Daily Archives: 11 August 2014

Eli Harman on Altruistic Punishment

ALTRUISTIC PUNISHMENT: “I will bear a cost in order to impose a cost on someone for imposing costs on others.”

Directly, no one wins, it’s a lose/lose/lose; costs all the way around.

Indirectly, we all benefit from the maintenance of a normative commons that discourages people from imposing costs, negative externalities, on others or refraining from contributing to benefits, positive externalities, which are shared.

This is a common human behavior and it is impossible to understand human behavior, or the evolution of societies and polities, without understanding altruistic punishment.