Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth Read Free Page B

Book: Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth Read Free
Author: Margaret Atwood
Tags: nonfiction, History, Business & Economics, Philosophy, Writing
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making of fine bigger-than and better-than distinctions when the edible goodies are being divided up verges on the unnerving. In 2003, Nature magazine published an account of experiments conducted by Frans de Waal, of Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Center, and anthropologist Sarah F. Brosnan. To begin with, they taught capuchin monkeys to trade pebbles for slices of cucumber. Then they gave one of the monkeys a grape — viewed by the monkeys as more valuable — for the very same pebble. “You can do it twenty-five times in a row, and they are perfectly happy getting cucumber slices,” said de Waal. But if a grape was substituted — thus unfairly giving one monkey a better pay packet for work of equal value — the cucumber-receivers got upset, began throwing pebbles out of the cage, and eventually refused to co-operate. And the majority of the monkeys got so angry if one of them was given a grape for no reason that some of them stopped eating. It was a monkey picket line: they might as well have been carrying signs that read, Management Grape Dispensing Unfair! The trading was taught, as was the pebble / cucumber rate of exchange, but the outrage appeared to be spontaneous.
    Keith Chen, a researcher at the Yale School of Management, also worked with capuchin monkeys. He found he could train them to use coinlike metal disks as currency, coins being the pebble idea, only shiny. “My underlying goal is to determine what aspects of our economic behaviour are innate, deep in the brain, and conserved over time,” said Chen. But why stop at obviously economic behaviour such as trading? Among social animals that need to co-operate in order to achieve common goals such as — for capuchins — killing and eating squirrels, and — for chimpanzees — killing and eating bush babies, there has to be a sharing-out of the results of group effort that is recognized as fair by the sharers. Fair is not the same as equal: for instance, would it be fair for the plate of a ninety-pound ten-year-old to contain exactly the same amount of food as that of a two-hundred-pound six-foot-sixer? Among the hunting chimpanzees, the one strongest in personality or physique typically gets more, but all who have joined in the hunt receive at least something, which is pretty much the same principle used by Genghis Khan for doling out the results of his conquering, slaughtering, and looting activities among his allies and troops. Those who express surprise at winning political parties for their porkbarrelling and favouritism might keep this in mind: if you don’t share out, those folks won’t be there when you need them. At the very least, you have to give them some cucumber slices, and avoid giving grapes to their rivals.
    If fairness is completely lacking, the members of the chimpanzee group will rebel; at the very least, they’re unlikely to join in a group hunt next time. To the extent that they’re social animals interacting in complex communities in which status is important, primates are highly conscious of what’s fitting for each member and what, on the other hand, constitutes uppity counter-jumping. The snobbish top-of-the-pecking-order Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice , with her exquisitely calibrated sense of rank, has nothing on capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees.
    Chimpanzees don’t limit their trading to food; they regularly engage in mutually beneficial favour-trading, or reciprocal altruism. Chimp A helps Chimp B to gang up on Chimp C and expects to be helped in turn. If Chimp B then doesn’t come through at the time of Chimp A’s need, Chimp A is enraged and throws a screaming temper tantrum. There seems to be a kind of inner ledger involved: Chimp A senses perfectly well what Chimp B owes him, and Chimp B senses it too. Debts of honour exist among chimpanzees, it appears. It’s the same mechanism that’s at work in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather : a man whose

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