IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-137-28770-0_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Agents of Paradise and the Rise of Self-interest

In: The Economics of Paradise

Author

Listed:
  • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

Abstract

The previous chapter highlighted the contested nature of capital exchange in the paradise setting; that conflict over capital contributions and distributions essentially defined paradise operating in a rather ‘capitalistic’ way. This chapter looks in greater detail at underlying reasons why paradise interactions could escalate so easily into conflict. A key thesis is that the agents of paradise compare well with the model of the economic agent: homo economicus. This model invokes self-interest and utility ‘optimization’ in different shades and levels as the key driving force of behaviour (for a review, see Kirchgässner 2014). In this regard, the chapter examines how closely the agents of the Paradise story (God, Adam and Eve, and the serpent) compare with a model of self-interested, utility-focused choice, and possibly worse, to what Buchanan (1975) called outright predation, or Williamson (1975, 1985), slightly more mildly, termed opportunism and subtle self-seeking with guile.

Suggested Citation

  • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto, 2015. "Agents of Paradise and the Rise of Self-interest," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Economics of Paradise, chapter 3, pages 70-98, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-28770-0_5
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137287700_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-28770-0_5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.