Realm of the gift, 2

Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes this rebuttal to my post summarizing Godbout’s book on gift. Jim quotes these sentences: “First, the dominant paradigm of human behavior is utilitarian. People act out of self-interest, and in that context the gift seems impossible, other-worldly, spookily spiritual.”

Then he responds:

“[1] It’s really very simple to generate gift-giving in (even) a narrowly utilitarian context: [a] Reciprocity, tit-for-tat, etc.

[b] Or even without expectation of future payback — just stick a preference for the utility of others in a utility function, and you’ll get tons of gift giving. Simple. It’s puzzling that you’d characterize it as “impossible, other-worldly, spookily spiritual.”

[2] Market participation in no way requires a narrowly-utilitarian/individualistic orientation. The person who wises to maximize gift giving (i.e., is most altruistic) would pursue profit-maximizing behavior precisely to maximize what he can give away. Also, the true altruist would want to give away what people most prefer to receive. This is a stupendous informational problem that, when it can be solved (which it cannot be much of the time) can be best solved through the market. I.e., even a society of saints (i.e., completely other-oriented folks) would need or want markets to allocate large numbers of goods and services.”