Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore,
Riding through the night.
Soon every lupin in the land
Will be in his mighty hand
He steals them from the rich
And gives them to the poor
Mr Moore, Mr Moore, Mr Moore.
Posted on 04/20/2007 1:32:24 PM PDT by neverdem
Robin Hood took from the rich and gave to the poor. A recent study by a team of researchers headed up by University of California-San Diego political scientist James Fowler suggests that we may all have Robin Hood tendencies. Experimental economists and psychologists from around the world have been watching how people play various economic games as a way to probe the bases of human cooperation. One of the more interesting discoveries is that in economic games some people - altruistic punishers - will take fairly big hits to their winnings in order to reduce the ill-gotten gains of cheaters. Games with altruistic punishers elicit more cooperative behavior among players. In addition, other researchers have found that players will happily spend some of their own winnings in gambling games in order to reduce the "undeserved" winnings of other players.
In re-analyzing some earlier studies, Fowler and his colleagues suggested "that egalitarian motives are more important than motives for punishing non-cooperative behaviour." In other words, people are really more interested in enforcing income equality than they are in punishing cheaters. To tease out motives, Fowler and his colleagues devised a game in which there was no possibility of reciprocity or cooperation. Their hypothesis was that people would spend some of their incomes to equalize the incomes of other players.
In their game, participants (120 college students) were assigned to groups of four anonymous players. At the outset each received a randomly generated sum of money. The payoffs are shown to all the players who are then given an opportunity to give "negative" or "positive" tokens to other players. Each token cost one monetary unit. Giving a negative token to another player reduced the recipient's winnings by 3 monetary units and giving a positive token to another player increased the recipient's winnings by 3 monetary units. After each round, the anonymous group members were randomized to prevent reputation from influencing decisions. Keep in mind that choosing to cut or to boost the incomes of other players is costly and yields no material gain, so self-interested subjects should have no incentive to engage in it. So what happened?
Their latest study in the journal Nature reports, "Individuals who earned considerably more than other members of their group were heavily penalized." On the other hand, players who earned a lot less than other group members received substantial gifts. A majority of players (68 percent) chose to cut the earnings of other players at least once, 28 percent did five times or more, and some fanatic levelers (6 percent) slashed at the incomes of their richer fellows ten times or more. But the game didn't just bring out spitefulness. Perhaps even more amazingly, a majority of players (71 percent) also paid, with no expectation of gain, to increase the incomes of other participants at least once. More generous players (33 percent) did so five times or more, and some saints (10 percent) boosted other players' earnings ten times or more. The researchers note, "Most (71 percent) negative tokens were given to above-average earners in each group, whereas most (62 percent) positive tokens were targeted at below-average earners in each group."
Also, players who earned ten monetary units more than the group average received a mean of nearly 9 negative tokens. In contrast, players who earned at least ten monetary units less than the group average received a mean of only 1.6 negative tokens. The opposite was the case for those earning ten monetary units or less. They received 11 more positive tokens on average while those earning more than ten units received a mean of only 4 positive tokens. Finally, the researchers report, "On average, the bottom earner in each group spent 96 percent more on negative tokens than the top earner and the top earner spent 77 percent more on positive tokens than the bottom earner." In other words, the poor spent a good bit of their meager incomes on reducing the incomes of the rich while the rich kindly reduced their wealth to endow the poor with more resources. Interestingly, the study does not report any gender differences in behavior.
Assuming that these research findings are valid, how did this innate drive toward enforcing income equality come about? It's hard to see how an inborn drive could arise in Pleistocene hunter gatherers such that people spend their scarce resources to reduce other people's resources promotes either individual or group survival. Or is enforcing equality really all that different an activity from punishing non-cooperating cheaters? Perhaps early in human evolution, large differences in income actually correlated with cheating and thus automatically merited punishment. Another puzzle is if humans are instinctively egalitarian, how did early hierarchical civilizations in which the incomes of priests and kings were significantly higher than those of peasants come about at all? Finally, finding that humans have an innate tendency toward enforcing a norm of income equality would explain the persistent attraction of communism, progressive tax rates, the demand for universal government-supplied health care, minimum wage laws and other such destructive modern leveling ideologies and policies.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent.
Ugh. No. No. No.
He took from the government and gave to the taxpayers.
Interesting read...I have no comment of yet.
I have a mild objection to the use of the term “economic game theory.” Isn’t EGT supposed to be mathematically-provable? I mean, just because someone constructed a “game,” and got a “result” doesn’t mean that it rises to the level of EGT.
I have no doubt we’re naturally born communists. My own childhood and early adulthood backs that up especially after living in a conservative household.
The trick is getting past your “feelings” and figuring out how the world works. Growing up. Maturing.
It’s been my opinion all along that at the base of everything we look at in wonder because of the immense stupidity of it all is a lack of growing up, of moving beyond immature thoughts.
1 Corinthians 13:11
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore,
Riding through the night.
Soon every lupin in the land
Will be in his mighty hand
He steals them from the rich
And gives them to the poor
Mr Moore, Mr Moore, Mr Moore.
A game concocted by communists to prove we're all innate communists.
Bill Cosby nailed that one. He said you only become a real parent when you have more than one kid, and then all you hear for the next few years is “MINE!....MINE!....”
All about EVE and getting even [the MMORPG]
and this passes for repected science?????
Yes, the Bible says we are ALL born with sin, and being a Communist is just one.
Your and my objections to this exercise in masturbation are very well founded, even if though they diverge in origin.
“...Fowler suggests that we may all have Robin Hood tendencies. ...”
Nothing new. In the Bible, it is called coveting and greed. It leads to theft. Two of the Ten Commandments address it. Curiously, One of the Commandments that protects marriage is found in the one that also protects property against coveting.
The founding fathers of Communism like Marx added another layer of sophistication to coveting and greed: they invented class, which they then pitted against each other.
All this leads to lies, the third sin of this the Socialist Triad. The socialist lies about the justification of the coveting. We are much more advanced for we don’t just covet, we covet for a good cause— to fulfill “unmet needs”, and we don’t break into houses in the dark of night to steal what we covet, we convince government to levy a tax, use a big bureaucracy, seize from bank accounts, and only rarely employ armed agents. All perfectly legal.
Now, it is lies, coveting and theft under the color and with the patina of law. It is basic human nature writ large, on a scope and scale unheard of in human history.
And then we invented fiat money and central banking, but that grand theft is for another time.
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One question. Is this real money -— i.e. at the end of the game the players take it with them -— or is it just game tokens that mean nothing at the end of the game?
An incorrect analysis of observed results, this is no indication that the "punishers" are "communists".
People in our society forgo portions of their income to serve on juries to bring justice to thieves, murderers, rapists, burglars, etc., and they are not "communists". It is the price of living in a civil society.
One who steals money, or time, from others, is stealing a portion of their life. "Cheaters" are punished because groups of people recognize the need for common guidelines in any civil structure.
Nobody is a natural born Communist. Communist countries get that way thru force and killing millions of people.Then they have to continue to use force and kill people to stay that way. Just like Islam
“One question. Is this real money -— i.e. at the end of the game the players take it with them -— or is it just game tokens that mean nothing at the end of the game?”
Precisely the question I had. Is it real money, and do they get to keep what they win or lose?
Also, the test was done on college students. Do the same thing on a bunch of 40 year olds with mortgages, and let them keep their earnings: we’ll see what happens.
Ditto (Post 19) asks the key question. I interpreted the article to suggest that the game used play money. If that’s the case, of course most people would choose the path that they believe will make them look best, or failing that, make the whole group look best. Why not? If they used real money, and enough to be meaningful, who thinks the results would be the same? I certainly don’t.
Small children and most dumb animals are natural born thieves. They feel they should just be able to take whatever they like, and enjoy it. Humans need to mature before they reach the point where they are willing to add more to the wealth of humanity, than they try to take away.
Unfortunately, many (perhaps most) humans never mature to this point, thus their willingness to support communist regimes or vote for redistributionist policies. The vast majority are hoping to get more than they give.
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
Riding through the land
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
With his merry band
He steals from the poor
And gives to the rich
Stupid bitch!
Since the description of the game says the participants were blind and shuffled, there is no data to support this assertion in this case. In other, meaningless, games, the altruistic punisher manifests as a person known as 'the pain in the ass,' or 'that nut.' This person has decided to bring down the others rather than win. Office gossip is a good example of it.
The game suggests nothing that applies in reality. There's no point, unless the proctor has subtly imparted some sense of what's desired among the players. Were the kiddies told to play this game because we want to see what happens? In that case, fairness as a priority makes sense. Look at how justice systems have evolved over the centuries to promote it.
But the game is best studied in the real world, where actions have consequences. Communism failed everywhere it was tried. Even the most spectacularly obtuse communist eventually realizes that comrade next door neighbor is looking out for numero uno, and he'd better scam the system the same way.
I think we can take it for granted that it was funny "money" or at most "money" which was actually chips for token (I believe I saw that word) amounts of real money.Which, if true, means that this is just an opinion poll, in which people by the way they play the (meaningless) game, suggest what they would do if confronted by a wacko Korean jihadist. May have zilch to do what actually would happen in real life.
I'd give up anything for my family. I'd give up anything to help my military unit, but confiscate money from me to help people I've never met and I rebel.
The heart of conservatism is that left to their own devices, absent government coercion, people help those nearest them and everybody benefits.
That's why the family is the most important unit of a nation.
That says it all for me, and from what I read, that's without there being any work or effort involved in the game. Some people just want to bring others down
Since they were given the “money” to start with, they had no problem giving it away to the poor because they had no connection with it. If they had really earned the money, it might have been different.
End of analysis necessary.
“Robin Hood took from the rich and gave to the poor. A recent study by a team of researchers headed up by University of California-San Diego political scientist James Fowler suggests that we may all have Robin Hood tendencies. “
Uh... Communists do not do this. They take from the rich because the rich can steal it back from the poor. Then they keep the middle class from becoming rich by raising taxes because they need people to keep the infrastructure running.
Communists are thieves, plain and simple. Show me a Democrat who actually gave something to the poor, other then midnight basketball and more cops on the streets to prevent the thugs from destroying the neighborhood once they were done playing midnight basketball.
Sharpton and Jackson aren’t black. They are the pigs who are seen sitting at the farmers table playing cards in “Animal Farm.” They are common thugs hiding behind a populace who have been indoctrinated into a culture of staying on the plantation. They are the crabs who pull the other crab back into the bucket after that crab tries to climb out.
Communism is a myth. It is an ideology of thievery and corruption. The problem is our Conservative commentators won’t call it what it is because they are too afraid of losing their jobs. So instead they call them “liberals.”
I’m a liberal. Reid, Clinton, Kennedy are crooks. Big difference.
Actually Communists just killed the rich, since they understood that even if you took all their money and gave it to the poor, they would find a way to get it back.
So that they would vote HIM in!
It's kinda like 'models' that are imbedded in software that PROVES that Evolution can take place.
Yeah... ALL of them!! ;^)
Yes; you were.
I'll never know for sure.
Yes; you will.
Don't fight it - go with the flow!
Exactly! Robin Hood took from the government of the bad King John who had confiscated all the wealth of his kingdom causing starvation among the serfs. So, because of excessive taxation, Robin Hood took it back.
This erroneous description of Robin Hood has always irritated me. It’s another case of rewritten history to suit the aims of socialists.
This is BS. Pure unadulterated communist BS. Well done, but propaganda designed to pursuade nonetheless.
BS is BS no matter what form it takes.
The article speaks of "tokens" and "monetary units" and not of actual dollars or euros. We can take from that that these "monetary units" were not actual money.And what is money? Money is credit for useful behavior. As in,
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . .Money is credit which has been voluntarily passed from earner to earner, each transaction certifying that the giver credited the recipient with useful or meritorious behavior (or, in many cases, love).
A phenomenon I've also observed, in many different games. You're correct, this "study" is bogus, and geared to "prove" a preconception. Totally without a rational foundation in reality, and absolutely worthless scientifically...
the infowarrior
Oh, me too!
But I learn stuff all the time...
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