I have been working on a general projects webpage. Most of it is dedicated to the nation founding idea, and I've done some more research and a lot more brainstorming/discussion on the subject. When a draft is done, it'll be here. But forget that for now, and listen to my latest evolutionary biology theory. Note that it requires a willingess to accept the fact that instincts are not inherently right or ordained from on high, but rather are produced by evolution and can be rationally analyzed. Also this is just a draft, its not supposed to be polished.

It's the holiday season, and we've been exchanging gifts at the house. Or at least, everyone but me. I got a book on the boardgame Go (my latest fascination), the American Beauty DVD, a purple hat, and a clock/compass for my fancy sports car which does zero to sixty in nothing flat but won't tell me what time it is. However, "Christmas on the 18th because everyone will be away from the holidays" got sprung on me only a couple days beforehand, and I chose not to shop frantically on the weekened in the crowded malls, so I still haven't given presents yet. I'm also mixing standard consumer items with a couple of crafts projects, and the latter are going to take a few days. Its amazing how much more satisfying the idea of making something for someone is than just forking over cash for an object. The culture of consumerism is so empty of satisfaction.

Now before those who intuit economics jump on me, I admit the economic efficiency of specialization. It would be bad for people to make everything themselves. But look at it this way: if you are going to be economically efficient, why buy something for someone when it is unlikely that you will do as good a job shopping for them as they will themselves? Giving cash - now that is efficient. Buying a good they might not like seems silly. The motivation is probably that it is satisfying because of the evolutionary biology of altruism. Yet those ingrained instincts don't motive us to give each other money or other readily convertible items (at least between economic peers - gifts to youth and the disadvantaged are different).

My theory is that in the ancestral environment, goods (and other gifts) were more unique, more labor-intensive, and more necessary for survival, so gift-giving makes sense in the context of reciprocal altruism. An exchange of gifts could easily benefit both parties if they had different skills or access to different goods (life is a non-zero sum game). For example, a good hunter might give meat to an expert nut-finder in exchange for the location of a large cache, trading animal protein for vegetable protein, resulting in an increase in the variety of both diets.

Yet in a consumer society with ubiquitous, identical goods, the situation is very different. We all have access to the same malls, and shopkeepers charge us the same amounts. Unless we have perfect models of the recipients, we will not choose them the perfect gifts. Even if they make a list of items, they will generally not be specific about the make or model, and also it is unlikely that they would have chosen to make so many purchases every December. Thus purchased gifts will usually be economically non-optimal. So if both parties spend the same amount of money, they both get less value than if they had spent it themselves, and they both lose.

The gut reaction of many people to this may be "But its the right thing to do! Giving gifts cements friendship, it means you are a good person!". If this instinct gets by without self-examination, you are not yet a full disciple of evolutionary biology. If you stop and think about there is not much of a rational reason for two people to give each other things that they could have picked for themselves. That instinct is there because it is evolutionarily advantageous, but just like craving fat and sugar, it was bred for a different kind of society. It may be true that exchanging gifts strengthens friendships - but the reason is that friendships are based on reciprocal altruism, and exchanging gifts used to benefit both parties. It still may strengthen relationships, because the machinery is still built into our brain, but (like eating candy) it no longer works for its original purpose.

Not everyone has this gut instinct. Some people feel trapped into buying presents, especially those who can't really afford them. Since they have the least to spare, they feel the negative utility of the transaction most acutely. Other people, such myself, may have the intuition that giving time, skills, and hand-made gifts is "satisfying" (evolutionarily produced positive reward), whereas giving mass-produced consumer products is not. In other words, the former fits into the evolutionary category of friendship, but the latter into the category of business. Hopefully this argument will have made it clear why this intuition is a more accurate reflection of good reciprocal altruism in the modern environment.

[Addendum: Notice that gift-giving is the opposite of what reciprocal altruism should be. In reciprocal altruism, people win by being nice because they find situations in which one person can do something that benefits another more than it costs them. If everyone looks for net-gain situations, everyone wins. But when you find and buy a consumer good for someone, you are creating situations in which you do something that benefits the other guy less than it costs you. Instead of finding mutual wins, we are finding mutual losses.

A friend pointed out in an email that when exchanging gifts, the time & energy spent shopping are the real gift. I agree that proof of friendship is important, and that spending time on people is good for that proof. But there are lots of ways to spend time & energy on someone else. Why not pick things that you are better at than they are, or can't do for themselves? (Or at least have a comparative advantage at, to be more economically precise). If you and a friend exchange time-consuming favors that the giver is worse at doing than the recipient , you have cemented your friendship, and paid a net loss in other respects to do so. Why not exchange favors that the giver is better at doing than the recipient, spend the same amount of time, cement the friendship just as well, and have a net gain while doing so? If you believe in cynical evolutionary biology, net gain is the point of friendships anyway. Mutual disadvantage is thus the opposite of what friendship is for.]

It should be noted that not everyone loses from these transactions. The merchants and producers of the goods gain. It is clear from looking at society with evolutionary biology in mind that clever people manipulate our genetically inbuilt emotional handles for their own advantage. For example, visual media use sex & violence to attract us, environmentalists use guilt & appeasement, and the food industry uses fat and sugar. Thus it is no surprise that a consumer-based christmas has become a pervasive cultural phenomenon, or that the malls are full every December, just as it is no surprise when a bad movie starring hot babes makes a lot of money.

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