the development of “market norms” promotes general levels of “trust, fairness and cooperation” with strangers (New York Times)

市場取引には信用や正直さが必要なので、
市場取引の多いところほど、
見知らぬ人に対するFairnessが大きいという話。
New York Timesは、いろいろな分野の最近の研究トピックについて書かれている記事が多いので、参考になる。


"Moral Lessons, Down Aisle 9"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/science/23tier.html

  • wide cultural variations by observing more than 2,000 people in 15 small communities participate in a two-player game, called Dictator, with a prize equal to the local pay for a day’s work
  • the Missourians on average shared more than 45 percent of the prize.
  • most of the hunter-gatherers, foragers and subsistence farmers were less inclined to share.
  • Selfishness offended the Missourians so much that they would punish the player even though it cost them money. But the members of traditional societies showed little inclination to punish others at their own expense.
  • “There are lots of norms in these small-scale societies for how to treat one another and share food,”“But these rules don’t apply in unusual situations when you don’t know anything about the kinship or status of the other person. You don’t feel the same sense of responsibility, and you act more out of self-interest.”
  • people in small communities like the Hadza camp (population about 50) were less willing to inflict punishment than people in larger communities like Hamilton (about 1,800). That makes practical sense: the more strangers there are, the more need to keep them from exploiting one another.
  • the strongest predictor was the community’s level of “market integration,” which was measured by the percentage of the diet that was purchased. The people who got all or most of their food by hunting, fishing, foraging or growing it themselves were less inclined to share a prize equally.
  • the development of “market norms” promotes general levels of “trust, fairness and cooperation” with strangers.
  • “Markets don’t work very efficiently if everyone acts selfishly and believes everyone else will do the same,” Dr. Henrich says. “You end up with high transaction costs because you have to have all these protections to cover every loophole. But if you develop norms to be fair and trusting with people beyond your social sphere, that provides enormous economic advantages and allows a society to grow.”
  • One such dynamic society was ancient Greece, whose ethical norms spread as it grew, widely, and perhaps it was no coincidence that those ethics were developed by philosophers debating alongside merchants at the central marketplace called the agora.