ABSTRACT
In this chapter we will examine a possible biological basis for economic behavior, with particular attention to the origin of the concept of fairness. By fairness I mean the various sentiments humans have about equity, justice, or propriety in their commercial dealings with one another. In examining this question, we will be moving the argument to still a third logical level. We will no longer be engaged in predicting the new economic behavior that might take place under structurally changed conditions, nor will we be drawing the clear mathematical consequences of testable premises about the behavior of machines and machinelike systems. In this chapter, we will be raising an entirely different kind of question. We will be asking about the wet ingredients of the system: the organisms, the human beings. There are four versions of the question: (1) Can humans behave in the ways required by job-market systems? (2) Would they like behaving in these ways if they were rewarded for doing so? (3) Would they spontaneously want to behave in these ways if the opportunity were given them, and they were at least not punished for doing so? (4) Finally, would they find such behavior self-rewarding?
