Group Selection and Altruism in a Cultural Evolutionary Setting and the Reduction of Malicious Envy in Economics

This paper represents the third part of a research work dealing with the integration of economic efficiency and equity considered as a no-envy concept. Specifically, I examine here the problem of reduction of the malicious envy in a cultural evolutionary context. In fact, both in the case of weak envy where an individual - through action is satisfied with minimum or even absent positive pay-offs in order to see the envied person deprived of the goods which he lacks, and when a situation is characterized by strong envy where the agent is even prepared to harm himself in order to worsen the position of the envied, the feeling of malicious envy turns out to be detrimental to society. Therefore, the problem of minimizing this kind of envy becomes a crucial issue in assuring an economic welfare for the society as a whole. I explore the possible contribution of group selection in the achievement of altruism which I reckon here as the true opposite of malicious envy as far as the degree of sociality is concerned. Then, I discuss the relationship among individual pre-disposition or personal attitude, cultural evolution (Boyd and Richerson's conformist transmission) and achievement of altruism considered as a form of ultrasociality according to Wilson and Sober's group selection (Simpson paradox) in the process of reduction of the malicious envy