Human governments and laws are not just social ideas, but are biological adaptations designed to stop natural selection from working.
April 29, 2026
Original Paper
Biological economics: the evolutionary biology of (state) institutions in modern humans
SSRN · 6657120
The Takeaway
For most of history, humans survived by competing for resources based on individual strength and luck. This theory proposes that the creation of institutions like states and legal norms was a biological move to shift our species into a more stable norms-based system. These institutions act like a shared nervous system for the whole group, suppressing internal competition so the species can thrive. By changing the rules of survival, we effectively changed the way we evolve as a species. This frames our modern political world as a direct product of our evolutionary biology. It is a stunning new way to think about why we follow rules.
From the abstract
The evolutionary history of modern humans (Homo sapiens) spans a brief ~315,000 years over which a series of unprecedented cultural and technological innovations-such as complex language, agriculture, money, and industrialisation-led our species to consolidate into the most successful and influential organism that ever lived. The transformative magnitude of these innovations is such, that they have triggered global-scale alterations of planetary systems, including climate change and the rapid lo