Sometimes markets work best, sometimes the state has the best solution. Yes, but I’m not part of the generation of the Cold War when the debate was all about capitalism versus communism or market versus state, right? I don’t live in that binary world. Do you think the two ideas are connected? Connected to the idea that humans are intrinsically selfish is the idea that the free market is the most efficient way to run an economy. And this is the opposite of what we’ve been told for decades, for centuries even in Western culture, and what the news tells us every day. And every single time sociologists and anthropologists find that it’s almost as if you push a reset button in people’s heads and they go back to their better selves. We’ve got more than 500 case studies of natural disasters from around the globe. I go over all this empirical evidence in my book, and I show that actually, what you see most in times of crisis is an explosion of altruism. I’m trying to redefine what the realist position is. People who think other people tend to be selfish have come to be called realists, whereas people who are more trusting are sometimes called idealists. And you’ll create exactly the kind of people that your view of human nature presupposes. So if we assume that most people deep down are selfish and cannot be trusted, then you’ll start designing your institutions around that idea. I think everything starts with your view of human nature, because what you assume about other people is often what you get out of them. Why do our assumptions about human nature matter? What’s at stake in the debate? Who did we rely on? I think that could impact a whole generation. And for decades, people will be able to say, remember 2020. ![]() We’ll all remember 2020 as an historic year. Because there’s now a whole generation growing up that will be impacted by this pandemic. So just imagine what the influence of that could be for the longer term. But you’ll find the garbage collectors and the teachers and the nurses, people who we often don’t pay very well, but turn out to be people we can’t live without. If you look at those lists, you won’t find the hedge fund managers or the marketeers or whatever. Around the globe, there are governments coming up with lists of so-called vital professions. ![]() ![]() The other thing this crisis shows very clearly is how dependent we are on certain professions. ![]() They really spread throughout a social network, even influencing people who you don’t know, who you haven’t seen. This may sound a bit cheesy, but there’s actually a lot of psychological research that shows that acts of kindness are really contagious. Whereas, if we assume that most people are cooperative and want to help, then we can actually inspire other people. If we assume that most people are fundamentally selfish, and if we design our response to this virus with that view of human nature, then we’re going to bring that out in people. Because it’s not only the virus that is contagious, but our behavior as well. I hope that the message of my book is extra relevant right now. Is this moment a fertile time for that idea?
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