#466 Bart Wilson - The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind
RECORDED ON FEBRUARY 9th 2021.
Dr. Bart J. Wilson is the Donald P. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Economics and Law at Chapman University. He is a founding member of the Economic Science Institute and founding member and Director of the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy. His research uses experimental economics to explore the foundations of exchange and specialization and the origins of property. Another of his research programs compares decision making in humans, apes, and monkeys. In 2019 he co-authored with Vernon Smith a Cambridge University Press book entitled, “Humanomics: Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century.” He is the author of The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind.
In this episode, we focus on The Property Species, and talk about Dr. Wilson’s work on this subject more broadly. We first discuss property from an evolutionary perspective, and the endowment effect. We ask if property is a human universal. We then talk about sharing, exchange, trade, and specialization. We discuss some features of the human mind that play a role in how we think about property, like abstract thinking, language, and morality. Dr. Wilson explains the difference between property and property rights. We also talk about intellectual property, and what we can learn about human sociality (focusing on how people cooperate) by studying how people think about property. Finally, we ask if anarchy could ever work, why social preferences are not preferences, and some thoughts on the so-called “sharing economy”.
Time Links:
Intro
Property from an evolutionary perspective
The endowment effect
Property across cultures
Sharing
Language and morality
Exchange and specialization
The difference between property and property rights
Intellectual property
Property and human cooperation
Would anarchy ever work?
Social preferences are not preferences
The sharing economy
Follow Dr. Wilson’s work!
Follow Dr. Wilson’s work:
Faculty page: http://bit.ly/2Wwxyts
Google Scholar profile: https://bit.ly/3jwiRBb
Amazon page: https://amzn.to/2OgVrEh
The Property Species: https://amzn.to/2YX4mN9
Twitter handle: @bartwilson