[asa] Darwin and Saving for Retirement

In today's Wall Street Journal, there's an article titled "Why Your 'Lizard
Brain' Makes You a Bad Investor--and How to Battle Back" (no link available
without subscription). Here's what the article reports:

It's helpful to think of our brains as having two parts, says Boston money
manager Terry Burnham, author of 'Mean Markets and Lizard Brains' and
co-author of "Mean Genes." There's the analytical part, which is the part
that calculates that we need to save $542 a month for retirement. And then
there's what Mr. Burnham calls the 'lizard brain,' which includes the
instincts that helped our ancestors survive. And the lizard brain says its'
better to consume, so let's take that $542 and go shopping.

...

So why do we strive for more? . . . 'There isn't necessarily a stop
mecnanism in us that says, Relax, you've got enough,' notes Robert Trivers,
an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.
'We've evolved to be maximizing machines.'

...

For our ancestors to survive, they had to be good at spotting patterns, such
as figuring out when and where they were likely to find wild animals, fish
and other foods. But relying on past patterns can be a disaster if you're
hunting for winners in today's markets.

Does Darwinism apply to social behaviours such as spending vs. saving
income?

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Received on Wed Oct 25 18:38:04 2006