Economic Natural Selection: Interpretation of Natural Selection as Economic Selection in the Evolutionary Process

Abstract

The paper proposes that natural selection hypothesis in the theory of evolution can properly be interpreted as economic selection in that the species that have adapted successfully to their changing environment through the optimizing economic behaviors resulting in efficient allocation of scarce resources have been selected by nature in the evolutionary process. It is the species’ optimizing rational economic behaviors rather than their superior intellectual or physical strength that are responsible for their being naturally selected. In that sense, natural selection may be interpreted as economic natural selection. The paper presents the evidence that the species that have survived the natural selection process in general including the human species behave rationally through constrained dynamic optimizing behaviors which result in efficient allocation of scarce resources through decentralized decision making without a central coordination or control with the result that such species are selected by nature over those that do not.