The Fear Economy

How corporations, politicians, and NGOs all exploit our hardwired bias toward loss-avoidance

Image credit: Financial Times

For 98% of our evolutionary history, life was a zero-sum game. As a species with very limited technology (a few rocks, perhaps a few pointed sticks, and then much later the wonder of fire) we survived on the margins, clinging to existence and dying young. There was no way to increase available resources except by taking them from others. Thus your gain was my loss, and vice-versa.

Not surprisingly, we evolved to be highly risk-averse. Numerous studies have shown how we fear the possibility of loss far more than we value the possibility of gain. This hardwired bias shapes the way we see the world and unless we educate ourselves on how modern economies actually work, we will continue to see the world in terms of zero-sum balances.

Unfortunately, this default way of viewing is hopelessly inadequate today. Since the largely accidental invention of agriculture around eleven thousand years ago, our species has gradually become the dominant animal and we have reshaped the planet in pursuit of plenty. Far from us living in a zero-sum world, we live in a world of abundance. This has been especially true since the Industrial Revolution commenced and we substituted fossil fuel energy for muscle power. Today even the…