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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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Let me put it another way. Selfishness is no more human nature than cooperation is. If we can build a civilization based on rewarding selfishness we can build one off rewarding cooperation.
Yes, both selfishness and cooperation are traits of human behavior but it seems natural that humans only cooperative if it benefits them i.e. Bob helps his village now because Bob is fairly confident the village will help him in the future if he needs help. In situations where there are not enough resources for all, don't people usually fall back to every-person-for-themselves?
I've been watching past seasons of the US reality show "Survivor" and it's a common strategy to stay in alliances throughout the competition but it's not uncommon for these alliances to breakdown towards the end in the form of backstabbing, because there can only be a single winner. I've only seen a handful of seasons so far and it seems split at best that the winner of a season won with little/or no use of deceit and backstabbing.
My point is, when there's lots to go around, sure, people will help each other. But when resources are scarce, it's every person for themselves. And scarcity is a feature of life itself, therefore, human selfishness is natural and I'd guess is prioritized over cooperation when things get really tough.
Thats not selfishness though. It isn't selfish to contribute to a group that benefits you. Its selfish if you contribute to a system that harms others because it benefits you. These are very different things.
In the various crucibles of civilization people came together precisely because resources were scarce. Yes they would eventually collapse when resources became too scarce to sustain whatever system they had built and infighting wasn't uncommon but resources are not scarce now. We produce enough food, we have enough homes, we have enough water (for humans not for our current technological setup). The issue we are currently struggling with is not scarcity its distribution. The technology produced by the capitalist era is more that sufficient to provide for us all.