self-interested and self-regarding behavior. Then, we get into how we can use game theory to study human sociality, and the aspects of it we can learn about through different game designs, like the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Public Goods Game, and the Ultimatum Game. Finally, we talk about how we can make sense of the interplay between people's social dynamics and their culture; the phenomenon of gene-culture coevolution; and the role cultural group selection might have played in the evolution of certain aspects of our sociality, like altruism and strong reciprocity. -- Follow Dr. Gintis' work: Personal Website: https://people.umass.edu/gintis/ Books: https://tinyurl.com/y6ot643p -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, SCIMED, PER HELGE HAAKSTD LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, RUI BELEZA, ANTÓNIO CUNHA, CHANTEL GELINAS, JERRY MULLER, FRANCIS FORDE, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BRIAN RIVERA, ADRIANO ANDRADE, YEVHEN BODRENKO, SERGIU CODREANU, ADAM BJERRE, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, AIRES ALMEIDA, BERNARDO SEIXAS, HERBERT GINTIS, RUTGER VOS, RICARDO VLADIMIRO, BO WINEGARD, JOHN CONNORS, ADAM KESSEL, AND VEGA GIDEY! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, ROSEY, AND JIM FRANK!

It is widely held today on grounds of prudence — if not realism — that in designing public policy and legal systems, we should assume that people are entirely self-interested and amoral. But it is anything but prudent to let Homo economicus be the behavioral assumption that underpins public policy. Samuel Bowles, a research professor and director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, explains why this is so, using evidence from behavioral experiments mechanism design and other sources, and proposes an alternative paradigm for policy making.Sponsored by UC Berkeley's Graduate Division, Bowles gave this lecture on Feb. 25, 2019, as part of the Barbara Weinstock Lectures on the Morals of Trade.(Santa Fe Institute photo)Read a transcript on Berkeley News. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we will talk to two guests; law professor Shiela Foster (https://twitter.com/sheilarfoster)about what she calls the "Co-City" and economics professor Suresh Naidu (https://twitter.com/snaidunl) about what he calls "economics after neoliberalism" . Bios Sheila R. Foster is a Professor of Law and Public Policy (joint appointment with the McCourt School). Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a University Professor and the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law at Fordham University. She also co-directed the Fordham Urban Law Center and was a founder of the Fordham University Urban Consortium. She served as Associate Dean and then Vice Dean at Fordham Law School from 2008-2014. Prior to joining Fordham, she was a Professor of Law at the Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. Professor Foster writes in the areas of environmental law and justice, urban land use law and policy, and state and local government. Her most recent work explores questions of urban law and governance through the lens of the “commons” exemplified by her article The City as a Commons, Yale Law and Policy Review (2016) and forthcoming MIT Press Book, The Co-City. Professor Foster has been involved on many levels with urban policy. She currently is the chair of the advisory committee of the Global Parliament of Mayors, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Urban Innovation Working Group, an advisory board member of the Marron Institute for Urban Management at NYU, and sits on the New York City Panel on Climate Change.As co-director with Christian Iaione of the Laboratory for the Governance of the Commons (LabGov), she is currently engaged in the “Co-Cities Project,” an applied research project on public policies and local projects from over 100 cities around the world. Publications: The Co-City: Collective Governance, Urban Commons and Experiments In Social and Economic Pooling (with Christian Iaione) (forthcoming) --- Suresh Naidu teaches economics, political economy and development. Naidu previously served as a Harvard Academy Junior Scholar at Harvard University, and as an instructor in economics and political economy at the University of California, Berkeley. Naidu holds a BMath from University of Waterloo, an MA in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Publications: “Recruitment Restrictions and Labor Markets: Evidence from the Post-Bellum U.S. South,” Journal of Labor Economics. “Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies” with Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Greg Clark, Ila Fazzio, Michael Gurven, Kim , Paul L. Hooper, William Irons, Hillard Kaplan, Donna Leonetti, Bobbi Low, Frank Marlowe, Richard McElreath, Suresh Naidu, David Nolin, Patrizio Piraino, Rob Quinlan, Eric Schniter, Rebecca Sear, Mary Shenk, Eric Alden Smith, Christopher von Rueden, and Polly Wiessner. Science Vol. 326. No. 5953 (October 30, 2009.) pp 682-688. “Occupational Choices: The Economic Determinants of Land Invasions” with Danny Hidalgo, Simeon Nichter, and Neal Richardson, Review of Economics and Statistics. “The Economic Impacts of a Citywide Minimum Wage” with Arin Dube and Michael Reich. Industrial and Labor Relations Review Vol. 60, No. 4 (July 2007), pp. 522-543.

Homo economicus is the figurative human being used in economic modeling. But the term defines human nature as perfectly rational, perfectly logical, and always self-interested. Does that sound like any real humans you know? Nope, we didn’t think so either. So we invited Professor Samuel Bowles to join Nick and Goldy in throwing a funeral for homo economicus, and all the flawed economic thinking that he’s inspired over the years.   Samuel Bowles is a Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute where he heads the Behavioral Sciences Program. His work on cultural evolution have challenged the conventional economic assumption that people are motivated entirely by self-interest. His most recent books are ‘The Moral Economy: Why good laws are no substitute for good citizens’ and ‘A Cooperative Species: Human reciprocity and its revolution’.  ‘Spock goes shopping’ was based on a thought experiment in Eric Beinhocker’s book ‘The Origin of Wealth’: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781422121030 https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/homo-economicus-must-die/ https://www.core-econ.org/ https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2016/10/11/the-moral-economy-homo-economicus-becomes-human/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey and his most recent book The Moral Economy. Topics covered include the influence of parents, his encounters with Nehru and Martin Luther King, and his education. He addresses the necessary changes in the agenda of economics as it grapples with the limits of incentives and the opportunities for bringing in a focus on community and altruism in order to confront global problems. He also offers advice to students entering the discipline of economics. Finally, he discusses his involvement in an online global effort to reform the economics curriculum through the creation of an online textbook, curriculum, and a community of economists from around the globe focusing on the economics of inequality, innovation, environmental sustainability and more. https://www.core-econ.org Series: "Conversations with History" [Business] [Show ID: 34594]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey and his most recent book The Moral Economy. Topics covered include the influence of parents, his encounters with Nehru and Martin Luther King, and his education. He addresses the necessary changes in the agenda of economics as it grapples with the limits of incentives and the opportunities for bringing in a focus on community and altruism in order to confront global problems. He also offers advice to students entering the discipline of economics. Finally, he discusses his involvement in an online global effort to reform the economics curriculum through the creation of an online textbook, curriculum, and a community of economists from around the globe focusing on the economics of inequality, innovation, environmental sustainability and more. https://www.core-econ.org Series: "Conversations with History" [Business] [Show ID: 34594]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey and his most recent book The Moral Economy. Topics covered include the influence of parents, his encounters with Nehru and Martin Luther King, and his education. He addresses the necessary changes in the agenda of economics as it grapples with the limits of incentives and the opportunities for bringing in a focus on community and altruism in order to confront global problems. He also offers advice to students entering the discipline of economics. Finally, he discusses his involvement in an online global effort to reform the economics curriculum through the creation of an online textbook, curriculum, and a community of economists from around the globe focusing on the economics of inequality, innovation, environmental sustainability and more. https://www.core-econ.org Series: "Conversations with History" [Business] [Show ID: 34594]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey and his most recent book The Moral Economy. Topics covered include the influence of parents, his encounters with Nehru and Martin Luther King, and his education. He addresses the necessary changes in the agenda of economics as it grapples with the limits of incentives and the opportunities for bringing in a focus on community and altruism in order to confront global problems. He also offers advice to students entering the discipline of economics. Finally, he discusses his involvement in an online global effort to reform the economics curriculum through the creation of an online textbook, curriculum, and a community of economists from around the globe focusing on the economics of inequality, innovation, environmental sustainability and more. https://www.core-econ.org Series: "Conversations with History" [Business] [Show ID: 34594]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey and his most recent book The Moral Economy. Topics covered include the influence of parents, his encounters with Nehru and Martin Luther King, and his education. He addresses the necessary changes in the agenda of economics as it grapples with the limits of incentives and the opportunities for bringing in a focus on community and altruism in order to confront global problems. He also offers advice to students entering the discipline of economics. Finally, he discusses his involvement in an online global effort to reform the economics curriculum through the creation of an online textbook, curriculum, and a community of economists from around the globe focusing on the economics of inequality, innovation, environmental sustainability and more. https://www.core-econ.org Series: "Conversations with History" [Business] [Show ID: 34594]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey and his most recent book The Moral Economy. Topics covered include the influence of parents, his encounters with Nehru and Martin Luther King, and his education. He addresses the necessary changes in the agenda of economics as it grapples with the limits of incentives and the opportunities for bringing in a focus on community and altruism in order to confront global problems. He also offers advice to students entering the discipline of economics. Finally, he discusses his involvement in an online global effort to reform the economics curriculum through the creation of an online textbook, curriculum, and a community of economists from around the globe focusing on the economics of inequality, innovation, environmental sustainability and more. https://www.core-econ.org Series: "Conversations with History" [Business] [Show ID: 34594]

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter SubscribeStar: https://www.subscribestar.com/the-dissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT Dr. Herbert Gintis is External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He and Professor Robert Boyd (Anthropology, UCLA) headed a multidisciplinary research project that models such behaviors as empathy, reciprocity, insider/outsider behavior, vengefulness, and other observed human behaviors not well handled by the traditional model of the self-regarding agent. Professor Gintis is also author of several books including Game Theory Evolving, The Bounds of Reason, A Cooperative Species, Game Theory in Action, and Individuality and Entanglement and also coeditor, with Joe Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, and Ernst Fehr, of Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-scale Societies, and with Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr of Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: On the Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life. In this episode, we talk about sociobiology, game theory, and behavioral science in general. First, we talk about the historical and scientific relevance of sociobiology. Then, we go through one of the big projects of Dr. Gintis' work for the last two decades - a framework for the unification of the behavioral sciences – and the several obstacles that we have to that, including the fact that different behavioral sciences have different approaches and focus on different aspects. We also talk about the relationship between culture and biology. Finally, we go from there to the particularities of human cooperation, group selection, and the role that social institutions play. Time Links: 01:03 Sociobiology and human behavior 04:37 A framework for the unification of the behavioral sciences 10:52 It makes no sense to talk about individuals or collectives 17:20 Culture and biology, and gene-culture coevolution 21:50 The particularities of human cooperation 25:55 About group selection 35:24 The function of social institutions in social species 42:30 The importance of group identity (distributed cognition) 48:50 Humans are rational, but not in the way you think 59:05 What is human nature? -- Follow Dr. Gintis' work: Faculty page: https://tinyurl.com/y3xj55na Personal Website: https://people.umass.edu/gintis/ Articles on Researchgate: https://tinyurl.com/y5dzoe2l Books: https://tinyurl.com/y6ot643p Books referenced in the int

In Episode 18 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas speaks with Samuel Bowles, about economic man and the moral economy, exploring some of the latest insights from the field of behavioral economics with insights about how incentives and prices convey information and shape perceptions of value in the economy. Dr. Bowles is a Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, where he heads the Behavioral Sciences Program. His studies on cultural and genetic evolution have challenged the conventional economic assumptions of an economic man motivated entirely by self-interest. The author of nearly twenty books, Samuel Bowles has most recently written The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizensand A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution.  In today’s conversation, we follow the archeological record of economic man. We pursue the path towards rational expectations and utility maximization. We take the road from Aristotle, paying heed to his ethics, and to his conviction that the test of a good constitution, is a good citizenry. But, with the collapse of Rome and Europe’s descent into darkness emerge ideas of life as brutish and man, as wicked. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and Niccolò Machiavelli's Prince, were written to appeal to the lowest, most unimpressive motives of man's animal nature. Later, political economists like Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith would take this notion further. They sought to harness the industries of avarice, converting man's self-interest towards the public good. The invisible hand emerged, and with it, notions of separability. Homo Sapiens existed in one realm, and economic man in another. The beneficent, moral being on the one hand, and the selfish, utility maximizing agent on the other. Laws were built upon this framework. Ideas of the marketplace were developed. Incentives and regulations were crafted, in what economists call Mechanism Design. What have we learned in the years since that have challenged the foundations of these neoclassical assumptions? What has come of rational expectations and utility maximization? What are some of the insights of behavioral economists, moral philosophers, and evolutionary psychologists that task the fitness of economic man? What types of systems can we design that are better suited towards the citizens of Aristotle’s legislator than to the aberrations of modern economic man? Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Los ideólogos venezolanos del socialismo del Siglo XXI o muestran un atraso muy grande en el dominio de la economía o son unos manipuladores, porque citan autores avanzados del pensamiento marxista, de manera tendenciosa para justificar la asfixia regulatoria cuando las tesis de esos autores, señalan que las regulaciones mal concebidas no conducen a la formación de buenos ciudadanos sino a todo lo contrario. Los economistas del gobierno conocen que la fuente mayor de extracción de rentas se deriva de la asfixia regulatoria de providencias, decretos, reglamentos y leyes con las características siguientes: Cuando son complejas extensas, intensas, ambiguas y de difícil interpretación; Cuando son prácticamente de imposible cumplimiento; Cuando conceden amplio poder discrecional a los funcionarios en la administración, la aplicación y las sanciones de las normas. La extracción de rentas es una poderosa herramienta de extorsión social por la capacidad de discriminación ideológica que permite cuando se excluye del acceso a los bienes y servicios públicos, a comunidades y a individuos por ser críticos del gobierno. La extracción de rentas distrae recursos productivos y los diluye entre redes de comercialización, de distribución y de mercados negros, con el agravante que constituye una evasión fiscal por los tributos que deja de percibir el Estado. En definitiva, la asfixia regulatoria es una demoledora injusticia que destruye valor económico, social y moral del país. Con la “viveza criolla” los economistas de nuestro socialismo del siglo XXI, tratan de esquivar el asunto buscando argumentos de autores marxistas para darle un manto de academicismo a sus propuestas, para ello recurren a dos falacias del razonamiento, primero a la “Ignoratio Elenchi” al utilizar una revisión sobre el cómo hacer política económica a través de incentivos con una descalificación del análisis de impacto regulatorio por la vía de los incentivos y segundo, con la “argumentum ad verecundiam”, como lo dice “Samuel Bowles” y es una voz autorizada, entonces ellos los ideólogos del socialismo tienen razón. Falso de todas falsedades. Recientemente, en mayo de este año, fue publicada la obra “La economía moral” del profesor Samuel Bowles[1]. En su obra la idea central es: “¿Debería la idea del hombre económico, amoral y egoísta el llamado “Homo economicus” — determinar el cómo esperamos que la gente responda a los castigos y a las recompensas monetarias y otros incentivos? Samuel Bowles contesta con un rotundo "no". Las políticas que se derivan de este paradigma, muestran, que pueden "desplazar" el ser generoso y ético que el hombre es y por ello ser contraproducentes. Pero los incentivos per no se son realmente los causales. Bowles muestra que desplazamiento moral ocurre cuando el mensaje transmitido por las recompensas y las multas es el que se espera de un ser amoral y egoísta, por ejemplo, donde el empleador piensa que la fuerza de trabajo es perezosa, o que no se puede confiar en que el ciudadano contribuya con el bien público. Utilizando estudios de casos históricos y recientes, así como experimentos conductuales, Bowles muestra como los incentivos pueden desplazar los motivos cívicos que un buen gobierno espera de sus ciudadanos.”[2] La interpretación correcta es que un incentivo mal diseñado puede hacer que un individuo no amoral, es decir con unos principios de conducta adquiridos, por cultura, por religión, no egoísta, generoso y altruista podría devenir en un ser amoral y egoísta debido a incentivos que parten del supuesto de concebirlo como amoral y egoísta. El error de política económica no radica en el incentivo por si mismo sino en la manera como se formula. Estos argumentos son bien diferentes a la conclusión falaz de los propugnadores del socialismo del siglo XXI, cuando consideran que los incentivos no deben ser tenidos en cuenta en el diseño de regulaciones y que solo debe privar el propósito final, por ejemplo, si los precios son juzgados como “no justos” hay que controlarlos sin preocuparse del comportamiento esperado del individuo ante la norma. [1] Samuel Bowles. The Moral Economy”. Yale University Press. New Haven and London. May 24, 2016, 288 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 ¼, 18 b/w illus. ISBN: 97803001638032016. (iBooks. https://itun.es/us/awhqcb.l) [2] “Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.” http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/

Las categorías del análisis de impacto regulatorio. El diseño de políticas económicas enfrenta la complejidad no susceptible de reducción del comportamiento humano, el individuo enfrenta situaciones con una racionalidad no enteramente hedonista y no enteramente generosa, cuya acción puede ser un tanto moral como amoral. Más allá de esa complejidad, partimos del supuesto que el entorno puede incidir en la inclinación de la balanza del comportamiento humano hacia un lado o hacia otro, es el desafío sobre el cómo las regulaciones pueden favorecer la formación de buenos ciudadanos. [1] La justificación de las regulaciones económicas se encuentra en los llamados fallos del mercado cuando dan lugar a la producción excesiva o deficiente de bienes y servicios, pero las regulaciones no están exentas a su vez de efectos secundarios nocivos que pueden ser mayores que los fallos del mercado que pretenden corregir. Del mismo modo que el mercado sin controles da lugar a fallos, las regulaciones pueden acarrear males públicos. Esos males públicos son los derivados de los incentivos perversos, cuando no existe una alineación entre los resultados del comportamiento que se estimula y el propósito final de la norma, en términos de los intereses de la sociedad como conjunto. La extracción de rentas que ocasiona un incentivo perverso surge en presencia de asimetrías de información [2] y del poder discrecional. El problema esencial de las regulaciones tiene su origen en la respuesta que dan los agentes que participan en el mercado, cuando la norma permite el aprovechamiento de las regulaciones de unos en detrimento de los demás, estamos en presencia de un mal público. Un mal diseño de las regulaciones no solo tiene los efectos primarios al beneficiar a unos y perjudicar a los demás, tiene también otros impactos colaterales en forma de costos de transacción, pues genera erogaciones adicionales que no agregan valor a la producción de bienes y servicios. Un análisis complementario puede ser realizado cuando una regulación otorga a un agente poder discrecional para decidir sobre la aplicación de la norma y permite la distracción de recursos en su favor, en cuya situación estamos en presencia de una extracción de rentas, es el tipo de poder discrecional que se hace presente con la intervención de políticos cuyos intereses ideológicos o económicos no están alineados con los de la sociedad. Un trabajador en situación de inamovilidad laboral puede aprovecharse de su condición para no hacer nada o lo que le venga en gana pues sabe que no tiene riesgos de ser despedido. Una regulación, técnicamente imposible de cumplir, da lugar a la corrupción pues la persona se encuentra de manera inevitable al margen de la ley. La persona que recibe una ayuda justificada socialmente puede sentirse motivada para no realizar ningún esfuerzo para salir de su situación. Estos sucesos son los que caracterizan el riesgo moral el cual describe una situación por la que una persona modifica su conducta cuando ella no resulta la responsable total de las consecuencias de sus decisiones, dando lugar a destrucción de valor económico y social. En el mar de fondo de los males públicos creados por un mal diseño de la política pública están: Se pierde la motivación para contribuir con la creación de valor económico y social, tanto en lo individual como en las organizaciones, por el aprovechamiento fortuito de la norma. Es la fuente del surgimiento de mercados negros y todas sus secuelas: escasez, racionamiento, violencia, colas y corrupción. Erosiona la efectividad de la gobernanza de un país a la larga el gobierno puede convertirse en un estado fallido. Es destructiva de la confianza y el empoderamiento social: la gente no cree en nadie y pierde su capacidad como buen ciudadano. Da lugar a comportamientos tipo “aprovecha ahora que mañana ya es tarde”, teniendo como consecuencia la destrucción de bienes públicos por explotación hasta el agotamiento, es la llamada “tragedia de los comunes”.[3] La promoción de contratos o acuerdos en las que una de las partes contratantes, está menos informada y no es capaz de distinguir la buena o mala calidad de lo ofrecido por la otra parte. Ventajas a favor de quien posee poder discrecional cuando un individuo u organización dependen de su acción y de su condición moral, condiciones sobre los cuales no se tiene perfecta información, ni conocimiento preciso del alcance de sus atribuciones. Notas: [1] Una buen libro para adentrarse en el tema de los incentivos es el siguiente: Samuel Bowles. “La economía moral”. (https://itun.es/us/awhqcb.l) [2] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/asymmetries-of-information-and-economic-policy?version=spanish&barrier=true [3] “La ruina es el destino hacia el cual corren todos los hombres, cada uno buscando su mejor provecho en un mundo que cree en la libertad de los recursos comunes. La libertad de los recursos comunes resulta la ruina para todos.“ Garrett Hardin “The Tragedy of Commons” en Science, v. 162 (1968), pp. 1243-1248. http://www.ine.gob.mx/ https://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/ciencias/jonate/Eco_Rec/Intro/La_tragedia_de_los_comunes.pdf

Drones and robots are or soon will be watching you, driving you, delivering to you, and maybe even trying to kill you. They’re loud, nosy, deadly, useful, safe, and dangerous. There are many different kinds of them and many different kinds of us. What should we do when, say, a man shoots a camera-bearing drone out of the sky above his property? Or when a creditor remotely shuts down your car when you’re behind on your payments but, unfortunately, while you’re on the highway? For some answers and more questions, we chat with delightfully deep-thinking Frank Pasquale. This show’s links: Frank Pasquale’s faculty profile and writing Frank Pasquale, The Black Box Society Oral Argument 41: Sense-Think-Act (guest Ryan Calo) Robot or Not?, a podcast of one to two-minute episodes Jeff John Roberts, Man Arrested for Shooting $1,800 Drone Won’t Apologize, Cites Privacy DJI, drone purveyor, which company’s name Christian managed to mangle, Joe-style Michael Froomkin and Zak Colangelo, Self-Defense Against Robots and Drones Frank Pasquale, Air Traffic Control for Drones Jacque v. Sternberg Homes, Inc. Desnick v. ABC United States v. Causby Hinman v. Pacific Air Transport See, e.g., Field v. Google (on copyright claims against Google for search results) Margot Kaminsky, Drone Federalism: Civilian Drones and the Things They Carry Thomas Frey, 55 Jobs of the Future Timothy Lee, Amazon Has a Plan for Thousands of Drones to Fill the Sky Yoko Kubota, Google Reshoots Japan Views after Privacy Complaints The FAA’s interpretive rules for recreational drones (line-of-sight and less than 400 feet, among other restrictions) and proposed rules for commercial drones (including weight limitations, line-of-sight, daylight-only, less than 500 feet, and more) Foster v. Svenson (finding no statutory privacy right to prevent artistic show of photographs taken unsuspecting through open windows via telephoto lens) AP, Enrique Iglesias Recovering After Fingers Sliced at Concert, video Patrick Hubbard, 'Sophisticated Robots': Balancing Liability, Regulation, and Innovation 99% Invisible 170: Children of the Magenta (Automation Paradox, pt. 1); see also part 2 Turn Your Key, Sir! Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone Frank Pasquale, Do Corporations Enjoy a 2nd Amendment Right to Drones? Jathan Sadowski and Frank Pasquale, The Spectrum of Control: A Social Theory of the Smart City Jathan Sadowski and Frank Pasquale, Creditors Use New Devices to Put Squeeze on Debtors Dale Carrico, We Are the Killer Robots; see also Dale Carrico, Natality, Tech “Disruption,” and Killer Robots Mary Ellen O’Connell, 21st Century Arms Control Challenges: Drones, Cyber Weapons, Killer Robots, and WMDs Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jayadev, One Nation Under Guard; see also Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jayadev, Garrison America Frank Pasquale and Glyn Cashwell, Four Futures of Legal Automation Special Guest: Frank Pasquale.

Herbert Gintis is Emeritus Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts and visiting Professor at Central European University. He is known for his theoretical contributions to sociobiology, especially altruism, cooperation, epistemic game theory and gene-culture co-evolution. Herbert has a B.A and M.A in Mathematics but switched his PhD program at Harvard from mathematics to economics. Professor Gintis was part of a group of economists who developed their ideas on a new economics which encompassed issues of alienation of labor, racism, sexism, and imperialism. Herbert has worked extensively with economist Samuel Bowles, writing their landmark book, Schooling in Capitalist America. One of Herbert’s latest books The Bounds of Reason emphasises the unification of economic theory with sociobiology and other behavioral sciences which, in the words of Nobel Prize-winning economist, Vernon L. Smith, “is firmly in the revolutionary tradition of David Hume (Convention) and Adam Smith (Sympathy)”. In the episode you will learn: about the importance of trans-disciplinary research and collaboration. why economics is not the only social science that explains human behavior. how biology, economics and sociology explain the behaviour of humans in different ways and which discipline is correct? about the Ultimatum Game and how it shows the cooperative and non-cooperative behaviour of humans. about the morality of humans and how we reciprocate kindness with kindness and unkindness with unkindness. why reciprocity makes humans so successful as a species. why some species have a symbiotic relationship with other species, which is not the same as reciprocity. how we can fit all the human feelings together to form a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding human behavior. why we always need a system to punish free-riders and non-cooperators. how the future structure of the University can be seen at Arizona State University today. why we need a new generation of thinkers and research centres who are trans-disciplinary. what projects Professor Herbert Gintis is working on right now. why morality controls politics and your vote will not make a difference. how Herbert gets things done in terms of writing books and journal articles. about Herbert’s disagreement with Nassim Nicholas Taleb. why Herbert believes that macroeconomics is wrong and is in agreement with Taleb on that issue. and much much more. Links mentioned in this episode: economicrockstar.com/herbertgintis economicrockstar.com/bluehost audiobooks.com/rockstar Subscribe now on iTunes and get access to the complete list of Economic Rockstar episodes.

Samuel Bowles, Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena, gave three public lectures where he presented evidence that explicit incentives and constraints often diminish ethical motivations. This is the third lecture of a three-part series.

Samuel Bowles, Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena, gave three public lectures where he presented evidence that explicit incentives and constraints often diminish ethical motivations. This is the second lecture of a three-part series.

Samuel Bowles, Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena, gave three public lectures presenting evidence that explicit incentives and constraints often diminish ethical motivations. This is the first lecture of a three-part series.

Spider expert Greta Binford, from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and her student MG Weber talk about the fascinating world of spiders. And economist Samuel Bowles, from the Santa Fe Institute, discusses the co-evolution of war and altruism. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Web sites mentioned on this episode include www.santafe.edu/~bowles