Re: Richard Dawkins Question

"Antony Quinn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:-

> M:
> the capitalist idea that successful companies
> grow larger whilst unsuccessful ones must be allowed to collapse is the
> evolutionary algorithm applied to economics.

AQ:
There is some validity in this analogy, but it can only go so far. It is
true that in nature and capitalist economies there is a tendency to grow
larger (as a defence against predation?).

JE:-
The tendency is to _absolutely_ increase _fitness_
(which ever way you define fitness). In biology
absolute fitness is the total number of fertile
forms each parent reproduces in one population.
In economics is it the total amount of money
an individual makes in one country.

AQ:-
Some genes are favoured by natural
selection, some companies by artificial selection. However, evolution
consists of natural selection and *random* mutation. Companies do not
randomly mutate. Their owners take active steps to survive in response to
price signals and other changes in market conditions ('the environment').

JE:-
Money, like genes, is useless in itself unless
it functions for something else. The view that
money is "just paper" reflects this truth.
Likewise, genes are just DNA/RNA.

Genes and money are not selected themselves
they are only selected as a sub part of
something else. That "something else" is one
entire individual. The freq of genes reflects the
biological fitness of such individuals like the
amount of money reflects economic fitness.
Individuals are not selected to just
increase their genes any more than individuals
are selected to just increase their money. Genes
are sub selected to increase the number individuals.
For genes to increase, individuals must also increase
because fitness at the gene level is dependent and
not independent of, fitness at the Darwinian individual
level. Similarly, money is sub selected to increase the
quality of individuals. For money increases to be
selected, the quality of individual life must also
increase. In Neo Darwinism, the view that selection
at the gene level can force fitness altruism at
the individual level (Hamilton, Dawkins Wilson et al)
has reversed known, testable, cause and affect within
a science of biology. This so small beer mistake.
Similarly, the view that monetary fitness altruism at the
individual level can be selected for at just a money level of
selection alsos reverses known economic cause and affect. Both
reversals cause disaster at the individual level. You cannot
increase  the quality of life by just increasing the amount of
money in circulation. Economists like Maynard Keynes et al
almost destroyed western economies using such inflation.
In the same way, Neo Darwinists like W.D. Hamilton
have almost destroyed evolutionary theory by
inflating the number of genes in a population
at the cost of the number of individuals actually
reproduced.

AQ:-
This is more akin to Lamarckism than Darwinism. Moreover, it would be more
accurate to describe this as an analogy of the theory of perfect competition
than capitalism. Perfect competition is a reasonably useful model, but it
makes some unrealistic assumptions such as perfect information, perfect
mobility of labour and capital, and no barriers to entry. In the sense of a
ruthless and consistent application of the rules over the long term, the
real world of evolution is closer to perfect competition than any economy,
past or present.

JE:-
Within nature and economies,
"perfect information", "perfect
mobility" etc does not exist.
However, nature, unlike mankind,
always  attempts to maximise true information
rather than reduce it to provide just a
short term, i.e. "relative", gain. Crooks
hardly exist in nature but are common
within economies. Nature does no cheat
because it costs more than the gains
to do so. We havn't yet worked this
one, out.The process of fitness mutualisation
is more important than almost anything
else within both nature and economies.
If you reduce it for any reason ,
e.g. just to provide a short term relative gain
you risk an absolute fitness cost for yourself.
lIt is this simple, basic fact that has been
left out of Hamilton's rule and most non free
market economics. Economic competition
within what are termed "free countries", attempts
to maximise economic fitness mutualisation
by increasing available truthful information
within the economy because everybody gains
but not necessarily equally. Non equality is the rub!
The same applies to mobility. Competition becomes
more "perfect" the more mobility and information
increases. Any deliberate reduction of the
mobility of capital and labour may allow a
short term gain but may only provide an
absolute cost that is greater than the gain.
Such an event cannot be selected FOR.

Nature can only select to increase
mobility and information by increasing
competition and reducing protectionism.
Humankind falsely reasons that protectionism
is a sustainable benefit, when it is not.
We have not learnt what natural selection
discovered many billions of years ago:
only a mutual but not necessarily equal
fitness gain is sustainable.


In non free countries, group selection reduces
economic fitness at the individual level because
false information is deliberately propagated for
"the good of the group". Thus some individuals
prosper as most others fall into dire poverty to pay
for it, leading to instability and war. The same logic
applies to Hamilton's rule. As the altruistic gene
just relatively spreads, the number of individuals
in that population may absolutely decrease to pay for
it. Thus nobody really wins because everybody absolutely
loses. In biology, it is pointless providing a theory that
purports to suggest that, "somehow", an absolute fitness
reduction can be naturally selected FOR. It can't be.
In the same way an absolute reduction in real wealth
cannot be selected within an economy.

It is no accident that Hamilton, Dawkins etc  are
members of a lunatic left. The lunatic left and the right
always make  the same terrible  mistake. They negate the
individual as their one _absolute_ unit of benefit.


AQ:-
In addition, succesful genes spread by replication.
Succesful companies grow, but when they replicate (by mergers and
acquisitions) the result is more often than not disappointing, since it is
very difficult to replicate the conditions of one company in another.

JE:-
Companies are mutual economic fitness associations between
individuals. Thus companies come and go so that many an individual's
wealth can absolutely increase. Companies are like species.
Darwin entirely removed fixed species as a absolute assumption.
The concept of fixed species is just a left over from non
testable creationism that group selectionists like to play with
from time to time. The fixation of companies mostly happens in the
public sector within free economies. Here the preservation of jobs
can take precedence over economic efficiency. This can cause a reduction
of the real wealth produced by the public sector to INDIVIDUALS. To
compound this, public selector management is mostly group selective.
Such economic entities are mostly protected from INDIVIDUAL economic
selection. Subsequently things are more often than not done in a
non competitive and thus, a much less efficient way since they are
at the direction of public service Mandarins.

>> AQ:
>> I would suggest that language, art and technology are what sets humans
>> apart from animals. Trade is a consequence of these attributes.

> M:
> Language and trade feed off each other. Beyond a very simple level,
> technology also depends on groups of people co-operating, and there's
> evidence for trade in flints from a very early period.

>snip<

AQ:
Yes, I see. Trade is an important factor in economic and technological
development. And communication is essential for trade.

JE:-
The missing link in human evolution is not some
half man half ape fossil, it is the point in time
when a conscious act of trade actually happened
within human evolution. Most evolutionary theorists,
because they appear to be politically dominated by the
(lunatic) left or the right, have not understood the overriding
importance of trade as an INDIVIDUAL BIOLOGICAL ADAPTATION.
Thus they have almost entirely neglected to talk about trade
within evolutionary theory. Search any discussion,
book or paper on evolutionary theory. You will find
almost nothing about trade as an adaptation! All
you will find is masses of rubbish about anti
mutualisation, i.e. fitness altruism and reciprocal altruism.
The false "altruism" focus is just a way to psychologically
evade the overriding importance of fitness mutualisation
to both economics and evolutionary theory.
If you remove the _absolute_ fitness focus of
the INDIVIDUAL, then you have no other choice but to try to make
fitness altruism stick. Economic fitness altruism is just as
absurd as biological fitness altruism. Neither can be selected
FOR within their respective selective systems. Both are a
product of just a lunatic political, right and left that
is dominated by false political dogma.

>snip<

Best Wishes,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

[EMAIL PROTECTED]