Last April President Obama called a House Republican
budget plan “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” Of course Obama meant it as a
put-down. But by the Encyclopedia
Britannica’s characterization, social Darwinism is simply a
correct, ideology-free statement about the world. Moreover, the fact that Obama
is president is evidence of social Darwinism. Let me explain.
The Encyclopedia Britannica
describes social Darwinism as “the theory that persons, groups, and races are
subject to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin had perceived
in plants and animals in nature.” “According to the theory,” says the Encyclopedia, “the weak were diminished and their
cultures delimited, while the strong grew in power and in cultural influence
over the weak.” The Encyclopedia states that social Darwinists “held
that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by
‘survival of the fittest,’ a phrase proposed by the British philosopher and
scientist Herbert Spencer.”
That raises the question: What
is “fit?” The answer to that depends crucially on the context—that is, on what
is rewarded.
Take the Soviet Union. Was
Joseph Stalin particularly fit? He certainly didn’t produce much that other
people valued; yet he thrived. He did so by lying, manipulating, intimidating,
and murdering, all on a massive scale. In the Soviet Union the fittest got the
best food, houses, cars, and more, but fitness meant the ability and
willingness to be untrustworthy, unscrupulous, and bloodthirsty. In that environment
Stalin was indeed one of the fittest.
Or take a street gang. The
fittest street gangs are those whose members know how to fight the best and who
are the least scrupulous about using physical violence. In this way a
neighborhood policed by street gangs is similar to the Soviet Union: The most
ruthless succeed in each.
That shouldn’t be surprising.
In both environments the most important rule is: Kill or be killed. There is no
protection of the rights of someone who simply wants to go about his or her
business peacefully. Peaceful, productive people are in fact sitting ducks
waiting to be picked off by the violent.
This is a kind of natural
selection. The environment “selects for success” those who are best at working
within its rules. You tell me the environment and the rules, and I’ll tell you
the kind of people who will emerge as the fittest.
Survival of the Sincerest
Back to Obama. The media and
the voters tend to reward people who, however insincerely, sound as if they
care. The evidence that they do care is much less important. And Obama, who is
very good at sounding sincere while carrying out actions that often contradict
his “sincere” statements, was rewarded with arguably the most powerful job in
the world.
Take the rules of academia.You
might think that the people who would do well in academia are those who teach
the best and contribute the most to knowledge by writing clearly about
important issues. But the best teachers are less likely to get tenure because they
spend more time on teaching and less time on research than others. Those who do
get tenure tend to be the people who publish, and more than 90 percent of their
publications are badly written articles in obscure journals about issues of
limited interest. Yet these people are the “fittest” because the main rule in
academia is “publish in academic journals.” The easiest way to do that is to
specialize in one or two very narrow issues, so that you can be one of five to
20 people in the world who are considered experts on those subjects.
Or consider the free market.
What are its rules? One rule is that private property rights are respected for
all—not just for the wealthy executive but also for the person selling hot dogs
on the street corner. Another rule is that contracts are respected and
enforced. A third rule, part of property rights, is that people are free to
exchange goods or services with each other.
Under those rules, as Adam
Smith stated more than 230 years ago in The Wealth of
Nations, the people who fare best are those who figure out what
they can do well that other people are willing to pay for. The key to getting
wealthy in a free market is to find a new product people want, a fresh use for
an old product, a use for idle resources, or a cheaper way of making or
delivering an existing product. The person who creates a software program that
does something many people want accomplished, and who then figures out how to
market it, will make a lot of money. The person who finds some new use for an
unused resource—garbage, wood chips, the blank space on the white uniforms of
top-seeded tennis players—will also make a lot of money.
People also do well in a free
market by being trustworthy. When I buy a hamburger at McDonald’s, whether in
San Jose, Moscow, or Paris, I am sure of getting a certain minimum quality.
That’s why people often eat at branded restaurants when traveling in strange
places—they want quality assurance. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and many other
well-known brands are worth a lot because their owners have invested in
establishing a reputation.
Survival of the Weakest, Too
And here’s the bonus. Although
those who do best in a free market are those who are the most productive, even
the least productive thrive. One reason is competition. Because of the pressure
to innovate more quickly and usefully than their competitors, and to price
their products more attractively, people like Bill Gates and the late Steve
Jobs created more benefits for us than they will ever create for themselves.
The other reason even the
least productive thrive in a free market is capital accumulation. The dividends
and interest people earn by accumulating capital in a free market give them an
incentive to accumulate capital, and the high amount of capital per worker
makes workers more productive, thus increasing their wages. Every worker in a
free-market economy, even someone with no capital, gains enormously because of
the past capital accumulation of others. Just compare the standard of living of
the typical poor person in the United States today with that of a counterpart
in India, China, or most of Africa, places without a long tradition of free
markets.
The correct statement,
therefore, is not that only the fittest survive in a free market. Rather, in a
free market, the fittest—the most productive—do best. And free markets allow
more and more people to survive who wouldn’t even stand a chance in an unfree
economy.
The important question is not
whether one thinks the fit will survive and thrive better than the unfit. They
will. The important question is how the rules define “fit.”
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