They just assume that you have preferences and want to satisfy them. Those preferences can include 'earn as much money as possible', but they can also include 'feed starving children in the orphanage across the street'. The theory doesn't really care about the exact shape of your preferences.
It's a useful shorthand to assume that economic actors want to maximize profit, because that allows them to spend money on almost any other goal they have (like feeding the orphans). But economics can still help us understand why more people want to be teachers, even if the pay is low, than programmers or prostitutes or truck drivers in oil boom counties.
There have been many societies based on the idea that people can be convinced to be unselfish. They've all failed. Bregman has an impossible uphill battle against a vast historical record.
Reading the synopsis https://www.amazon.com/Humankind-Hopeful-History-Rutger-Breg... it appears Bregman has made a mistake. He posits that cooperation is unselfish. This is incorrect. He's right that cooperation works, but people cooperate for selfish reasons. If I grow bananas and you hunt fish, we cooperate and trade the results, and we are both better off. We cooperated for selfish reasons.
Now, if you grow fish and I just take it from you because I felt I deserved it more than you, you are going to be mad at me and might fight me. This is how it is in our selfish interests to cooperate.
> But if we believe in the reality of humanity's kindness and altruism, it will form the foundation for achieving true change in society,
Many societies have been founded on this model, with a 100% failure rate.
It isn't Bregman's premise that people can be convinced to be unselfish, but rather that they are kind an unselfish by nature, and that it is modern society that made us egoistic.
The book does a far better job of making the argument than I, or its synopsis, ever could.
All people are selfish. People who give to others derive pleasure from it, and they like that pleasure. Not enough to base an economy on it, though. People soon get tired of working hard only to give the results to loafers.
I can't help but notice that you didn't answer my question, but instead repeated your original assertion.
Let's say I declare that your observation is not true of me personally. Note that this doesn't necessitate any evidence external to me; I could introspect and discover this about myself, however you don't have the ability to "introspect" into my own mind.
How could you prove to me I'm mistaken? And please note, I am not looking for a restatement here, I understand what your view is.
By having a conversation with you. I'd point out your pride and self-satisfaction at being unselfish. If I knew of you more than that, I'd point out your selfish behavior. It's not hard, look at the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the cookie you ate, your grooming, and so on.
You wouldn't think much of my clothing. I've never owned a car. My grooming is minimal, my appearance just doesn't cross my mind. But I do like a nice cookie.
I behave selfishly sometimes, no question. Does that really define the entirety of who I am? Why would it define me more than, say, when I feel bored, or when I behave generously, or when I do things on impulse? Afterall, I try to avoid behaving selfishly, so I spend a lot more time in these other frames of mind. Why shouldn't the totality be what defines me or anyone else?
Flattening a human being into mere selfishness might be a convenient assumption to build models around, but the map is not the terrain.
Lets break it down, how much of your income do you spend on yourself, your family, friends and community you live in, how much to benefit society as whole where you see almost no benefit what so ever?
There is a reason economist use the term, self-interest, not selfishness. And it doesn't 'define you as a human' but it non the less true in the behavior patterns for 99.999999999% of humanity.
You simply biologically have to look out for your own survival, and in the few cases you don't, its because you put family or sometimes community above your own interest. But that still is self-interested.
No, not really. Following my values usually feels neutral. Sometimes it feels absolutely terrible.
What I'm trying to tell you is that this is an intrinsic goal, not an instrumental goal. If you were to ask me, "why do you have values?" or "why do you follow your values?" I wouldn't even know how to answer, it would be like asking a fish why it swims.
Alternatively; why do you do things you enjoy? Why do you do things that benefit you? Why does it matter to derive benefit?
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As far as I see it, the point of contention here is that you believe there exists only one intrinsic goal. I not only disagree but contend that I experience other intrinsic goals.
At this point, I don't really see how one of us could convince the other. You don't believe my self-reported experience for one reason or another. I know I have other intrinsic goals, so your hypothesis is exploded from my perspective. I was trying to demonstrate that you don't have access to other people's experiences and can't really know what motivates them, but you seem unmoved.
But if you have a different idea or line of argument I'm happy to entertain it.
A fish swims because a fish swims. (It's an idiom.)
> Only one? No.
If you actually believed this I don't think you'd have much reason to doubt me when I said I had an intrinsic goal other than selfishness. Why would you unless you believed it was impossible?
> Frankly, I don't believe you do things from which you derive neither benefit nor satisfaction.
This would seem to imply you do believe there exists only one intrinsic goal. So I'm not really sure what you're trying to say.
Is it possible to have an intrinsic goal other than selfishness, or isn't it?
> Because, unlike what classical-liberal economic theory stipulates, human beings aren't inherently selfish.
If you actually knew anything about the history of classical liberalism you wouldn't perpetuate this nonsensical stereotype. Classical Liberalism is not the same as Objectivism.
A core classic liberal belief, arguably the core belief, is that nothing should stand in the way of individuals being able to secure their own economic self-interest.
To be sure this does not stipulate that all actors be selfish, merely that no penalty should inhibit selfishness.
> A core classic liberal belief, arguably the core belief, is that nothing should stand in the way of individuals being able to secure their own economic self-interest.
That is completely false, you are simply attacking the straw men that 100 years of oversimplified critics of classical liberalism have set up.
The classical liberal tradition always had a strong association and interest in English Common Law and never asserted individual action is above the law, exactly the opposite is the case. The Law very foundation that classical liberal build on.
That's why there is a whole field of economics called 'Economics & Law' that goes back a long time.
> To be sure this does not stipulate that all actors be selfish, merely that no penalty should inhibit selfishness.
The factor that inhibits selfishness is the law. But you are correct, no classical liberal thinker thought people should be punished for being selfish in of itself.
Drawing on ideas of Adam Smith, classical liberals believed that it is in the common interest that all individuals be able to secure their own economic self-interest.
attributed to: Dickerson, M. O.; Flanagan, Thomas; O'Neill, Brenda (2009). An Introduction to Government and Politics: A Conceptual Approach. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0176500429.
> A core classic liberal belief, arguably the core belief, is that nothing should stand in the way of individuals being able to secure their own economic self-interest.
You literally said 'nothing'.
It is of course true that they believed that self-interested individuals seeking voluntary trade to improve their self interest within a legal framework would be beneficial for society.
Note how Adam Smith never says 'its amazing to steal as much money as possible because following your self interest is good for society'.
I suggest you read Adam Smiths actual work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
That is still wrong. It more correct for Chicago but its not remotely true for Austrian school.
The whole point that made the Austrian school different from the Neoclassical approach used by for example Walras or Jevons was that they DID NOT think about micro economics as pure utility optimization.
The point of their approach is not to claim that all individuals are self interested, rather that a dynamic market situation can lead to a good outcome whatever desire the person has. It doesn't fundamentally matter if a person buys porn for himself or if he feeds the homeless. That's of course morally different, but a difference in the underlying economics. That why there is a strong emphasis on subjective theory of value in Austrian economics.
But of course simply empirically speaking most people first look out for themselves and their family and friends. Not sure why that would be controversial. And that is what Austrian economics also assumed, but its called self-interest and not selfishness.
but why always communism? Let's agree today's system is bad. What system are we in? Certainly not capitalist. ~ 50% of GDP goes to the government. That's closer to socialist.
Why love communism so much? We're practically communist already. Why not blame that?
I mean a lot of us work on open source software in one form or another. I don't think FOSS is communism by any means, but it does seem somewhat adjacent in terms of values.
