The Real Reason People Can't Stand Free Markets

If you have argued in favour of market-based solutions in some area of society which is under government control, you may have received objections along the lines of ‘I don’t believe the market can handle X’, ‘companies only look at the short term’ or ‘companies are motivated by greed and cannot be trusted to handle X’, where X might be healthcare, care for the elderly or the environment. Why is that? 

As I demonstrate in my essay ‘Evolutionary Economics’, based on my book ‘Evolution and Social Order’, at its heart, the reason is a fundamental mismatch between our hunter-gatherer brain and the market economy. Up until a relative blink of an eye, humans lived as hunter-gatherers for close to 2 million years, some 70,000–80,000 generations, successions of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. For at least 150,000 years, our ancestors were exactly like us and lived in groups of 20–70, within tribes, whole countries, of about 500.