Evolution revisited: We’re all monkeys! Gimme gimme gimme!

Why is the New York Times held in such high regard? Their editorials are hopelessly bent on statism; to them, there is no problem that couldn’t be solved with more government intervention (and taxes to support it). With the possible exception of Tom Friedman, the opinion page is a mish-mash of leftist thinkers who always – always – frame their debate in a visceral manner. There’s very little inclination to convince an audience. Instead, it’s perpetual moralizing with every issue viewed through the prism of liberal thought.

Nothing could illustrate this blindingly obvious point than the brainless article: “What the Monkeys Can Teach Humans About Making America Fairer” in the Sunday Times.

Give a capuchin monkey a cucumber slice, and she will eagerly trade a small pebble for it. But when a second monkey, in an adjoining cage, receives a more-desirable grape for the same pebble, it changes everything. The first monkey will then reject her cucumber, and sometimes throw it out of the cage. Monkeys rarely refuse food, but in this case they appear to be pursuing an even higher value than eating: fairness.

So a monkey trades something of limited value (a pebble) for something of greater value (a cucumber). But when another monkey is given a grape for the same pebble, unfairness occurs. Too bad the monkey didn’t have a free market to trade his pebble elsewhere…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The capuchin monkey study, published last week in Nature, has generated a lot of interest for a scant three-page report buried in the journal's letters section. There is, certainly, a risk of reading too much into the feeding habits of 10 research monkeys. But in a week when fairness was so evidently on the ropes — from the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancún, which poor nations walked out of in frustration, to the latest issue of Forbes, reporting that the richest 400 Americans are worth $955 billion — the capuchin monkeys offered a glimmer of hope from the primate gene pool.

We laugh at that risk! Let’s plow straight ahead and make comparisons to world trade and income inequality. Furthermore, let’s be clear: Bill Gates could learn a thing or two from the monkeys.

In the interest of space and because it’s ridiculous, the author makes a specious comparison between the amorphous issue of “fairness” and Supreme Court decisions that are viewed as “conservative” because (in my opinion) they enforce the letter of the law. Here’s the bathetic concluding paragraph of this dung-heap:

In Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," an ape-man throws a bone he has just used as a weapon into the air and it is transformed into a spaceship. The discovery of weapons was certainly, as the movie indicates, one of our key evolutionary moments. But the capuchin monkey study is a welcome reminder that the first time an ape-man angrily picked up his food allotment and threw it into the air because it was unjust was no less pivotal to the emergence of what it means to be human.

Yes, surely the cucumber-refusal incident was a turning point in the history of mankind.

A couple of thoughts:

First of all, on the issue of “fairness,” in a typical NYT fashion, the author cannot conceive of issues that might be viewed as “unfair” in a conservative viewpoint. These issues simply do not exist. For example, is it fair to tax people at a higher rate simply because they work harder and make more money? Is it fair to allot more points to a student applying to college because he or she is a minority? Is it fair to condemn kids to rotten schools because certain special interests are intent on maintaining the monopoly of public education?

I saw “2001” also. When the ape-man discovers that a bone can be used as a weapon, there’s a sequence of shots showing water buffalo falling to the ground, followed by images of the ape-tribe eating heartily. Could it be possible that the chief ape-man, the bone-wielder, would be entitled to a greater portion of the meal?

Or would that be “unfair”?

Anyway, read the article and tell me the NYT hasn't become a parody of itself.

Update: Radley Balko has his monkey thoughts.