Sublime

a natural way to fund public/supermodular goods without relying excessively on the limited knowledge of administrators is for such an administrator, philanthropist, or public authority to match contributions by distributed individuals.

Avec leur agressivité contenue par une morale trop étroite, ceux qui sont uniquement ou principalement charitables et altruistes – et naïfs et manipulables – sont incapables d’invoquer une colère justifiée et protectrice nécessaire à leur défense.

Think of the implications. People we might ordinarily dislike—unsavory or unwelcome sales operators, disagreeable acquaintances, representatives of strange or unpopular organizations—can greatly increase the chance that we will do what they wish merely by providing us with a small initiating favor.

In people, oxytocin reaches far beyond family life. If you squirt oxytocin spray into a person’s nose, he or she will be more trusting in a game that involves transferring money temporarily to an anonymous partner.29 Conversely, people who behave trustingly cause oxytocin levels to increase in the partner they trusted. Oxytocin levels also rise

Mathematically, there is an optimal way to play such games, but it assumes that players are strangers who will never meet again (i.e. you and that secondhand car salesman). Dutifully, the students produced the optimal solution. But most of the players in the ethnographic societies did not. They either accepted offers that were far too low or

Maybe so. No one can know for sure what would have happened, but I can tell you that people will always be more inclined to help people they know as opposed to people they don’t know.