Capuchin monkeys reject unequal pay

What Hacker News said

Recommends thaumaturgy · 2014-02 · on “The Star Trek Economy”

So, economic models are more or less based on, or at least constrained by, human psychology, right? Communism and socialism don't work because peoples' brains aren't wired to do lots of work for little or no or unequal reward. This isn't restricted to just people, either, it's been observed in monkeys ( [LINK] , [this video] -- it's a short video and pretty hilarious, worth a watch). At the same time, capitalism has serious flaws, also exploited by human psychology. Capitalism rewards not just work and the investment of capital but also greed and cheating. So, when looking for a new economic model, why not go back to psychology? Is it really true that most people don't want to work? There are som

Cites Intermernet · 2014-01 · on “Light Table is now open source”

My feeling is that the fairness effect comes into play strongly with open source distribution models. People are willing to play fairly (i.e. not re-distribute source code that's probably only a google search away anyway) when the author does the same. Frans De Waal demonstrates an experiment with Capuchin Monkeys showing this effect in action. [LINK] [this video]

Cites whybroke · 2015-05 · on ““Information asymmetry” cuts both ways”

That is very true. Indeed we know fairness is an innate value for us and all primates [1] Likewise "meritocracy" is a very imprecise word depending a lot on what you want to maximize and so, if not focusing on net benefit to humanity, could produce horrendous outcomes. Blindly maximizing wealth creation could be such a mistake but given how much good prosperity usually does for people, it looks like a good starting point. But I believe the article and I are referring to fairness among employees rather than employee vs employer (which is of course also interesting). Specifically, employees comparing wages would create quite appropriate outrage between employees when some individuals receive m

Cites pacala · 2019-04 · on “Google Staffers Share Stories of ‘Systemic’ Retaliation”

Most people have a fairness instinct. The fairness instinct has been observed even in monkeys [0]. Given that most people also live within a social fabric, it is not too hard to imagine that most people have an instinct for a fair society. Alas, this is simply too vague of a definition, as it encompasses most religious/philosophical/political perspectives out there, on the left as well as on the right [gasp!]. The modern "social justice" movement has a number of very specific insistences, which align with a much smaller subset of perspectives than the umbrella "fair society" ideal would imply. I simply want to have someone sympathetic to the modern "social justice" movement to state some spe