Ernst Fehr of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics conducted a game. The game was called "The Public Goods Game." It went like this: teams were formed, with each team having 4 individuals. Each individual got $10 house money. The game had 10 rounds of play. In each and every round each individual could anonymously contribute any part, $0-$10, to a kitty for a proposed "group project." At the conclusion of each and every round the house doubled the total contributions to the kitty of each group and then divided that sum equally among the 4 players in their respective groups.
What Fehr and his colleagues found was that individuals generally contributed $5 in the first round. This was a safe bet, halfway between full cooperation and full defection. As the game progressed through the 9 remaining rounds, cooperation among the 4 members on each team disintegrated until no one threw any money into the kitty. Why did cooperation dwindle?
If each player throws in the full $10, there is $40 in the kitty, which is then doubled by the house, for a total of $80 in the kitty. That $80 is then split equally among the 4 players, which gives each player $20, a $10 dollar (100%) increase over their initial investment. However, if one of the four team members defects and withholds entirely from making a contribution, the kitty at the end of the round is $30, doubled by the house to $60, which is then divided equally among the 4 players, producing $15 per person. Thus, the defector gets $15 dollars without pitching in anything at all. He or she keeps the $10 stake, adds $15 from the round for a total of $25. All the others wind up with only $15. It pays to be a free-rider, but that one individual can disrupt the common good.
The game was then modified in the following manner. Anonymity was removed. After each round participants were told exactly how much each of the teammates had thrown in. Furthermore, sanctions were introduced. It cost a player $1 to sanction another player, but the sanctioned player was fined $3 for their non-cooperative behavior. That money, $4 in total, was removed from the kitty. Defections stopped almost instantly and by the 10th round members were matching the contributions of their teammates.
The Public Goods Game and versions of it have been played under supervision of Fehr’s colleagues in locations around the world and the findings have been recounted in Peter Turchin’s excellent book, War and Peace and War: The Life Cycle of Imperial Nations. What the game reveals is that society consists of several types of people. About 20-30% of a population are the self-interested, rational agents. Turchin calls them "the knaves." (Are these the same folks whom John Dean refers to as the Authoritarian Type in Conservatives Without Conscience?) Knaves will never contribute to the common good unless forced to by sanctions. Opposite the knaves are what Turchin refers to as the "the saints." These people continue to contribute to the common good even when its obvious that cooperation among the group has broken down. Saints make up about 20-30% of a population, just like the knaves. The clear plurality-majority of people falls into the third category. These people are conditional cooperators. They prefer to contribute to the kitty but without sanctions for free riders in place they will chose to withdraw from cooperation until the free riders are punished. Turchin calls this group "the moralists." About 40-60% of a population are moralists.
The general result of these games is always the same. Many of "the moralists" behave in a pro-social manner despite the fact that sanctioning another member costs them money. The kindly "saints" are completely ineffectual in preventing the free-riders from disrupting the cooperative impulse of the team. In other words, the moralists are necessary in order to counter the knaves. This is not to say that the moralists are high-minded or ethically superior people. They may just have a stronger desire to protect group "norms." They may also derive disproportional "pleasure" from depriving the free-loaders of their ill-gotten gains. They’re not warm and cuddly people. Still, they’re the ones who re-establish group cooperation.
What’s the point of all this? The notion of cooperation among non-related individuals has fallen into disrepute. Economists like Milton Friedman and the so-called Chicago School tout "the rational agent" as the sine qua non of economic behavior. The rational agent thinks only of self-interest. Greed is good, according to the Chicago School. The Invisible Hand of the marketplace may inadvertently steer the self-interested actor in the general direction of the common good, though not through any conscious effort by the agent. Any efforts to coerce the rational agent into altruistic action will be fought off and rejected.
What Fehr and his group, along with the Neuro-economists, are showing through empirical study is that people are hard-wired to cooperate. Self-interest is not a determined impulse in human beings. What people really have hard wired into their brains is a sense of justice and fair play, a capacity for nuturance of others –even non-kin others, a keen eye for in-group norms, and, surprisingly, a self-organizing tendency to make hierarchies.
Fehr’s work, as well as that of many others in many other disciplines, gives the lie to the entire Conservative Agenda which takes self-righteous self-interest as its core value. The newly elected Congress is not only constitutionally required to establish oversight of the Executive, they are compelled to by the "better angels" of pro-social human behavior. While the elected officials may not want to explicitly attack the philosophical underpinnings of Conservatism, those whom the Democratic Party sends out to the talk shows should take up the fight against what has been a ruinous embrace of rampant greed (take your pick of the hundreds of examples from the past 6 years). George Bush and Conservatism have not failed, as some have pronounced. Quite the opposite. What we all saw from the Administration during Katrina and the Schiavo debacle represent the embodiment of the Conservative Agenda. As such, those episodes and the disgusting war profiteering that has taken place represent Conservative success. Begone with it! Bring back the Cooperative Spirit among the people (and god - and all of us - help the Democrats in Congress keep the Republicans from trying to subvert it there)!