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Our internal drivers
In the face of multiple, conflicting motives, how can we make the best decisions?
The very first humans were already economists. At least, that is what we would conclude if we were to believe the Old Testament. Why? Well, while they inhabited the Garden of Eden, whatever Adam and Eve needed was available in plentiful supply. But the moment they left paradise, boom! All of a sudden, resources were scarce resources and they had to learn to make between them.
Evolution, however, is generally considered a more plausible explanation than creationism for the emergence of life on our planet, and so it is for the emergence of economic behaviour. The very first unicellular organisms already had to make choices. Initially, it was just a case of getting it right — between moving towards or away from an environment, depending on whether it was nutritious or toxic, for example. But sometimes they also had to decide between preserving energy and staying put in an environment with depleting sources of food, and expending scarce energy packing up and swim off in the primordial soup, in search of a more nutritious environment. As a single-celled organism, even without have a single brain cell, they passed down their ability along the evolutionary tree through their DNA (or rather, the ones that made the right choices passed on their DNA, so that…
