Author is very unfair to the "capitalist environment like America's". Our market-driven society requires, and rewards/trains, a level of trust that's less-common elsewhere. Just two data points:
(1) Americans are "The Weirdest People in the World", per one review of psychological studies, in economic games. They're more willing to punish 'unfair' offers in the 'Ultimatum Game', and offer higher shares against naked self-interest in the similar 'Dictator Game'. See for more details:
(2) We've had a number of explicitly "anti-capitalist" nation-states in the last 150 years. They haven't been paragons of collective action for the greater good, or protection of the common environment. In particular, the ex-Communist societies and emigrants-from-same sometimes take a while to adjust to new economies where every stranger, government and non-government alike, isn't constantly trying to screw them under false pretense of shared-sacrifice.
The actual games in "capitalist America" are only very occasionally dog-eat-dog zero-sum affairs. More often, they're iterated games rewarding not just consciously chosen cooperation but an optimistic, cooperate-by-default mindset. Politics, with its zero-sum elections and redistributions, is an exception. Its partisanship shouldn't be attributed to market processes, but to electoral/governmental ones.
(1) Americans are "The Weirdest People in the World", per one review of psychological studies, in economic games. They're more willing to punish 'unfair' offers in the 'Ultimatum Game', and offer higher shares against naked self-interest in the similar 'Dictator Game'. See for more details:
http://www.psmag.com/magazines/magazine-feature-story-magazi...
(2) We've had a number of explicitly "anti-capitalist" nation-states in the last 150 years. They haven't been paragons of collective action for the greater good, or protection of the common environment. In particular, the ex-Communist societies and emigrants-from-same sometimes take a while to adjust to new economies where every stranger, government and non-government alike, isn't constantly trying to screw them under false pretense of shared-sacrifice.
The actual games in "capitalist America" are only very occasionally dog-eat-dog zero-sum affairs. More often, they're iterated games rewarding not just consciously chosen cooperation but an optimistic, cooperate-by-default mindset. Politics, with its zero-sum elections and redistributions, is an exception. Its partisanship shouldn't be attributed to market processes, but to electoral/governmental ones.