From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Mon Mar 18 2002 - 13:09:52 MST
> (Mike Lorrey)
> Well, you could look at it as a sort of objective confirmation that
> there is a natural human disposition to be a jealous materialistic
> confiscatory socialist bastard (at least in England).
>
> Another way to look at it is that it does conform to one of my own
> rules: Anybody who tries to fuck Mike over will wind up enjoying the
> experience even less than me. This is one of those rules that helps push
> for a polite society. We shouldn't be surprised that England, being
> still one of the most polite societies around, would have such a
> strongly similar reaction, given the acceptance of the assumption that
> someone elses gain is always your loss under any circumstances.
>
> If such a behavior is universal, then we need to look at social
> mechanisms which help keep such in check. In this case, popularizing the
> meme that we should be happy when others get richer, on the theory that
> eventually it will be our turn to do so, or something to that effect.
> Aha, well then, we need to practice capitalism.... ;)
Another interesting paper along these lines is David Friedman's
"Economics and Evolutionary Psychology", a short and pleasant read
on his website <http://www.best.com/~ddfr/>. It seems there are
many situations where people do not behave as rationally as
economists would predict, and reasonable good reasons for that.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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