In pondering “market fundamentalism,” David Sloan Wilson dedicates a post to defining a concept of fundamentalism which, I trust, will be soon wielded against free-market folks.

Wilson asks the reader to envision a 2×2 grid with “good for self” and “good for others” on the axes, leaving spaces four spaces:  good for self and good for others, good for self and bad for others, and so on, and speculates that

(using my) 2×2 table to code the way that words such as “market” and “regulation” are used by market fundamentalists (will almost assuredly lead to) the win-lose and lose-win boxes …largely unfilled

Even though it might, in some circumstances, lead to reasonable rules of thumb, from an evolutionary perspective, this is supposed to be bad.

…the most pressing problems of modern live require an accurate description of the real works so that the inevitable tradeoffs can be managed for the common good.  Fundamentalism interferes with this enterprise and needs to be recognized for what it is.

I wonder what Wilson would say if we replaced the words “market” and “regulation” with “free speech” and “censorship.”  Does “free speech fundamentalism” “interfere” with managing social tradeoffs?  The standard answer is not that all speech is beneficial, or, at least, harmless, but, rather, that we can’t trust the censors to do the job properly.  Where does that answer fit in the box?

Apparently David Sloan Wilson is one of a long series of non-economist academics who think they understand economics, but really don’t. The link is to the fifth of a series of posts contrasting evolutionary theory with a version of economic theory that few economists actually espouse.

…the metaphor of the invisible hand has represented the idea that unrestrained self-interest automatically enhances the common good, which is the foundation of laissez-faire economic philosophy.

No, not “unrestrained”. Most emphatically restrained, by respect for property rights (no theft) and the prohibition on fraud.

The invisible hand metaphor shows that, save for certain situations which economists have devoted extensive time and effort cataloging, respect for property rights and a prohibition on fraud is pretty much all that is needed.

An example will bring [the idea of group selection in the apparent face of individually costly behaviors] to life. When a honeybee colony runs low on honey, it behaves as if it is hungry, sending more workers to the fields to look for flowers. Yet, no individual bee is hungry. Instead, colony hunger is orchestrated by a social interaction between two work forces. When a foraging bee returns to the hive with her load of nectar, she waits until she can regurgitate it to another bee that will store it. The amount of time that she must wait provides an accurate index of the colony’s food supply. If not much food is coming in and most cells of the honeycomb are empty, then the storers are lined up at the hive entrance like taxicabs outside an airport and foragers can unload their nectar immediately. If lots of food is coming in and storers must search a long time to find an empty cell, then it is the returning foragers who must wait in line. Honeybees have been programmed by natural selection to follow a particular rule that causes foragers to remain foraging and to recruit more workers to forage whenever their waiting time is short. Brilliant!

Brilliant indeed! And remarkably similar to the invisible hand guiding entrepreneurs to the most needed tasks by restricting the supply of, say, restaurants, by requiring potential restauranteurs to pay for their inputs and earn profits by being able to sell meals for more than the cost of the inputs.

Wilson’s series touch on a bunch of interesting economic topics.  But his criticisms of the discipline of Economics sounds like an English professor commenting on nuclear physics.