What are some criticisms of evolutionary psychology or left wing social and economic policy

Great Debates
41

On the subject of incentives, I agree with you and that is a big part of why I am a left winger.

Corporations do a lot of good (they can drive up wealth and productivity, and with it quality of life). But their incentive is to only pursue short term profits which is good in some situations, but not in others. Some of the advances we need as a society are counterproductive or irrelevant to the immediate profit motive. I do not find the profit motive immoral or evil, however I do not think that an unmanipulated profit motive alone is enough incentive to solve humanities biggest problems. Things like functioning infrastructure, basic science, quality education, etc benefit society as a whole by increasing productivity. However there is sometimes little profit motive in pursing these things, which is why you need the public sector to step in and manipulate the market. Pursuing profits works with consumer electronics, but not so much with energy since sustainable alternatives require large amounts of R&D before they are cost competitive with polluting energies like coal. Wind power is now cost competitive with coal (and as a result grows at 20%+ a year in the US & China because the profit motive is there now). However it took decades of research, largely from the public sector, for wind power to become cost competitive with coal. The profit motive alone would’ve meant 2009 would be a world where wind power was still 50 cents a KWH instead of the $0.03-0.06 it is now.

It is cheaper to dump toxins in a lake or the air than to purify them. And slave labor is cheaper than a living wage. And monopolies work better than competition. Outsourcing all the negatives of capitalism onto things other than the producers is highly incentivized. So unless the market is regulated with positive and negative incentives to force industry to work in humanities best interests, capitalistic democracy is doomed to descend into oligarchy and plutocracy with a handful of well off people and tons of struggling people. There are no wealthy, developed democracies with unregulated capitalism.

So on the issue of incentives, I agree with you that incentives motivate behavior. But as an example one of the things Obama has called for is more tax credits to small businesses and to R&D, both of which I agree with since that increases incentives.

As far as information, I agree and the internet has opened up the prospects and potential of decentralized information. My limited understanding is that planned markets tend to fail. However there are issues like R&D where the public sector can and does do good. Public R&D into science and medicine is not a bad thing. Talent is talent. Some of the smartest people I knew worked in the public sector (they were professors of science at public 4 year universities). Most of their incomes came from the public sector in one way or another since public tertiary education is largely funded via public funds. I don’t support centrally planned market economies, but I do support public incentives to manipulate R&D and industry to work in the best interest of humanity.

With your example of France and how people fight for the spoils, the fact is that GDP growth in France vs. the US are fairly similar. I think you are Canadian, which is even to the left of the US, but I believe the US has one of the most right wing economic policies of developed nations. So even with the stronger regulations and welfare system in France, their GDP growth is similar to the US’s with our weaker regulations and welfare.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&idim=country:FRA&q=France+GDP+growth#met=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&idim=country:FRA:USA

I think you are arguing about a more theoretical version of socialism, more to the left of me. I am a socialist, but I’m more of a left winger by European or New England standards than an out and out Soviet communist. I am for market economics, but I think there needs to be regulation to force the market to act in a way that is humane, sustainable and improves quality of life.

42

I don’t think profit motive is bad. However to a degree an economy is zero sum and even though the pie is growing, there is a limited pie there. And money that goes to corporate profits is money that is not going to other consumers or expenses.

The argument supply siders make is that making it easier for producers to produce results in job growth. However where was the job growth when corporate profits and the incomes of the top 1% skyrocketed while their tax rates were cut in half? Even though the economy grows each year, it is still finite at roughly 15 trillion. And you need public revenue to keep the system going. So if supply side economics does not work, then I would be in favor of higher taxes on producers and the wealthy since state and federal governments are undergoing severe budget shortfalls.

Outsourcing to China is not as cheap as it sounds. When oil was $150/barrel, it became cheaper to manufacture in the US than in China because the cost of transportation. I believe outsourcing saves roughly 1-10% in manufacturing costs, and that number is declining every year because of currency changes (USD is going down while the yuan is going up), higher Chinese wages, higher natural resource costs, higher management & transportation costs, etc. Within a few years China will probably not be cost competitive anymore.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_24/b4135054963557.htm

http://www.globalenvision.org/2009/06/12/chinas-not-so-cheap-anymore

Outsourcing to mainland China has several “hidden costs” related to rising labor and currency rates, the report reveals. In the last three years, the yuan has gained ground on the weakened U.S. dollar and factory workers wages are going up. This translates to a drop in the average price gap between China and U.S.-manufactured products — from 22 percent to 5.5 percent.

And when you add in the costs that come with producing goods halfway around the world — storage fees, shipping delays and the price to repair or replace high-tech product parts — the ultimate savings are minimal. “A couple of years ago, outsourcing to China was a no-brainer,” says Stephen T. Maurer, director of AlixPartners, the firm that led the study. Now, he tells BusinessWeek, manufacturers are thinking twice about where to send their business.

One of the reasons China is becoming less competitive with the US is because of labor unrest and environmental unrest. People are demanding better environmental protections and more labor protections (higher wages, better treatment). These drive up the cost of Chinese products. Quality control costs are also (from what I know) going up due to a variety of toxins.

So my argument as a left winger is why is it the US’s responsibility to lower our environmental, quality and labor standards to match China? Why not encourage China to raise its standards to be cost competitive with us?

What are the negative effects of implementing labor, civil and environmental standards in free trade agreements like NAFTA or CAFTA? Would that trap people in developing nations in poverty by pricing them out of the market?

43

Maybe I wasn’t clear? My suggestion is to penalize American companies that ship jobs overseas through (a) fines or (b) higher taxes . On the flip side, I’d like to see tax breaks given to companies who keep jobs in America. I also don’t buy your argument that Americans are not competitive. What, precisely, makes Vishal from Pubjab more competitive in communicating with American customers than <drumroll> an American? When I call an American company for help, I should get someone who speaks the language and can communicate effectively in that language without mangling it. <shrug>

44

Qualitatively they are different. So, no, they aren’t equal. I look at automation as an innovative way for a company to cut production costs.

I’m OK with imports and exports. Isn’t the U.S a net exporter anyway? Corporations shutter plants leaving States and Federal agencies stuck with issuing protracted unemployment checks. This is a strain on you and me. Most of these corporations close a plant only to open another in Mexico for the sole purpose of training foreigners to do the job cheaper, dirtier, and with less regulation.

45

USA has a trade deficit with the world. However, the USA is a net exporter of some things, like food (wheat, corn).

LOL… it’s ultimately the consumers with their wallets that choose the products made with cheaper labor and less regulation.

Let’s play your scenario out in different ways, and see where it would lead.

Company U makes socks. All USA labor and raw materials. The USA workers have higher minimum wages, and possibly more benefits. All this is reflected in the price and socks cost $5.00.

Company M makes socks in Mexico. Cheaper foreign labor and raw materials. Socks cost 99 cents.

If USA socks and Mexico socks were both on the shelves at stores, most consumers would pick the 99 cent socks. They buy on price. Sure, many are patriotic but most aren’t patriotic enough to pay extra for it.

If Company U sticks to its principles of maintaining a USA manufacturing line, they will go out of business. (See various examples of textile, steel, and furniture makers over the last 30 years.)

Now, let’s say a government regulation was passed that prevented any USA company from outsourcing to Mexico or any country. Does that solve everything?

Nope. Because now the consumers will prefer to buy cheap socks from foreign companies based in the foreign land. They now want to buy socks from China Inc. for example.

If Congress passes a law (or tariff) or any kind of protectionist policy to keep out China Inc, the consumers will complain to Congress that they feel cheated out of the freedom to buy the cheapest product available. The consumer will explain that it is not their problem that Company U can’t make socks as cheaply as China Inc. They just want cheap socks!

If the government insists on maintaining the trade protections, you get weird scenarios where some USA citizens will secretly smuggle in China Inc socks and sell them on ebay. Or some USA citizens will travel to China and buy a bulk supply while they are there. Then they brag about the “deals” on some coupon-clipping web discussion forum! (The “socks” are not the best example for this scenario but you can insert whatever high-dollar item makes sense, such as cameras or laptops.)

Psychologically, people just don’t give a shit about American jobs. That’s just lip service.

At this point, we cue up the common chant, “it’s a race to the bottom!”

Well maybe. My question is how do we ask 300 million American consumers NOT to focus on their wallet WHICH LEADS TO the so-called race to the bottom?

You can’t just wave a magic wand and pass government laws expecting obedient Americans to comply. Americans crave a deal for their purchases and will exploit every loophole so they don’t feel cheated into mandatory USA-made purchases.

46

You are assuming US products are 5x more expensive than Mexican products, which isn’t true. Like the study I showed earlier, when comparing US vs. Chinese manufacturing, the savings amount to 5.5%, and are likely even lower due to variables like higher transportation and inventory costs.

This argument that outsourcing will let you make for $10 what it would cost $60 to make in the US is not true. At best, if it costs $100 to make it in the US it will cost (when all is said and done) $90-98 to make it in China. You save on labor, but labor is a small cost of manufacturing. You still have management, raw materials, machinery, transportation, inventory, etc many of which tend to cost the same or more than in the US.

A poll in 2007 about IT outsourcing found it results in minimal savings 3x more than it results in large savings (45% vs 15%). And that is IT, which can be labor intensive.

http://blogs.cioinsight.com/research_central/content001/outsourcing/outsourcing_what_savings.html

Also keep in mind that China artificially keeps their currency low. So for all the talk of free markets, if China were not using leverage to keep their currency low they wouldn’t be cost competitive.

So if you took away tax credits for companies that outsourced and gave them to US companies, and you tried to get China to stop manipulating it’s currency, that alone should make US products cheaper than Chinese.

Because of the higher cost in China, some producers are outsourcing to Mexico instead, but Mexico is not China. It has 1/13 the population for one thing. For another, they have a drug war going on. Mexico can’t replace China as the one stop manufacturing plant of the US.

I buy a specialty toothpaste online. It costs $6.49 if it is made in China, and the version made in the US costs $6.99. I buy the US version. Why? Partly to help create US jobs but also because quality control issues in China bother me. So I am willing to spend the extra 8% on a higher quality US made product vs. a Chinese product that may have quality control issues. It is worth the $0.50 I pay. I also shopped at Kroger when I was in college instead of Marsh. Why? Because Kroger has a union and as a result they have higher wages for their employees. The products cost the same at the 2 stores.

There seems to be a mentality that outsourcing saves tons of money and that labor is the biggest/only factor in production costs. The reality is savings are minor because labor is a small part of the equation. Currency exchange rates, raw material costs, taxes, energy, communications, environmental policy, transportation, management, inventory, etc all come into play.

You also seem to be assuming that if products were made with higher labor and environmental policies, it would break the bank. I don’t see any reason to believe that. Why would it add more than 1-3% to the final cost of a product? I read that for every extra $1 in wages and benefits that goes to wal-marts low wage workforce, it would cost an extra 0.5% in products. So socks that cost $1.99 would cost $2.03 if you gave an extra $2 in wages and benefits to the low wage workforce. How is that breaking the bank?

You are also neglecting the negative impact of the race to the bottom. More job insecurity and a worse environment (which results in worse health and lower productivity).

China is ‘racing to the bottom’ in part because their environmental laws suck. But as a result tons of people in China are getting cancer and other diseases, which counterbalance the savings.

You don’t factor that into your equation. If I save $2 by buying a $100 product made with poor labor and environmental standards, what are the negative impacts to physical and psychological health (and how much money is lost from that) because of that $2?

Pollution in China might be costing them $200 billion a year.

The fact that those of us in the US save 1-3% by having lower environmental standards in China doesn’t mean that money is free. That 1-3% in savings to us comes from adding 1-3% (or more) in expenses to the Chinese who have higher rates of health problems. Lower environmental and labor standards is not ‘creating free wealth’. You are taking away physical and psychological health from other people with those savings. We are basically shifting expenses from the US onto China and using corporations to do it (we get lower cost products, they get more health spending and lower productivity).

Also what about the negative impact of job insecurity? Since we have a consumption driven economy, wouldn’t this ‘race to the bottom’ result in more cautious spending habits (due to higher job insecurity) which would shrink GDP?

You aren’t factoring these things into your post.

47

This is not an attack on free market economics, this is an attempt to show that one of the basic assumptions of classical economics is incorrect. That goes all the way from Friedman to Keynes to Marx. That assumption is that the economic actor is making decisions based on his own self interest given the available data. That turns out not to be true. In fact, experiments demonstrate that people do things that make no sense under this assumption.
It impacts free market economics to the extent that your policy prescriptions are based on the assumption that people always make rational decisions in their best interests.

There were no negotiations. The students were asked to write down the maximum price they would pay for a mug and the minimum price they would sell the mug for. This was given to the professor, not exposed to other students. This is not a price they told a prospective purchaser/seller. I assume that when you negotiate to buy a car you decide ahead of time what is the maximum price you are willing to pay, right? That is the price we’re discussing here. I think that is a good indicator of the value of the car to you. Of course you would be happy to pay less. I’m not saying that this value is one which will get you the car, it might be unrealistic. Which is exactly the point.

I used that term because I don’t think the Birch Society exists anymore. However it is curious how you and Sam both started yammering about the evils of Communism to me (who agrees totally) when I was talking about something entirely different.

Organ donation rates in Denmark (opt-in) are 4.25%. In Belgium they are 98% (opt-out.) You think this is the result of filling out a simple piece of paper? (I opted in in California, I forgot to do it when I renewed but did it on the DMV website in under two minutes.) And you didn’t respond to the 401 K situation, where there is a significant direct financial advantage to opting in. In a study quoted in Thaler and Sunstein on page 111 of Nudge, 401 K participation rates went from 20% after 3 months of employment and 65% after 36 months in an opt-in situation to 90% and 98% in an opt-out situation. In fact the power if defaults is so great that when an opt-out signup with a default of 2% of income saves (vs. 6% getting matched) was instituted, money into the system actually went down as people went with the default. Please let me know why your rational economic actor would do that.

We are not talking about how accurate the valuation of the mugs were. We are talking about how the valuation differs between those with the mugs and those without the mugs. In fact the average value for the sellers fluctuated from about $2.00 to about $2.75 over 4 trials in the data we use for our class. (Versus about $1 for buyers.) Why would the knowledge of how much a mug is worth in a store change so much over a pretty uniform population of students if it is not an effect of ownership. (And, for the nth time, there were no negotiations.) I have no argument with your explanation of how The Price is Right works, but if you think it is at all relevant, you don’t understand either the experiment or the effect.

Here is the wiki entry on loss aversion, which explains the endowment effect, for those who are interested in reading more.

48

Have you ever looked at the book ‘predictably irrational’?

49

I think the two are mostly unrelated. I believe that my belief in natural selection and evolution makes me more prone to believing that we humans are responsible to helping each other (since there is no plan or designer, we have to take care of each other), which may push my economic and social beliefs to the left. But by and large they are unrelated.

I brought up EP and left wing economics/social policy in the same post because I feel those beliefs are very central to my worldview.

50

A few years ago, I priced out contracted manufacturing costs for an electronic device I was making. For quantities of 200,000 the costs including plastic injection molding, pc board chips, plus several dozen steps of final assembly, the manufacturing cost in China was indeed 4x cheaper even if you factor in transportation costs. (Of course, the rising price of oil can change the equation.)

When my business partners looked into the global options for manufacturing ourselves, that’s when we truly grasped the reason why every toy at Wal-Mart and all clothes at the mall are made in Asia.

It wouldn’t matter if they let their currency float. That’s a constant red herring. China government could simply accomplish much of the same discount by reduced taxes, tax rebates, or more subsidies to the manufacturers.

When you focus on the “yuan”, you focus on the *labels *of trade policy instead of focusing on their big picture goals. If USA convinces China to revalue the yuan, that’s a false victory. China has dozens of other financial manipulations that accomplishes much the same thing. That’s because their big picture goals have not changed.

There is no “mentality” about it. Thousands of business people and companies did the same type of cost analysis my business partners did and came to the same conclusion.

I know all about the negatives.

What you didn’t answer is how to prevent the CONSUMERS from chasing the low price. It’s not the corporations that cause this, it’s the consumers. If you had a corporation that stuck the patriotic principles, then the consumers would buy from somewhere else cheaper. The patriotic corporation would not survive.

Americans have a pathological desire to get their products for the cheapest price, period. Even way back during the American Revolution, American colonists were smuggling items into the states to bypass England’s higher-taxed, higher-priced finished products. The American colonists certainly could have “played by the rules” so that England’s standard-of-living could remain high. It’s the same argument repeated again.

51

Your experiment doesn’t show anything of the sort. It makes perfect sense that buyers and sellers would have different initial ideas about price, in the absence of information about the market.

It is in the seller’s best interest to set a price that is as high as they can get. It is in the buyer’s best interest to set a price that is as low as they can get. This is a truism, which your experiment demonstrated but which was never in any doubt in the first place.

Are you claiming that your experiment showed that either sellers or buyers are acting against their own best interest? In what imaginable way is this the case?

Which is exactly what point?

Classical economics teaches that buyers want to pay as little as possible, and sellers want to get as much as possible. How exactly do you believe this experiment disproves this?

It is not irrational, in the absence of information about demand, to set a price that is as high as possible. In fact, it is nearly unavoidable. The notion that this disproves free market economics is bizarre. It doesn’t do anything even remotely like that.

Yes. You even give an example of how that works -

You forgot, however, you remembered later and went to the website. That is to say, you were willing to incur the opportunity cost (the amortized cost of your ISP, for instance, as well as the effort to find the website). Someone who was not so willing, and who also forgot, would not therefore be a donor. In Belgium, however, the default is donation. Therefore, those who do not incur the opportunity costs of opting out become donors, willy-nilly.

I understand the experiment and the effect perfectly. But it doesn’t come within a hundred miles of disproving anything about classical economics.

[ul][li]The actions of the students were not against their own best interests, []were completely explicable in terms of classical economics, and []demonstrated (as if any further proof were necessary) one of the driving forces behind the free market as understood by everybody from Karl Marx to the lowliest rug-seller in the streets of Baghdad.[/ul] Apart from that, it is fine. [/li]
My son brought me a scarf from Kuwait. (It’s gorgeous, and really warm. And it goes with my good top coat, as well as the jacket I use when I go out walking. My son has excellent taste. :D) But he told the whole involved story of how he went shopping for it. He looked at several, and the merchant offered him a price that was far more than twice what he wound up paying for it. Are you claiming that this is disproof of how the free market works, because the initial offer was so high? Please keep in mind that the initial offer was before any negotiations occurred.

Regards,
Shodan

52

I agree with Voyager that behavioral economics shows this kind of behavior in individuals. Cass Sunnstein’s point about the effect of ‘nudges’ is true - if you set the default such that an employer witholds savings automatically, and you make the employee take positive steps to cancel the savings, you’ll find that a lot more people save. Given that a very large change in behavior can be triggered by a relatively small and easy to undo thing, it doesn’t seem compatible with a vision of the public as purely rational economic actors.

You can already see evidence of this with income tax witholding. Does anyone dispute that there would be a lot more opposition to taxation if all the people were forced to cut cheques for thousands of dollars at the end of every year and send it to the government? Having the money come off your cheque automatically should not make any difference, because the amount of money is the same. But it most definitely does.

However, the real question is how much influence such effects have on the market. It seems to me that in the vast majority of cases, the market DOES behave ‘rationally’, and products do get priced efficiently. The other question is how much the behavior of individuals affects the aggregate behavior of an entire economic cohort. Do the behavioral changes average out at an aggregate level?

For all the noise the supposed ‘failures’ of capitalism make in the media, we should not forget that we are all surrounded by goods and services that are the result of the workings of a very rational marketplace. We also should not lose sight of the fact that the countries with the freest markets also tend to be the ones with the highest levels of productivity and the highest overall standards of living.

53

You are basing your argument on the assumption that outsourcing results in massive savings. Maybe in your case it did. But in many other cases it does not.

He makes curling irons that cost $130-170. The extra manufacturing cost to produce them in the US is $2.50 per unit. But he feels even that cost will go down as he will have fewer legal bills to fight Chinese counterfeits, and the cost of raw materials will go down due to bulk negotiations. I don’t know what the final result will be, but chances are it will cost 1% or less (less than $1.50 per unit) to produce his items in the US instead of China.

Shipping costs have and will continue to cut into the wage advantage of low-cost producers such as China and Vietnam, especially in inexpensive items that have a high freight cost relative to their final sale price.
An example the authors provide is Chinese steel. Only an hour and a half of labour goes into every tonne of steel. So cheap labour doesn’t get you very far. On the other hand, it costs US$90 to ship a tonne of steel sheets from China to the US. So while it may still cost more to make that steel in America, American steel becomes very competitive for domestic consumption.

How do you get Americans to stop chasing the best deals? I don’t see how a 1% savings is going to make a huge difference in purchasing choices. But on top of that you mandate that foreign countries have a base level of labor, environmental and quality control standards which will increase the cost of production overseas. It’ll make the US more cost competitive while not resulting in hundreds of billions of economic damage overseas.

Labor is pretty much the biggest appeal of manufacturing in China (since most other expenses are fixed or higher when outsourcing). But labor is willing to work for $8/hr in the US., Chinese labor works for $2/hr or so and Chinese wages double every few years. The cost savings are not that great anymore of China vs. the US.

Your argument is based on the assumption that outsourcing reliably results in massive savings, and tariffs will destroy the economy. My point is that the savings from outsourcing are minor (the study I posted earlier showed a 5.5%, and that was before other higher expenses were taken into consideration). The curling iron example is a 1-2% savings. These are not groundbreaking issues. You encourage labor, QC and environmental standards in our trade agreements and you manipulate the tax code (remove tax cuts for outsourcing, add them in for domestic production) and that alone will make US product the same price or cheaper than Chinese products. It is not an either-or proposition. You can have US made products that are as cheap or cheaper than Chinese, or at the very least cost competitive to within a few percentage points.

54

In the market for goods and services, I agree that it works quite well, since many of the players are acting for others and thus behaving more rationally than when people act for themselves. However, in the stock market, etc., I think these principles explain bubbles. It is a truism that when Joe the Barber starts making stock picks, it is time for professionals to get out.
The importance of this research, besides the nudges, is to address the idea that pure libertarianism works because only morally deficient people don’t make rational choices.

55

Have it. My daughter, who is doing research in this area, is in Ariely’s e-mail list. That is probably the best of the lot for popular consumption, but the actual papers are a bit clearer in my opinion.

56

Outsourcing has become a fad like everything else, and some companies do outsource in order to jump on the bandwagon when it doesn’t make economic sense, or where the downside is not considered. (Think of Dell and the Indian customer service disaster.) But any market is messy, and examples like this don’t mean that there aren’t many places where it does work.

Where government policy does make sense are instances where companies are profiting by shedding costs onto the general public. When this happens it is okay to recover the costs through tax policy or fines. It is no different from fines for polluting and littering. That is not the same as imposing tariffs to protect inefficient producers.

57

Of course, each product is done on a case-by-case basis.

However, thousands of people just like me are evaluating costs of manufacturing and all of us desperately want to manufacturer in the USA. Believe me, the benefits are enormous: very fast lead times – from design to prototype to finished sample in less than a week vs 6 weeks in China.

I know business people of about a dozen different products and it is NOT a 1% difference in manufacturing cost between China and USA. Keep in mind that most talking heads on TV and newspapers don’t actually RUN A REAL BUSINESS so it’s easy for them to spout nonsense of tiny 1% cost savings.

As the standard-of-living equalizes between China and USA, the cost different would move toward 1% but it is not there TODAY. That’s economic reality.

I don’t think you read the article you cited carefully. The curling iron manufacturer isn’t comparing apples to apples. His manufacturing in USA used more automation equipment vs human labor. Therefore, he’s not comparing exactly just China laborers to USA laborers.

It wouldn’t, if it was truly 1%. It’s not. At least not today. Maybe when oil is $200/barrel or when Chinese average family living standards include 2 SUV’s parked in a 3-car garage.

Mandate? How exactly do you “mandate” something to a country? Do you ask nicely as in, “Could you stop polluting your rivers so you exports cost more? Please? Pretty please with sugar on top?”

Various countries have asked the USA to participate in Kyoto Protocol. The USA told the world to kiss its ass because its GDP was too important. I don’t know if the other countries asked nicely by adding “pretty please” to their requests. Maybe that was the stumbling block.

The costs savings are significant enough TODAY that it’s still worthwhile to do it. When the cost savings are truly no longer significant, USA companies will automatically switch over to domestic manufacturing — or switch to an even cheaper country than China.

58

Yes, you are clear. What you propose is for all intents and purposes is tariff which will drive employers away and raise costs for consumers.

Your blatant jingoism and racism aside, “competetive” means that given a choice between two people doing the same job about as well, I will go with the cheaper worker. But FWIW, many Amrican companies have found that it is not cost effective to outsource jobs overseas for many of the reasons you describe. So it becomes a cost vs quality of service problem. If you don’t like dealing with companies where you have trouble with their customer service reps, I suggest you vote with your dollars.

I suppose there is always that possibility. Really the fundamental problem with any “free trade” agreement is when you find that under the agreement, your particular country or industry is not the most competetive. There are always winners and losers and the losers tend to get upset.

59

Scientific studies could be designed to get around both of these objections. Let’s first tackle the question of whether the correlation between any one gene and any one behavior is strong or weak. It’s perfectly possible to design an experiment that detects a weak correlation. If you want your study to sniff out very weak correlations, all you need is a large sample size. For example, Robert Plomin’s study on genetics and intelligence was able to capture the effects of genes that determine only a few percent percent of a person’s IQ score. To do so, he simply included several thousand children in the study. The only problem is that at that even at that level, he still couldn’t actually find any genes that have a definite, statistically significant effect. Nevertheless, the problem of a weak correlation can be overcome by doing a large study.

As for the problem that “it’s pretty difficult to separate out the effects of genes from other potential factors”, researchers have procedures to deal with that as well. They can place subjects in groups using a totally randomized design, a block design, or a matched pair design. Any of those would be appropriate for a study that tries to link genes to psychological traits. Although it’s true that traits such as selfishness, intelligence, aggression, and so forth exist on a sliding scale and there’s some difficulty in measuring them, that doesn’t prevent an experiment from being down. There are psychological tests that measure aggression, for instance. So simply take a thousand very aggressive people and a thousand passive people, while leaving out those in the middle. Search for the genes that occur more frequently in one group than in the other. Once you’ve identified a candidate gene, repeat the study and see whether you get the same result.

But I keep returning to the same point. Sure, you have an excuse for why scientists haven’t discovered every gene that evolutionary psychologists predict. You may even have an excuse for why they haven’t discovered most such genes. But why have they failed to find any of these genes? If evolutionary psychology was true or close to true, we’d have inherited thousands of genes from our ancestors that played certain roles in our behavior. Where are these genes?

Wesley Clark whether there are criticisms of evolutionary psychology. There are, and that’s what I’m trying to communicate in this thread. First, I’d imagine that Wesley gets most of his info on the topic from the mainstream media, and as Ben Goldacre has said, the media has an obsession about this stuff. Evolutionary psychology theories are easy to understand. They also frequently have to do with sex, which makes them perfect for the mainstream media. But newspapers and such don’t necessarily reflect all the real research that’s out there. In reality, if you went to school and studied for a degree in clinical or cognitive psychology, you’d learn little or nothing about evolutionary psychology, because it’s a pseudo-science. If you’re job is to meet with real patients and give them real therapy, you have to base your work on real results. Many prominent researchers have spoken out against evolutionary psychology. Besides Panskepp, who I’ve already mentioned, there’s V. S. Ramachandran, one of the leading neuroscientists currently alive. There’s Harry Jerison, the paleontologist from UCLA (now retired) who probably knows more actual facts about the evolution of the brain than anyone else. Most famously, there was Stephen J. Gould.