Everything in nature is dictated by “economy” whether it is free-market or collective (hunting as mentioned above). There are a finite amount of resources and there are efficient and inefficient ways of obtaining them. In evolution, some traits are enhanced at the expense of others, and vice versa. An antelope could grow taller, slimmer legs to increase speed and outrun cheetahs, but taller, slimmer legs increase the chance of breakage. So it is more economical for the antelope to spend that energy (saved by not growing longer legs) in other ways (grazing, reproduction, endurance running, etc). The most successful species find the most economical way to survive.
Richard Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show On Earth” details a fascinating metaphor for our monetary economies: forests. Trees compete for sunlight, and they only grow as tall as they need to to extract the most amount of sunlight. But to grow tall requires a lot of energy to produce and maintain a trunk. The higher a tree goes the more energy it requires to operate. So the key is to find a balance — grow tall enough to obtain enough energy (from the sun) to survive. Grow too tall and you waste energy supporting your system. Grow not tall enough and other trees will steal your energy.
Imagine the fate of a hypothetical forest in which, by some mysterious concordat, all the trees have somehow managed to achieve the desirable aim of lowering the canopy to 10 feet high instead of 100 feet. From the point of view of a planned economy, our forest is more efficient as a forest than the tall forests with which we are familiar, because resources are not put into producing massive trunks that have no purpose apart from competing with other trees.
But now, suppose one mutant tree were to spring up in the middle of our forest. This rogue tree grows marginally taller than the ‘agreed’ norm of 10 feet. Immediately, this mutant secures a competitive advantage. Admittedly, it has to pay the cost of the extra length of trunk. But it is more than compensated, as long as all other trees obey the self-denying ordinance, because the extra photons (from the sun) gathered more than pay the extra cost of lengthening the trunk. Natural selection therefore favours the genetic tendency to break out of the self-denying ordinance and grow a bit taller, say to 11 feet. As the generations go by, more and more trees break the embargo on height. When, finally, all the trees in the forest are 11 feet tall, they are all worse off than they were before: all are paying the cost of growing the extra foot. But they are not getting any extra photons for their trouble. And now natural selection favours any mutant tendency to grow to, say 12 feet. And so the trees go on getting taller and taller. Will this futile climb towards the sun ever come to an end? Why not trees a mile high, why not Jack’s beanstalk? The limit is set at the height where the marginal cost of growing another foot outweighs the gain in photons from growing that extra foot.
We are talking individual costs and benefits throughout this argument. The forest would look very different if its economy has been designed for the benefit of the forest as a whole. In fact, what we actually see is a forest in which each tree species evolved through natural selection favouring individual trees that out-competed rival individual trees, whether of their own or another species.
In this example nature is a free-market economy where individual benefits outweigh the benefits of the whole. Sure, it would be nice to impose a 10-foot limit on forest in order to maximize efficiency, but all it takes in one tree to grow an extra foot to throw the whole system off balance. The other trees are then required to grow in order to compete and we enter a cycle of inefficiency and waste. The parallels with our own monetary economies are fascinating to me.
