Back to Basics Series: Homo Economicus Must Die (with Samuel Bowles)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the relentless drive to maximize personal gain isn't human nature, but just a flawed model we built? In this Back-to-Basics episode, behavioral economist Samuel Bowles helps us lay homo economicus—the myth of the perfectly rational, self-interested actor—six feet under. He shows how this caricature not only misrepresents human behavior, but underpins an economic system that ignores cooperation, community, and ethics. If we're hoping to reclaim our society from greed-driven oligarchs and neoliberal policy, we need a better model—which starts with recognizing that humans are more than economic robots. Samuel Bowles is an economist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, currently serving as Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also the author of The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens. This episode originally aired May 7, 2019. Further reading: The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social TikTok: @pitchfork_econ Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, pitchfork listeners, Goldie here. We've been doing this podcast for a long time now, so we thought we'd take a little break this summer.
0:08.4	But we don't want you to miss us too much, so we thought we'd revisit some of the most essential episodes from early in our history with a back-to-basic summer series.
0:18.7	Perhaps no idea is more central to orthodox economics than the
0:23.6	assumption that human beings are perfectly rational, perfectly logical, and perfectly self-interested.
0:30.1	So we talked with Professor Sam Bowles at the Santa Fe Institute about why this idea is, well, bullshit.
0:39.3	The conclusion, homo-economicus must die.
0:49.3	What's the consequence if you think that people are entirely selfish?
0:53.3	This basic assumption that economists have made has entered the culture and the consciousness of people.
1:01.0	And what we have done over generations is that we have taught people to believe that people are perfectly selfish and rational.
1:09.0	The capitalist system would fall apart. Indeed. The capitalist system would fall apart.
1:12.1	Indeed, any social system would fall apart
1:15.0	if the people were psychopathic
1:16.9	as described by homo-economics.
1:24.8	From the offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer.
1:31.7	In honest conversation about how to make capitalism work for everyone.
1:43.2	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
1:46.2	I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.
1:53.9	So in this episode of Pitchfork Economics, we're going to make the claim that Homo Economicus must die.
2:02.3	Oh, my God.
2:02.8	Who's that, Nick?
2:04.1	Who's this guy you want to kill?
2:05.7	It's really, really mean here.
	...

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