Is there Really an Evolutionary Pressure against Mishandling Money?


Blog One
Donna Hoang

Michael Phillips mentioned in his book The Seven Laws of Money that putting people in jail is “a part of the evolutionary development of the social fabric” (74). He further explains that 80% of the crime today is in relation to money, and people’s inability to handle money is what causes them to be in jail. Therefore, those who know how to handle money will not go to jail, while those who don’t, through evolutionary pressures, will go to jail.

I completely agree with the notion that the inability to deal with money (whether that be because one is surrounded by bad influences or simply because of the lack of education) can cause people to make poor life decisions. These decisions make sustainability difficult, and the idea of money becomes a matter of survival. Coming from Philadelphia, many kids my age go into drug dealing because they need to make some extra cash for their siblings and parents. Although many have argued with me that this is not the majority case, it cannot be denied that the reasons why some people commit crime is not as malicious as society assumes it to be. However, no matter how good the justification for committing a crime may be, a crime should not be allowed for the safety of the bigger community. If the inability to handle money creates harms for the greater society, then, evolutionary, it makes sense for that harm to be eliminated for the time being, making Phillips argument compelling and realistic.

However, the problem that I have with the term “evolution” in this context is the fact that those who are selected against evolution are not consistent. If people who didn’t know how to handle money go to jail, then shouldn’t those businessmen who were involved with the 2008 financial crisis still be serving their term? Numerous documentaries and articles have shown and recorded that out of the people who were involved with creating the crisis, very few actually got any sort of punishment, and the percentage of those who had to go on trial was also astonishingly small. The fact that these people did not get punished shows that Phillips' notion of evolution is not as accurate and consistent as it may seem.  

The survival selection in our society today makes the mishandling of money for some become a tremendous crime, while the mishandling of money for others (who may have created bigger consequences) trivial. Money is truly a nightmare, but some have a greater sum of money and power that can make those nightmares disappear, begging the question of what our society is truly selecting against.

Comments

  1. jdoutJanuary 29, 2018 at 10:33 AM

    Excellent commentary, Donna; your experiences have provided you with a powerful counter-narrative to Michael Phillips's somewhat simplistic notion of "evolutionary" trends in American society. It may be more accurate to say that, in the absence of family wealth, parental influence, status, or other social forms of "credit," an individual who commits a money-oriented crime will see his life and that of his cohort shortened, but that for those Americans who benefit from the nexus of family wealth, parental influence, status and other forms of socially-sanctioned "credit" will likely not be bothered much.

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