"Antony Quinn"  wrote in message
>
> It is true that in nature and capitalist economies there is a tendency to
> grow larger (as a defence against predation?).
>
The classic response to heavy predation pressure is to grow smaller. Larger
animals have control of more resources than smaller ones, so other things
being equal the larger will also be the more successful. It is debatable
whether there is a drive to giantism built into life, or whether large
animals are just the extreme fringe of a random walk.
>
> Some genes are favoured by natural selection, some companies by
> artificial selection.
>
Not all anthropogenic selection is "artifical selection". It's only
artificial if the deliberate aim to to cause evolution.
>
>However, evolution consists of natural selection and *random*
> mutation. Companies do not randomly mutate. Their owners take
> active steps to survive in response to price signals and other changes in
> market conditions ('the environment').
>
This is fair enough. A successful company generally grows bigger, then
imitators, either new start-ups or near competitors, begin to imitate its
business model. There's nothing like this in natural selection.
>
> This is more akin to Lamarckism than Darwinism. Moreover, it would > be
more accurate to describe this as an analogy of the theory of perfect
> competition than capitalism.
>
Capitalism presupposes that resources are invested in the company to enable
it to operate. Without this the idea of growing larger doesn't make sense.
Bootblacks might be in perfect competion with each other, but until someone
invents a boot-blacking machine, their businesses can't expand beyond the
shoe-shining capacity of one labourer.
>
> What does it take to be a great president? Which of the great
> presidents were not clever or had invalid ideas? George Washington,
> Abraham Lincoln, JFK?
>
The obvious example is Reagan. He won the Cold War, with minimal loss of
American life. However he wasn't a particularly intelligent man. His "evil
empire" speech was mocked by academics, as was his strategic defence
initiative - the policy which finally broke the Soviet Union.
>
> Ethics is a branch of philosophy, so Dawkins must at least believe in
> something outside of science (unless he doesn't believe in his own
> moral views). And how are his views a "bastardised version of
> Christian ethics"?
>
I've heard Dawkins claim that "nothing is outside its [ science's ]
province". Most people would argue that science can only answer empirical
questions (tigers are rare) not moral ones (tigers ought to be preserved). I
don't know what Dawkins would say when confronted with this, maybe that the
ethical intution that tigers ought to be preserved is simply the product of
evolution, and itself open to scientific investigation, and that "ought"
ultimately has no meaning.
>
> You could say that Christian ethics are a bastardised version of
> Hebrew or Greek ethics.
>
Christian ethics are consciously a revision of Hebrew ethics, whilst Dawkins
doesn't acknowledge his debt to Christianity. I wouldn't like to say how far
Jesus was influenced by Greek ethics.
>
> I disagree. Evolution doesn't *naturally* lend itself to right-wing
> political views, but the common *misinterpretation* of evolution does, >
ie. 'survival of the fittest' and genetic determinism.
>
'survial of the fittest' is only a misinterpretation if you define fittest
in a moral sense, rather than simply fittest to survive. Genes for being a
welfare queen may trump genes for being a space shuttle pilot in 21st
century America.
There are no genetic determinists. The interaction of genes and environment
determines the phenotype, and variation may be wholly genetic, wholly
environmental, or something in between.
>
> And if we think'survival of the best adapted' instead of 'fittest' then we
> can stop seeing survival as an individualistic affair, and can see how
> 'mutual support' and 'reciprocal altruism' can raise the survival rate of
> all individuals within a family/tribe/society (with the detection of
cheats
> and freeloaders being an essential, co-evolved cognitive safety net). A
> loose analogy from economics would be the theory of comparative
> advantage (we achieve more by cooperation than by working alone).
>
Alliances can increase all allies' competitive advantages. However your
closest competitor is usually another member of the same species, and a
tribe or other group can only expand so far until it begins to run out of
resources. At this point a faction or individual who works against the group
will gain an advantage.
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