Derb – The idea that economics should be treated as a branch of Darwinian biology doesn’t strike me as that new. The founding economists of American Progressivism virtually all believed they were applying Darwinian principles to human affairs, from economics to the law. Indeed, Darwinism and economics have been joined at the hip from the get-go. Darwin himself was for the most part inspired by an economist, Thomas Malthus. The “struggle for existence,” Darwin explained, was simply “the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms.” Marx, another economist of a sort who was also indebted to Malthus, wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin (Darwin refused). In fact, I’ve often thought that Malthus doesn’t get nearly the blame he should for all sorts of problems. Virtually everything conservatives dislike about environmentalism, leftwing economics and the like can, to one extent or another, be laid at Malthus’s feet.

Anyway, there was a certain cognitive dissonance on the part of many who argued that economics was kind of biology. Environmentalists generally believe in laissez-faire when it comes to the natural world. But that’s the very last thing Progressives believed.