Some great comments from my last post….I started to reply in a comment, but I figured I’d just write a fresh post.

We need to recognize that people do things out of their own self-interest.  Any expectation otherwise is unrealistic and ignorant.  We should design systems that harness this inherent “selfishness”; they will be much more robust than systems relying on “selflessness,” which doesn’t exist.

If the U.S. is going to be competitive in the world, we need to recognize that promoting creativity, innovation and hard work is the only way to get there.  We should work with human nature, not against it, to get there.

This was part of the message given by Harold “Terry” McGraw III, the Chairman and CEO of the McGraw-Hill Companies, in his remarks to the graduating class.  He talked about the importance of education…of designing systems where creativity and innovation can flourish, as a means of maintaining our competitiveness in the world.  (His speech was extremely U.S.-centric, which I found a bit quaint and insulting, but if you replace “americans” with “earthlings” it still makes sense).

I’m not saying we should abolish charities and blow up public schools.  Far from it.  There are perfectly valid reasons to help others.  But we should be clear about those reasons so we can make sound decisions and design systems that actually work.

I take real issue with the idea that “everything would be better if we just acted selflessly.”  Or, as Edward Tuck put in 1904, “that altruism is the highest and best form of egoism, as a principle of conduct to be followed by those who strive for success and happiness in public or business relations as well as in those of private life.” (Professor Argenti read this letter at graduation….I love when Argenti preaches about morals, it’s sort of like D’Aveni preaching about family values or rationality…but I digress)

The communists promoted a system where people weren’t supposed to benefit from selfish acts, and look where it got them.  People continued to act like people, corruption took over, and the system crumbled.

That doesn’t mean that we should constantly act like wolves.  Instead, we should spend our time designing a system which pits wolf against wolf in fair competition.  Again, harness the human spirit, don’t restrain it.

Why do we start with the premise that we are somehow born ‘wrong’?  That’s one of the main problems with Christianity: it says that we are born sinful, and that we need to be saved.  Priests have marshaled this tenet over time and made the church the most powerful institution in the world.  Thank God that’s declining.  But something else springs up in its place.  People try to convince you that you’re bad, and then they tell you how you can get better.  But it will cost you…

Why can’t we just accept that we are who we are, and that’s OK?