In Reply to: There have been multiple nobel economics prizes awarded posted by TheHappyBurgermeister on September 20, 2025 at 09:31:19
By that, I mean the corner of personal relations rather than group benefits.
I agree, it is roughly the same dynamic. And so, as I assumed, the source of this type of response goes much deeper than the social contexts it frequently expresses itself in. It's something that's pretty deep-seated in people's psyche.
I'm going to disagree a bit on the resource allocation angle. Maybe that applies better in the divorce context but does not apply in these other instances we're talking about: (a) unionization is not a 0 sum game, for instance. If my sector is going to get unionized it doesn't mean some other sector has to get de-unionized, and (b) when this involves benefits programs, what these people are demanding is that no one gets the benefit/program as opposed demanding that they should get other people's benefits/programs. So I suppose when the resources are limited this behavior goes up a few notches but in general, we still have it in our lives even when it's not a limited resource issue.
I wasn't aware of the Nobel prizes awarded to this concept. I know there was a Nobel awarded for the genius who discovered that people don't make their economic decisions rationally! An earth-shattering concept for a libertarian perhaps, but a head-scratcher otherwise.
So here's my angle on this: I don't think young children work this way. When child sees that another child has a toy they like, they demand that they should have one too. If they're told they can't have it, they may be more inclined to steal that toy than to break it so that the other kid doesn't have it either. I don't know that I have ever seen any kid who would do the latter (If they did, the parents would be really concerned about their children's mental state, I assume). And yet, somewhere along the line that child turns into an adult that does exactly that. Something definitely goes off the rails at some point, but I'm not sure what, when, and how.