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Philippe DARREAU's avatar

Wouldn't it be in the beneficiary's interest to behave like a free rider? Rationally, the beneficiary has an interest in maintaining the income of the altruist, but not of the altruistic group (the government for example). In natural selection, the beneficiary has an interest in favouring his own genes but not directly those of the group.

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Doctor Hammer's avatar

One thing to note is that the reproductive effects on the benefactor due to his altruism might well be zero on the margin, not always negative. The reason is that success often is a question of “good enough” and the marginal utility of extra resources often goes to zero. So if after a certain threshold more resources don’t have a real impact on reproductive success (say because sickness or violent accidents are random and unpreventable after a certain point) the cost to reproduction is zero from altruism and you don’t expect the genes to be competed out. Depending on the nature of the society, that threshold might be really quite low, if there is say ample food but nothing else to really spend resources on like functional medicine.

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