Re: Unequal Pay Makes Monkeys go Ape
Paul Krugman, as debated about on Brad DeLong's Weblog (and Calpundit - Kevin Drum; and Daniel Drezner), is often focusing on how detrimental increased income inequality is. I have great feelings of sympathy for that, but rationally reject much of it. It's always been clear to me that destructive envy is an irrational emotion -- but now I'll start calling it primitive and animalistic, as well. Tom Grey Answer to question: egalitarianism, of course; the law of the jungle! PS. I wonder if others have the new problem that a simple MS Outlook Express Reply does not go to the Armchair address (so I had to copy paste)? - Original Message - From: Michael Giesbrecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 9:02 PM Subject: Unequal Pay Makes Monkeys go Ape So, can anybody tell me economic school of thought monkeys adhere to? ;-) http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/scitech/SciTechRepublish_948138.htm Unequal pay makes monkeys go ape Thursday, 18 September 2003 Monkeys, like humans, are acutely aware of injustice, which suggests that a sense of equality is an ancestral trait among primates, a study says.
Re: Unequal Pay Makes Monkeys go Ape
Quoting Michael Giesbrecht [EMAIL PROTECTED]: So, can anybody tell me economic school of thought monkeys adhere to? ;-) http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/scitech/SciTechRepublish_948138.htm Unequal pay makes monkeys go ape Thursday, 18 September 2003 Monkeys, like humans, are acutely aware of injustice, which suggests that a sense of equality is an ancestral trait among primates, a study says. In an unusual two-year experiment, animal behaviourists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, taught brown capuchin monkeys to receive tokens as a reward and to barter them for food. The monkeys were usually quite content to swap the tokens for cucumber but if the researchers gave one of the monkeys a grape, a more eagerly-sought food, the other animals would become jealous. Some of them refused to hand over their tokens. Others would still exchange their token for the cucumber but scornfully decline to eat it. cut Note that (IN THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE) the writer labels the differential trades as an instance of *injustice*. Nothing like a walloping touch of bias in science reporting, especially when comparing humans to apes. Getting *away* from that ancestral sense of equality is probably what got man out of the trees in the first place. Scornfully decline? How could the researcher or the reporter possibly know such a thing? -- Susan Hogarth [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.tribeagles.org
Re: Unequal Pay Makes Monkeys go Ape
Quoting Tigger [EMAIL PROTECTED]: PS. I wonder if others have the new problem that a simple MS Outlook Express Reply does not go to the Armchair address (so I had to copy paste)? Try 'reply all'. If you want to be very nice, you can take the original sender out of the 'To:' line and drag the list name there (from the 'cc' line) instead. -- Susan Hogarth [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.tribeagles.org
