I’m guest-blogging this week at the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, so check out my post on economics, microbial social evolution theory, and the Black Queen Hypothesis.

In the BEACON post I link to a great article by Matt Ridley on the similarities between free market economic theory and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. I didn’t show the best quote from Ridley’s article though, because it was too political for an academic website. When you read it, you’ll see how it fits the Antisocial Darwinist’s mission pretty much perfectly (links and emphasis added by me):

“Today, generally, Adam Smith is claimed by the Right, Darwin by the Left. In the American South and Midwest, where Smith’s individualist, libertarian, small-government philosophy is all the rage, Darwin is reviled for his contradiction of creation. Yet if the market needs no central planner, why should life need an intelligent designer? Conversely, in the average European biology laboratory you will find fervent believers in the individualist, emergent, decentralised properties of genomes who prefer dirigiste determinism to bring order to the economy.” — Matt Ridley