Excerpt:
Free-enterprising, impersonal markets may seem cutthroat and mean-spirited, but a provocative new study says markets have been a force for good over the last 10,000 years, helping to drive the evolution of more trusting and co-operative societies.
“We live in a much kinder, gentler world than most humans have lived in,” says anthropologist Joe Henrich of the University of British Columbia, lead author of the study that helps topple long-held stereotypes.
The finding, reported in the journal Science, suggests people trust and play fair with strangers because markets and religion — not some deep psychological instinct inherited from our dim tribal past — have helped shape our neural circuitry over the eons.
The 13 researchers on Mr. Henrich’s international team spent time — and played clever psychological games — with more than 2,000 people in 15 different societies.
[…]The study found that the likelihood that people “played fair” with strangers increased with the degree people were integrated into markets and participated in a world religion.
[…]The study also suggests world religions, such as Christianity and Islam, were a potent evolutionary force, favouring the growth of complex societies by reinforcing fairness and trust.
Science is the number one peer-reviewed journal in the world. Capitalism, for lack of a better word, is good. Capitalism works.
WINTERY KNIGHT 