TITLE:
Economic Natural Selection: Interpretation of Natural Selection as Economic Selection in the Evolutionary Process
AUTHORS:
Jong Soue You
KEYWORDS:
Natural Selection, Economic Selection, Economic Natural Selection, Economically Optimal Behavior, Efficient Decentralized Decision Making
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.13 No.5,
October
24,
2023
ABSTRACT: The paper proposes that natural selection hypothesis in the theory of
evolution can properly be interpreted as economic selection in that the species
that have adapted successfully to their changing environment through the
optimizing economic behaviors resulting in efficient allocation of scarce
resources have been selected by nature in the evolutionary process. It is the
species’ optimizing rational economic behaviors rather than their superior
intellectual or physical strength that are responsible for their being
naturally selected. In that sense, natural selection may be interpreted as
economic natural selection. The paper presents the evidence that the species
that have survived the natural selection process in general including the human
species behave rationally through constrained dynamic optimizing behaviors
which result in efficient allocation of scarce resources through decentralized
decision making without a central coordination or control with the result that
such species are selected by nature over those that do not.