BQ 2022

Champion Briefs
2022-2023
Big Questions Brief
Resolved: Humans are

primarily driven by
self-interest.
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The Evidence Standard Big Questions 22-23
The Evidence Standard
Speech and Debate provides a meaningful and educational experience to all who are involved.
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These seven statements, while simple, represent the complex notion of what it means to
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Champion Briefs 5
Letter from the Editor Big Questions 22-23
Letter from the Editor
The Big Questions Debate Resolution for 2022-2023 is Resolved: Humans are primarily
driven by self-interest. This topic has me excited because it will force students to analyze a
descriptive question about humanity: what really drives our decision making? We debate all the
time about what should happen in the future, about policy or social justice, but we rarely have
a topic that requires us to analyze human nature. As a philosophy enthusiast, I’m jealous of
those of you who have an entire year to ponder this question.
The two most important pieces of advice I have this month concern the framing of the
resolution. Firstly, the debate over what constitutes self-interest is very significant, as the
affirmative can easily argue that any number of things are motivated by or related to self-
interest. The negative, on the other hand, needs to distinguish other motivations from self-
interest, and prove that those motivations can outweigh self-interest when people make
decisions. As such, be prepared to establish a very clear definition of self-interest, as that will
be very helpful in claiming ground during your debates.
The second piece of advice I have would be to remember that you’re debating about
what drives humans, not about the merits of human nature. Self-interest might be bad or good,
but that’s not the question of the resolution. Ultimately, your job is to analyze the various
motivations that humans have, and debate about which is the most significant. One can argue
that the benefits or costs of self-interest prove their importance in our decision making, but
that requires a bit of work to demonstrate.
The final thought I’ll leave you with is to keep your arguments straightforward. Without
clarity, there is a high risk that debates will have little clash, as each side debates right past the
other. Establish in plain terms what you believe motivates people, and why that proves your
side of the topic wrong or right – don’t get bogged down in the complicated concepts. As
always, I wish all of you the best of luck, and happy researching!
Michael Norton
Editor-in-Chief
Champion Briefs 6
Table of Contents Big Questions 22-23
Table of Contents
The Evidence Standard ....................................................................................... 5
Letter from the Editor ........................................................................................ 6
Table of Contents ............................................................................................... 7
Big Questions Debate Event Primer .................................................................. 10
Topic Analyses ................................................................................................. 14

Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda.................................................................................................... 15
Topic Analysis by Michael Norton ............................................................................................ 22
Topic Analysis by Adam Tomasi ................................................................................................ 27
General Information ......................................................................................... 33
Pro Arguments ................................................................................................. 46

PRO: Self-interest led to historical developments .................................................................... 47
PRO: Self Interest creates desirable outcomes ........................................................................ 51
PRO: Self Interest Pervades Human Society ............................................................................. 55
PRO: Self Interest is Evolutionary ............................................................................................. 58
PRO: Capitalism is Based on Self Interest ................................................................................. 62
PRO: Self-Interest Encompasses Friendship ............................................................................. 66
PRO: Self-Interest Encompasses Family Relationships ............................................................. 70
PRO: Enlightened Self-Interest ................................................................................................. 74
PRO: Reciprocal Altruism .......................................................................................................... 81
PRO: Self-Interest Inevitable .................................................................................................... 89
PRO: Self-Preservation ............................................................................................................. 93
PRO: Modern problems prove self-interest is the primary motivation .................................... 98
PRO: Compassionate self-interest ..........................................................................................106
PRO: Self-Interest motivates activism ....................................................................................110
PRO: Self-Interest is self-love. ................................................................................................116
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Pro Responses to Con Arguments ................................................................... 120

A/2: Sympathy ........................................................................................................................121
A/2: Complex Motivations ......................................................................................................126
A/2: Service and civic duty .....................................................................................................131
A/2: Self-Defeating Actions ....................................................................................................138
A/2: “Self-Interest” Inaccurate ...............................................................................................141
A/2: Noncapitalist Societies are Successful ............................................................................145
A/2: Humans are driven by social approval ............................................................................148
A/2: Humans are driven by family ..........................................................................................151
A/2: Humans fail to make self-interested decisions ...............................................................154
A/2: Humans are driven by moral responsibility ....................................................................158
A/2: Self-interest facilitates inequality ...................................................................................161
A/2: Unchecked Self-interest leads to disaster ......................................................................165
A/2: Self-Interest is overstated...............................................................................................169
A/2: Humans are cooperative by nature ................................................................................172
A/2: Self-Interest corrupts economic systems .......................................................................176
Con Arguments .............................................................................................. 180

CON: Sympathy.......................................................................................................................181
CON: Complex Motivations ....................................................................................................185
CON: Service and Civic Duty ...................................................................................................190
CON: Self-Defeating Actions ...................................................................................................198
CON: “Self-Interest” Inaccurate..............................................................................................203
CON: Non-Capitalist Societies are Successful .........................................................................208
CON: Humans are driven by social approval ..........................................................................212
CON: Humans are driven by family ........................................................................................216
CON: Humans fail to make self-interested decisions .............................................................220
CON: Humans are driven by moral responsibility ..................................................................224
CON: Self-interest facilitates inequality..................................................................................228
CON: Unchecked Self-interest leads to disaster .....................................................................232
CON: Self-Interest is overstated .............................................................................................236
CON: Humans are cooperative by nature...............................................................................239
CON: Self-Interest corrupts economic systems ......................................................................243
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Con Responses to Pro Arguments ................................................................... 246

A/2: Self-interest led to historical developments ...................................................................247
A/2: Self-Interest creates desirable outcomes .......................................................................251
A/2: Self Interest Pervades Human Society ............................................................................255
A/2: Self Interest is Evolutionary ............................................................................................258
A/2: Capitalism is Based on Self Interest ................................................................................262
A/2: Self-Interest Encompasses Friendship ............................................................................265
A/2: Self-Interest Encompasses Family Relationships ............................................................268
A/2: Enlightened Self-Interest ................................................................................................272
A/2: Reciprocal Altruism .........................................................................................................279
A/2: Self-Interest Inevitable ...................................................................................................284
A/2: Self-Preservation ............................................................................................................291
A/2: Modern problems prove self-interest is the primary motivation ...................................296
A/2: Compassionate self-interest ...........................................................................................304
A/2: Self-Interest motivates activism .....................................................................................308
A/2: Self-Interest is self-love ..................................................................................................316
Champion Briefs 9
Champion Briefs
2022-2023
Big Questions Brief
Big Questions
Event Primer
Event Primer Big Questions 22-23
Big Questions Debate Event Primer
1. Overview
Big Questions Debate is a relatively new style of debate that combines elements of several
other styles of debate, but primarily focuses on topics that wouldn’t be addressed in other
formats.
This event primer is designed to give you a sense of the general structure of a Big Questions
Debate round, as well as some differences between the event and others.
2. Structure
Big Questions Debate is a somewhat unique format in that students can compete individually or
as a team. Normally, students are paired up or they compete exclusively one-on-one, but Big
Questions Debate presents an opportunity for debaters to choose.
The debate starts with the constructive speeches. The Affirmative starts with a 5 minute
constructive, then the Negative follows with their 5 minute constructive. Afterward is a
questioning segment that is much more like a PF crossfire than an LD cross-examination, in the
sense that it’s a back and forth where the affirmative and negative can ask questions.
After the constructive speeches and first questioning period, the Affirmative gets a 4 minute
rebuttal speech then the Negative gets a 4 minute rebuttal speech. Much like before, those
rebuttals are followed by a back and forth-style questioning segment.
The third speech is called the Consolidation speech, which lasts 3 minutes and starts with the
Affirmative followed by the Negative. This speech does not allow for new arguments, and is
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supposed to instead focus on the arguments that have become relevant throughout the clash
of the previous two speeches.
The next speech, the Rationale, is similar to a final focus speech in Public Forum Debate, but 3
minutes rather than 2. The general idea is that each team should provide a summation of their
side’s arguments and why they won based on those arguments, with no arguments being
introduced. As with the previous speeches, the Affirmative goes first followed by the Negative.
Each team gets 3 minutes of preparation time, which they can use throughout the debate
In Summary:
Affirmative Constructive – 5 minutes

Negative Constructive – 5 minutes
Q&A – 3 minutes
Affirmative Rebuttal – 4 minutes

Negative Rebuttal – 4 minutes
Q&A – 3 minutes
Affirmative Consolidation – 3 minutes

Negative Consolidation – 3 minutes
Affirmative Rationale – 3 minutes

Negative Rationale – 3 minutes
Prep Time – 3 minutes, divided and used as necessary
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3. Argumentation and Style
Big Questions Debate is supposed to ‘pit opposing worldviews against each other’ to explore
different levels of argumentation – including things like this year’s topic, Religion. As a result of
this, Big Questions Debates are theoretical – they are not pragmatic questions like one would
encounter in Public Forum Debate. Argumentation is therefore more philosophical in nature as
compared to some other styles of debate.
That being said, stylistically Big Questions Debate can often seem closer to a Public Forum
Debate than a Lincoln Douglas Debate. It’s typically not as fast, and not as technical – primarily
because the event has not become as popular on the national level compared to the other
major events. What this means is that argumentation needs to be philosophical but
approachable.
Champion Briefs 13
Champion Briefs
2022-2023
Big Questions Brief
Topic Analyses
Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda Big Questions 22-23
Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda
Resolved: Humans are primarily driven by self-interest.
Introduction
This year’s Big Questions topic is immensely significant. It poses crucial political,
economic, and social questions for debaters to ponder. The most successful teams will be able
to ponder abstract theoretical issues but also engage with examples and analogies to make the
topic relatable to judges.
What motivates human behavior? The answer is impossible to know for sure because
there is no way to see the inside of a person's head. Instead, answering this question requires
inductive reasoning – stitching together a hypothesis from the patterns and logic presented
through history. Debaters must consider a wide range of evidence, from contemporary
economic organizations to the prevalence of family relationships, and the ubiquity of charitable
contributions. Above all, debaters must be able to weave together the information into a
narrative that the judge believes is a plausible explanation for human behavior. Explanations
that overreach and present an unrealistic account of human motivation will be unpersuasive.
The best explanations will fit into the judge’s sense of self and identity.
Broadly, scholars believe that people are either motivated by self-interest or some other
community-oriented value system. Advocates of self-interest point to the rise of capitalism as
clear evidence that the desire to benefit oneself is integral to human behavior. On the other
hand, human beings engage in routine self-sacrifice and often put the well-being of others in
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front of their own. The reality is likely nuanced, with both self-interest and altruistic impulses
informing human behavior. Nevertheless, debaters must pick their side and defend it. The best
debaters will be able to clarify the deeply rooted ambiguity in this topic and leave the judge
feeling confident in their decision.
Strategy Considerations
Two questions control the course of this debate. First, what is “self-interest?” Second,
what is “primarily.” Framing these terms narrowly or broadly is just as important as winning the
substantive arguments in the round.
Pro teams must try to define “self-interest” broadly. The larger the set of actions
encompassed in self-interest, the more likely the judge is to believe that humans are driven by
it. Pro teams want to argue that self-interest encompasses any behavior that has an eventual
beneficial effect on the actor. This might include charitable behavior which improves self-
esteem, sacrifices that improve social standing, and costs that validate an urge. For a pro team,
the only actions that are not motivated by “self-interest” are abjectly and irredeemably self-
destructive. A pro team should appeal to a judge’s sense of self by emphasizing how much
value the individual derives from prosocial activities.
By contrast, con teams seek to define “self-interest” narrowly, so that judges will be
skeptical that it could be the primary driver of human experience. Con teams will contend that
self-interest relates to personal gain at the expense of others, which excludes self-validating
altruistic exercises. Under this framework, family and community-oriented behaviors would not
be self-interested because they confer benefits to more than the “self.” Con teams should
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emphasize that a restrictive definition of self-interest is necessary because otherwise, any
action taken by a human being could fall within the meaning of the term – after all, a "self" was
clearly "interested" in behaving that way.
The second key term in the wording of the topic is “primarily.” Pro teams should
attempt to cast this term to mean “substantial factor.” Under this interpretation, pro teams
need only prove that self-interest is a more substantial contributory to human behavior than
any single another factor. Pro teams should argue that people are inherently complex, and so
all the topic requires is that the pro team show that self-interest is the biggest single piece to
the puzzle. Of course, human action arises out of many vectors, but when we zoom out, self-
interest is the main thrust driving human behavior.
On the other hand, con teams should argue that it means “predominant factor.” Con
teams should argue that pro shoulders the burden of demonstrating that self-interest overrides
other human impulses and that human behavior is not attributable to any other impulse. Con
teams should contend that the presence of other important drivers of human behavior vitiates
the argument that self-interest is the “primary driver” of behavior. Although the difference
between “substantial” and “predominant” seems like an anodyne distinction, the result
radically shifts the burden of proof analysis required by the judge.
After defining key terms, debaters should consider how to approach the substance of
the topic. Most teams will make arguments about whether self-interest has informed important
political, social, and economic structures throughout history. Then, those teams will argue that
the particular structures they have chosen are the most important for determining what drives
human beings. For example, a pro team might argue that self-interest is the key ingredient in
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the education system, and then that the education system is the best way to understand
human nature. By contrast, a con team might argue that altruism is the primary driver for
charitable giving and that understanding charity is the best way to understand human behavior.
Teams that strategically choose which factors of life best represent human behavior will be in a
very strong position.
Affirmative Argumentation
The affirmative team should focus first and foremost on economic arguments. The
general capitalist disposition of the world’s largest economies is powerful evidence that self-
interest is a driving force behind human growth and development. Although economic systems
are hardly uniform, most economies have a significant market component, incentivize profit-
seeking, and reward self-interested behavior.
Capitalism is an economic system characterized by the private ownership of firms, a
competitive marketplace, and the free ability to conduct transactions. This system operated
based on the theory that individuals will make the most economically efficient decisions based
on their self-interest. Capitalism relies on the competition between multiple profit-seeking
firms to weed out economically non-viable ideas and distribute resources where they are most
needed.
Many economies are “mixed” between capitalism and some other form of economic
organization. The pure capitalist organization is rare because countries have national interests
apart from pure economic efficiency. As such, affirmative teams must argue that the hybrid
economic models which are present in most economies are still sufficiently capitalist to support
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the inference that they are driven by self-interest. They must say that although many
economies are mixed, they are still predominantly capitalist.
Debaters can make this argument by pointing toward the market-oriented movement
of large countries over the last century. Countries that embraced a more command-oriented
social economy in the early 20th century like Russia and China have now opened substantial
parts of their countries up to market forces. Indeed, the desire to agglomerate wealth has led
to the growth of massive conglomerate industries across the formerly communist world.
Affirmative teams should point to the move towards the market-economic organization as
persuasive evidence that self-interest motivates human behavior. By contrast, the non-market
elements of these economies can be explained away as political or ideological artifices, not any
intrinsic aspect of human behavior. Affirmative teams can argue that even within non-market
economies, people still compete for resources. This behind-the-scenes competition is more
evidence that even when market behavior is regulated, human beings still find ways to indulge
their self-interest.
Affirmative teams should argue that economic organization is the most important driver
of human behavior because it is an objective measure of how people act. Other political and
social institutions are obfuscated by multiple layers of explanation and overlapping justification.
But economics provides for a simple, totalizing view of human behavior that any judge can
easily understand.
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Negative Argumentation
Negative teams should start by considering arguments about human social institutions
like family, community, and morality.
Social institutions provide the clearest counterpoint to economic institutions because
humans rarely discuss them in terms of self-interest. Instead, social institutions, by their very
nature, derive their value from community values and group behavior. People often sacrifice
terribly for their communities in a manner that is difficult to reconcile with a pure self-interest
view of human behavior.
One important argument for the con to consider is that human behavior is
fundamentally derived from social morality. Different societies have different values, and
human beings merely reflect the collective judgments of their peers. This argument explains
why some people are willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of others – because the
importance of the community is placed above the importance of the individuals. This
understanding of social morality helps explain why people give to charity, enlist in the armed
forces, or participate in civic organizations.
This argument is also powerful because it accounts for more self-interested people. If
social morality informs an individual’s values, then people who are part of self-interested
societies will embody those values as well. In this view, there is no strict tradeoff between
social morality and self-interest, but social morality occupies a more fundamental place in the
firmament.
Negative teams should argue that social institutions provide the most fundamental
picture of individual motivation because they pervade all other institutions. Before human
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beings have a particular economic system, they have peer relationships. As such, peer
relationships precede other forms of engagement.
This topic is likely to challenge debaters to get into the weeds of philosophy and history.
Good luck!
About Jakob Urda
Jakob grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from the University of Chicago with
a BA in Political Science and is currently seeking a Juris Doctorate from the Georgetown
University Law Center. Jakob debated for Stuyvesant High School where he won Blake, GMU,
Ridge, Scarsdale, Columbia, the NCFL national championship, and amassed 11 bids. He coached
the winners of the NCFL national tournament, Harvard, and Blake.
Champion Briefs 21
Topic Analysis by Michael Norton Big Questions 22-23
Topic Analysis by Michael Norton
Introduction
I'm very excited about the upcoming Big Questions Debate topic because it should
present debaters with a great opportunity to discuss the basics of human nature, and how that
influences our behavior. Unlike a Public Forum or Lincoln-Douglas topic, this resolution will
require students to go a level deeper in their reasoning. With an abstract resolution like this
one, it will be difficult to contextualize your arguments but it should also lead to some very
deep conversations and interesting rounds. In the majority of debates, success will be
dependent on framing your arguments in an understandable way, given the complexity of the
subject matter. Ultimately, determining humanity’s inner motivations is a daunting task for a
debate round, so try to keep things grounded given the scale of the topic. Overall, I think this
resolution should be very fun for all students because it forces us to confront a question we
don’t normally address in competitive debate: what is our motivation?
Framing
The terms of the resolution are intentionally broad, leading to a more interesting
debate, but to succeed, debaters will need to define those terms. For debaters in the
affirmative, the resolution presents a huge strategic advantage by including the word
"primarily." By including the word primarily, the resolution doesn't require the affirmative to
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defend self-interest as an exclusive motivation, but rather as the most significant motivation
among others. This greatly lowers the affirmative's burden, but the negative can frame the
debate in a way that limits that advantage. The more restrictive the definition of "primarily" is,
the more advantageous that definition would be for the negative because it makes it more
difficult for the affirmative to defend other motivations in tandem with self-interest.
The other crucial aspect of the definition debate would be the meaning of "self-
interest." When considering self-interest, there are the obvious things to consider: safety,
financial stability, and friendship – the obvious things that humans want daily. However, self-
interest can include much more than simple pleasures; if self-interest is interpreted more
broadly, that could also include the interest to live in an equal, fair society where people treat
each other ethically. In that sense, the definition of self-interest defines an enormous amount
of ground in the debate. Negative teams will try to argue that humans are motivated by other
factors, like altruism, but affirmative teams can absorb most of that ground by arguing that
altruism is motivated by self-interest. Negative teams therefore should be prepared to argue
for a more limited version of self-interest, because that will limit the other team’s arguments
substantially.
Affirmative Argumentation
Teams on the affirmative have a lot of ground to play with, but I think the most effective
way to break down our motivations would be by looking at the ways that motivation manifest –
economically, socially, and politically. From an economic perspective, humanity has embraced
capitalism, an economic system designed to allow individuals to make the best decisions for
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themselves. Capitalism definitionally implies the existence of self-interest because it pits
individuals against one another – without competition, there cannot be innovation in a
capitalist system. For that reason, affirmative teams can easily argue that humans are self-
interested because they’ve designed their economic systems in a way that rewards self-
interested behavior.
Furthermore, capitalism also enables another aspect of self-interest: hoarding
resources. The obscenely wealthy keep enormous amounts of money for themselves, choosing
not to use those resources for the greater good. Negative teams can point out that wealthy
individuals like Bill Gates donate billions of dollars to charity, proving that self-interest is not the
primary motivator for some. While charitable donations like Gates’ are admirable, they don’t
prove these individuals aren’t still self-interested by holding onto the majority of their wealth. If
billionaires like Gates were not motivated by self-interest, presumably they would share a much
greater portion of their money with society. This greed supports the notion that humans are
ultimately motivated by self-interest first and foremost, which should be a difficult premise for
negative teams to counter.
Breaking down the social motivations, affirmative teams can also argue that self-interest
guides our interactions with others. Society is built on mutual respect and a system of laws and
expectations that guide our behaviors. For example, we're expected to treat other people the
same way that we would like to be treated. Those social expectations are created not out of
pure altruism, but rather out of our own desire to create a safe space for ourselves and our
loved ones. Affirmative debaters should posit that we don’t act ethically because it’s the right
thing to do in the abstract – we act ethically because we want others to treat us properly in
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return, and we know that society would frown upon us if we chose not to act correctly. The
emphasis on individuality and freedom in modern society proves this: we’ve constructed our
societies so that we are as safe and comfortable as possible.
From a political perspective, it's pretty easy to understand how self-interest influences
voting and policy. First, as an individual voter, you're typically voting for the candidate that
reflects your interests and opinions as a citizen of that nation. Second, if self-interest were not
the primary motivator, then our policies would reflect a very different reality. Voters very rarely
support restrictions on freedom, even when they are in the public's best interest. Even if a
policy would improve well-being overall, voters may not support that policy if it threatens their
position in society.
Negative Argumentation
Negative debaters are in an interesting position because much of their job will be
arguing about whether or not motivation is included under the umbrella of self-interest. As
you'll read later on in the arguments section of our brief, there are several potential
motivations to consider: empathy, and love for one's family, among others. To succeed in the
negative, you'll need to define these motivations as completely separate from self-interest, but
you'll also need to demonstrate that these motivations can be more influential than self-
interest.
Crucially, I think negative debaters need to establish that humans are ethical creatures.
For self-interest to be our primary motivation, would imply that it supersedes our other
motivations, yet there are countless examples of humans choosing to protect or help others
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even when it's not in their self-interest. Humans have studied morality for ages, devoting
enormous amounts of time and resources to determine what would be the "right" thing to do,
completely independent of self-interest. Entire moral systems, notably utilitarianism,
encourage humans to act not out of self-interest, but out of a desire to help the greatest
number of people as much as possible. So long as negative teams can prove that our ethical
obligations guide our behavior just as much as self-interest, they should be able to win any
debate.
Conclusion
Human motivations are a mystery that we may never solve – they're extremely
complex and impossible to know with any degree of certainty. Debating this topic will be very
abstract, and will require a great deal of generalization and inference about human behavior
throughout time and across cultural boundaries. Ultimately, winning debates on this topic will
require a clear narrative about what guides our behaviors, and a very specific vision of what it
means to be "primarily driven by self-interest." This topic cannot be proven wrong or right with
the biggest impacts – it will require clear argumentation and a direct framing of the grounds of
the debate.
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Topic Analysis by Adam Tomasi Big Questions 22-23
Topic Analysis by Adam Tomasi
The 2022-23 Big Questions Debate topic, “Resolved: Humans are primarily driven by
self-interest,” addresses one of the most heavily debated questions in philosophy, psychology,
economics, evolutionary biology, and other disciplines. The resolution importantly makes a
descriptive claim, rather than a normative one. The topic asks debaters to argue whether
humans are primarily self-interested, not whether they should be this way. Debaters will
inevitably discuss whether self-interested behavior promotes or hinders social welfare, yet at
the end of the day, the topic focuses on how human beings presently act, not how they ought
to act. The PRO could utilize the rhetorical move that while selfishness is not ideal, we cannot
escape the reality of imperfect humans. Both sides, however, still have plenty of normative
arguments to make on a topic that may appear purely descriptive at first glance. More
generally, both sides can strategically utilize the nuanced literature, from brain studies to
philosophical essays, that examines the complex motivations driving human decision-making.
This topic analysis will examine how PRO and CON can think creatively about the resolution
beyond the straightforward, empirical question it appears to ask and suggest how each side
may use the best arguments available to counter the other's strategies.
One of the most creative PRO arguments on this topic is the argument that humans are
primarily driven by self-interest because egoism is demonstrably the root of many societal
problems. Most PRO authors will understandably assume that the pursuit of self-interest is
Champion Briefs 27
morally legitimate (this is where normative assumptions come in), but PRO debaters’ thesis can
be “I agree that selfishness is morally wrong, but there is so much selfishness in our society that
humans necessarily must be driven by self-interest, first and foremost.” To read this PRO
argument strategically, debaters should read the evidence about multiple examples of
problems that we can attribute to selfishness. The brief includes examples from climate change
to political polarization and crime. If the case only focused on one problem like climate change,
CON could fairly argue that selfishness may be the root of one large issue, yet it is not humans’
primary motivation in general. If the PRO addresses multiple examples of selfish behavior that
harms society, they will be in a stronger position to generalize about human motivations.
There are still some compelling arguments that CON can use to refute this creative PRO
case. First, CON can argue that more complex motivations lead people to harm others or to dig
in their heels and refuse to address problems like climate change. Selfishness might be one
component, but political ideology can often be more important than self-interest in motivating
selfish political positions. For example, although a wealthy person can be motivated by financial
self-interest to oppose higher taxes on the rich, people with far less money might share the
same position because of their libertarian ideology. And second, CON can refute the PRO’s
pessimism about human nature (“we’re doomed to be selfish; look at the problems egoism
causes”) with brain studies that demonstrate that humans are driven by a mix of self-interest
and altruism. CON is not denying that humans can be selfish regarding some crucial issues in
society, yet argues that we cannot generalize from those problems to a larger conclusion about
human nature. The PRO case in question is nonetheless strategic because it speaks to our
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intuitions about selfishness being a widespread issue without relying on the expansive claim
from psychological egoism that “all interests are self-interests.”
Another set of creative PRO arguments revolves around the ideas of enlightened self-
interest and reciprocal altruism. In other words, self-interest is the primary motivation for
humans to cooperate and help each other in ways that are typically associated with
selflessness. These PRO arguments are strategic because they interact directly with CON
arguments about examples where humans serve others and thereby curtail their selfishness.
PRO is arguing here that self-interest, ironically, remains the primary motivation for regulating
the pursuit of one's interests by accounting for the needs of others. The premise of reciprocal
altruism, connected to evolutionary biology, is “I’ll help you because you help me.” Enlightened
self-interest is less transactional because it suggests that even if people that we help will not
directly help us back, we indirectly benefit from serving others in some way. PRO teams should
be careful with avoiding contradictions between these arguments and the case described
above. The “egoism bad” PRO case is more pessimistic about human nature, whereas cases
about reciprocal altruism and enlightened self-interest are more optimistic. Were you to read
both arguments as separate contentions, CON could introduce a fair point that the PRO should
lose for double turning themselves. On the one hand, the contention that selfishness is the root
of pollution, crime, etc. casts doubt on how much humans are motivated by reciprocal altruism
or enlightened self-interest. On the other hand, if humans do cooperate and help others
because that's in their interest, this only proves that issues like climate denial have to do with
root causes besides egoism. Debaters on both sides should make sure to write their cases
Champion Briefs 29
according to a consistent thesis, and they can always write multiple cases to use on each side if
they’d like to have different strategic options.
One of the most creative CON arguments on this topic is that “self-interest” is an
inaccurate description of human desires, especially in the context of interpersonal relationships
or market exchange. My favorite card in the brief, from Stefano Fiori, is tagged as “self-interest
cannot be known in advance—it can only be known after the persuasive process of exchange is
complete.” In other words, the first step of market exchange is persuading someone that you
can meet what you perceive to be their interest, and the other party does the same towards
you. Fiori argues that “if self-interest were perfectly known” in advance, there would be no
reason to engage in the dialogic process of transactions. Thus, self-interest “is not the premise
but the conclusion of the process.” Self-interest could not be the prior motivation of exchange
because we only have a fully formed idea of what our interests are after the transaction plays
out. To read this CON argument strategically, debaters need to offer an alternative theory of
why human beings seek out an exchange with one another. PRO can very easily argue that if
self-interest is only the outcome of, not the motivation behind, an exchange we would have no
coherent explanation for why humans offer to trade in the first place. CON could argue that
humans’ innate desire for social ties and recognition, or the search for meaning (feeling
accomplished or productive), inspires exchange apart from basic survival needs.
There are compelling arguments that PRO can make against the CON thesis that self-
interest is the outcome, not the motive. First, if an exchange is about persuading another
person according to what you perceive their interests to be, one has to believe that the other
party possesses fully-formed interests. If self-interest could not exist before the exchange,
Champion Briefs 30
neither party would have any confidence in the other’s needs or desires. And second, if PRO
uses the broadest definition of self-interest to include any action which gives humans some
personal satisfaction, that would mean that CON’s alternative motivations for exchange
collapse to self-interest. The CON case presented here is still strategic because of the
philosophical rigor underlying the position. Fiori’s argument about self-interest being the
product of exchange is similar to poststructuralist philosophers’ critique of “the self,” that the
self does not exist as an objective, independent entity apart from the experiences which
construct the self after the fact. Whereas brain studies may rely upon conventional definitions
of self-interest and altruism to guide experiments and interpret results, philosophers encourage
us to be a lot clearer on what we mean when we use certain phrases like "self-interest,” which
requires more abstract investigation into the fundamentals of desires and relationships.
Another set of creative CON arguments has to do with the idea that humans regularly
do things that go against their interests. The brief includes three warrants for this argument.
First, many people voted for Donald Trump against their interests; one example was people on
ACA health insurance plans voting for someone who promised to repeal Obamacare. Second,
Freud’s theory of the “death drive,” quite literally that we desire our death1, is related to the
idea of “repetition compulsion,” or the tendency to return to undesirable situations and get in
our own way.2 And third, human brains are hardwired to prioritize short-term gains over long-

1
Kendra Cherry, “Freud’s Theories of Life and Death Instincts,” Very Well Mind, March 28, 2022,
https://www.verywellmind.com/life-and-death-instincts-2795847
2
Olivia Guy-Evans, “Repetition Compulsion: Why Do We Repeat the Past?” Simply Psychology, June 7, 2022,
https://www.simplypsychology.org/repetition-
compulsion.html#:~:text=Some%20examples%20of%20repetition%20compulsion,of%20violence%20later%20in%
20life.
Champion Briefs 31
term benefits, even if those long-term benefits are in our ultimate self-interest. These CON
arguments are strategic because the egoism versus altruism debate typically takes the idea of
“rational self-interest” for granted, which begs the question of whether humans are truly
rational. If humans are regularly irrational, it would be harder to prove that they are primarily
motivated by self-interest.
There are two arguments that PRO debaters could consider making against the CON
position that humans are irrational. First, even though humans will often be irrational at a
deeper psychological level, we still think about self-interest when making decisions. Whether
we’re correct about our interests or not, humans still use instrumental rationality to determine
the best means to the ends that they hold (“if I do X, I’ll achieve Y, and Y is in my interest”). And
second, PRO can return to the broadest definition of self-interest as whatever brings us
personal satisfaction to say that if humans are hardwired to prioritize short-term benefits over
their long-term interests, this thought process is ultimately what we desire to follow.
The resolution is short and straightforward, on the one hand, yet philosophically
nuanced on the other hand. This topic analysis focused on the more creative PRO and CON
cases because debaters are more likely to win debates on this topic if they think outside the
box. The evidence in this brief should inspire you to think about even more creative positions
which no one has yet anticipated, which will give you the greatest edge against opponents
whose cases and blocks are not ready to adapt to your approach to the resolution.
Champion Briefs 32
Champion Briefs
2022-2023
Big Questions Brief
General
Information
General Information Big Questions 22-23
General Information
Foreword: We, at Champion Briefs, feel that having deep knowledge about a topic is just as
valuable as formulating the right arguments. Having general background knowledge about the
topic area helps debaters form more coherent arguments from their breadth of knowledge. As
such, we have compiled general information on the key concepts and general areas that we feel
will best suit you for in- and out-of-round use. Any strong strategy or argument must be built
from a strong foundation of information; we hope that you will utilize this section to help build
that foundation.
Champion Briefs 34
Defining Self-Interest
The concept of self-interest is used in two distinct ways. It sometimes refers to what is
in a person’s interests, to well-being understood as what makes their life go well. Self-interest
can also refer to a motive or disposition of character: persons are said to act from self-interest
when they aim at their own good or to be self-interested when they are disposed to pursue
their own good.
Are humans always really motivated by self-interest? Psychological egoists believe that
all actions, including apparently other-regarding actions, spring from self-interested
motivations. Some arguments for this view depend on a fallacious inference from the claim that
a person gets pleasure from the satisfaction of an other-regarding desire to the claim that the
agent acts in order to get pleasure. Recent appeals to the assumptions of economic theory also
fail to establish the universality of self-interested motivation. The weak assumption that
individuals aim to maximize preference-satisfaction does not entail that they are self-
interested. Stronger assumptions about self-regarding interests used in the explanation of
behaviour in markets cannot be extended to explanations of behaviour in non-market settings.
Individuals’ identities are constituted by a variety of roles, relations and commitments, and in
different institutional contexts under different descriptions individuals can have distinct and
sometimes conflicting conceptions of their interests.
What is the relation of self-interest and morality? Classical theories of morality claim
that the virtuous life is the best life for the individual. This view ties morality to what is in a
person’s interests. But this does not entail that agents are necessarily motivated by self-
interest. In contrast, some contractual theories tie morality to self-interested motivation: moral
rules are those that agents motivated by self-interest would agree upon in order to realize their
long-term good given a rough equality of power. Ethical theories in the Kantian tradition reject
any justification of ethical obligations that appeals to self-interest. In claiming that
commitments to others and excellences of character are part of the good life, however,
classical theories can avoid the more plausible versions of Kantian objections.
Champion Briefs 35
Empathy as a motivator
In a series of ingeniously designed experiments, Batson has accumulated evidence for

what he calls the empathy-altruism thesis. In arguing for this thesis, Batson conceives of
empathy as empathic concern or what others would call sympathy. More specifically, he
characterized it in terms of feelings of being sympathetic, moved by, being compassionate,
tender, warm and soft-hearted towards the other’s plight (Batson et al. 1987, 26) The task of
his experiments consists in showing that empathy/sympathy does indeed lead to genuinely
altruistic motivation, where the welfare of the other is the ultimate goal of my helping
behavior, rather than to helping behavior because of predominantly egoistic motivations.
According to the egoistic interpretation of empathy–related phenomena, empathizing with
another person in need is associated with a negative feeling or can lead to a heightened
awareness of the negative consequences of not helping; such as feelings of guilt, shame, or
social sanctions. Alternatively, it can lead to an enhanced recognition of the positive
consequences of helping behavior such as social rewards or good feelings. Empathy according
to this interpretation induces us to help through mediation of purely egoistic motivations. We
help others only because we recognize helping behavior as a means to egoistic ends. It allows
us to reduce our negative feelings (aversive arousal reduction hypothesis), to avoid
“punishment,” or to gain specific internal or external “rewards” (empathy-specific punishment
and empathy-specific reward hypotheses).
Notice however that in arguing for the empathy-altruism thesis, Batson is not claiming
that empathy always induces helping behavior. Rather, he argues against the predominance of
an egoistic interpretation of an agent’s motivational structure. He argues for the existence of
genuinely altruistic motivations and more specifically for the claim that empathy causes such
genuinely altruistic motivation. These genuinely altruistic motives (together with other egoistic
motives) are taken into account by the individual agent in deliberating about whether or not to
help. Even for Batson, the question of whether the agent will act on his or her altruistic
motivations depends ultimately on how strong they are and what costs the agent would incur
in helping another person.
Champion Briefs 36
The basic set up of Batson’s experiments consists in the manipulation of the situation of
the experimental subjects (dependent on the egoistic alternative to be argued against) and the
manipulation of empathy/sympathy felt for an observed target in need. The decisive evidence
for the empathy/sympathy-altruism thesis is always the recorded behavior of the subject, who
is in a high empathy condition and in a situation where his helping behavior can not plausibly be
seen as a means for the satisfaction of a personal goal. Since here is not the place to extensively
describe the details of Batson’s experiments, a brief description of the experimental set up—
focusing on Batson’s argument against the aversive arousal interpretation of empathy—and a
brief evaluation of the success of his general argumentative strategy has to suffice (for more
details see Batson 1991 and 2011). In all of his experiments, Batson assumes—based on
Stotland (1969) and others—that empathy/sympathy can be manipulated either by
manipulating the perceived similarity between subjects and targets or by manipulating the
perspective taking attitude of the subjects. Empathy according to these assumptions can be
increased by enhancing the perceived similarity between subject and target or by asking the
subject to imagine how the observed person would feel in his or her situation rather than
asking the subject to attend carefully to the information provided. [Note also that instructing
the subject to imagine how they themselves would feel in the other’s situation, rather than
instructing them to imagine how the other feels, is associated with an increase in personal
distress and not only sympathetic feelings. (Batson et al. 1997b and Lamm, Batson, and Decety
2007).]
In trying to argue against the aversive arousal reduction interpretation, Batson also
manipulates the ease with which a subject can avoid helping another person (in this case taking
his place when they see him getting electric shocks). He reasons that if empathy leads to
genuinely altruistic motivations, subjects in the high empathy/easy escape condition should still
be willing to help. If they were only helping in order to reduce their own negative feelings, they
would be expected to leave in this situation, since leaving is the less costly means for reaching
an egoistic goal. As Batson was happy to report, the results confirmed his empathy/sympathy-
altruism hypothesis, not only in the above experiments but also in experiments testing other
Champion Briefs 37
alternative interpretations of empathy such as the empathy- specific punishment and the
empathy-specific award hypotheses.
Researchers generally agree in finding Batson’s experimental research program and the
accumulated evidence for the empathy-altruism thesis to be impressive. Yet they disagree
about how persuasive one should ultimately regard his position. In particular it has been
pointed out that his experiments have limited value, since they target only very specific egoistic
accounts of why empathy might lead to helping behavior. Batson is not able to dismiss
conclusively every alternative egoistic interpretation. In addition, it has been claimed that
egoism has the resources to account for the result of his experiments. For example, one might
challenge the validity of Batson’s interpretation by speculating whether empathy/sympathy
leads to a heightened awareness of the fact that one will be troubled by bad memories of
seeing another person in need, if one does nothing to help him or her. In this case even an
egoistically motivated person would help in the high empathy/easy escape condition. (For this
reply and various other egoistic interpretations of Batson’s experiments see Sober and Wilson
1998, 264–271).
Champion Briefs 38
Ethics and human behavior
Ethics is a human universal. People have moral values: that is, they accept standards
according to which their conduct is judged either right or wrong, good or evil. The particular
norms by which moral actions are judged vary to some extent from individual to individual, and
from culture to culture, but value judgments concerning human behavior are passed on in all
cultures. This universality raises the question of whether moral sense is part of human nature
or one more dimension of our biological makeup, and whether ethical values may be the
product of biological evolution, rather than the prescriptions of religious and cultural traditions.
There are many academic traditions concerned with the rational grounds for morality,
such as deductive theories that seek to discover the axioms or fundamental principles that
determine what is morally correct on the basis of direct moral intuition; or theories like logical
positivism or existentialism that negate the rational foundations of morality, reducing moral
principles to social decisions or to emotional and other irrational grounds. Since the publication
of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, philosophers as well as scientists have
attempted to find, in the evolutionary process, the justification for moral behavior.
Evolution raises distinctive questions about the origins and tenets of moral behavior.
When did ethical behavior come about in human evolution? Have humans had an ethical sense
from the beginning of the species Homo sapiens? Did Neanderthals hold moral values? What
about Homo erectus and Homo habilis? And how did the moral sense evolve? Was it directly
promoted by natural selection? Or did it come about as a by-product of some other attribute
(such as rationality) that was the direct target of selection? Alternatively, is the moral sense an
outcome of cultural evolution rather than of biological evolution?
There are two questions to examine when considering if ethical behavior is biologically
determined: Is the capacity for ethics—the proclivity to judge human actions as either right or
wrong—determined by the biological nature of human beings? And are the systems or codes of
ethical norms accepted by human beings biologically determined? A similar distinction can be
Champion Briefs 39
made with respect to language. The question of whether the capacity for symbolic creative
language is determined by our biological nature is different from the question whether the
particular language we speak—English, Spanish, Chinese, etc.—is biologically determined,
which in the case of language, obviously it is not.
I propose that the moral evaluation of actions emerges from human rationality, or, in
Darwin’s terms, from our highly developed intellectual powers. Our high intelligence allows us
to anticipate the consequences of our actions with respect to other people and, thus, to judge
these actions as good or evil in terms of their consequences for others. But I also propose that
the norms according to which we decide which actions are good and which actions are evil are
largely culturally determined, although conditioned by biological predispositions.
The first proposition advanced, fully consistent with Darwin’s ideas, is that humans,
because of their high intellectual powers, are necessarily inclined to make moral judgments and
to accept ethical values, that is, to evaluate certain kinds of actions as either right or wrong. The
claim made is that moral behavior is a necessary outcome of the biological makeup of humans,
a product of their evolution. It is the exalted degree of rationality that we humans have
achieved that makes us moral beings. Humans are Homo moralis because they are Homo
rationalis.
This proposition does not imply that the norms of morality are also biologically
determined or that they are unambiguous consequences of our rationality. Independent of
whether or not humans have a biologically determined moral sense, it remains to be
ascertained whether particular moral prescriptions are in fact determined by the biological
nature of humans, or whether they are products of cultural evolution, be these chosen by
society or established by religious beliefs, or even selected according to individual preferences.
Even if we conclude that people cannot avoid having moral standards of conduct, the choice of
the particular standards used for judgment might be arbitrary or a product of cultural
evolution. The need for moral values does not necessarily determine the moral values, just as
the capacity for language does not determine which language we shall speak.
Champion Briefs 40
I argue that the moral norms according to which we evaluate particular actions as either
morally good or morally bad (as well as the grounds that may be used to justify the moral
norms) are products of cultural evolution, not of biological evolution. The norms of morality
belong, in this respect, to the same category of phenomena as political and religious
institutions, or the arts, sciences, and technology, as well as the particular languages we speak.
The moral codes, like these other products of human culture, are often consistent with the
biological predispositions of the human species. But many moral norms are formulated
independently of biological necessity or predisposition, simply because they don’t have
necessary biological consequences. Biological welfare (survival and reproduction) is obviously
not the determinant of all ethical norms in any given society or culture.
Champion Briefs 41
How relationships guide action
So we’ve endorsed the principle of rarity’s claim about what kinds of things can have
more value due to their rarity. Assuming you’re on board with this, I now turn to the question
of why friendships and loving relationships are valuable. For simplicity I am going to focus on
friendships, but will extend my argument to loving relationships briefly at the end. As you have
probably guessed, I think that what at least partially constitutes the value of these kinds of
relationships is that there’s something rare about them.
Some have claimed that what constitutes friendship is consistent altruistic behavior
toward the friend. We can at least say that friendship obtains when we act on the basis of
desires to benefit the other without desiring some return significantly more frequently than
normal. Call this the skewed altruism view. On this view, what constitutes a friendship is that
each member in the relationship acts on the basis of an abnormally-skewed-toward-altruism
ratio of altruistic to self-interested desires. Even if you don’t think skewed altruism is
what constitutes a friendship, it does seem at least that friendships consistently yield skewed
altruism, and so this can still be a cause of value in our friendships. Indeed, I frequently go out
of my way to help my friends, and they tend to do the same for me.
Many readers might be thinking that, actually, friendships are constituted by what is
known as reciprocal altruism. However, in reciprocal altruism, one may benefit another with
the ultimate desire to have some benefit returned. This is a self-interested motivation.
Networking could be an example of this sort of reciprocal altruism. Genuine altruism, on the
other hand, is characterized by the desire to benefit another without expecting to be benefitted
as a result. If the benefit is reciprocated, then all well and good; but it doesn’t expect that
reciprocation, nor is it motivated by any such expectation.
Now it’s very difficult to test whether or not someone is acting from genuine or
reciprocal altruism. After all, any putative case of genuine altruism could be reciprocally-
motivated altruism in disguise. Consequently, introspective arguments and intuitions must
Champion Briefs 42
suffice to support the claim I’m going to make about genuine altruism. I hope I can convince
you with these tools.
Imagine that you have a best friend called Brad. Without you knowing it, tragically, Brad
has become paralyzed and mute. Now imagine moreover that you are a subject in the Good
Samaritan experiment, and that when you are sent off to give your talk, the victim moaning on
the ground in your path is Brad. You see him coughing and expressing pain. I can’t be sure
about you, but I would immediately assist Brad without expecting any return. Indeed, even
after I recognize that due to his condition Brad cannot bring me any benefits in return, I would
still want to help him. I wouldn’t even ask myself, ‘Should I help him out of principle, since he is
a friend?’ before rushing to help. No! I would behave with genuine altruism toward Brad,
principles or self-interest be damned. This itself shows that friends seem to behave genuinely
altruistically more frequently toward each other than toward strangers. This isn’t to say that we
never act from the expectation of reciprocal altruism in friendships; it is only to show that we
behave out of genuine altruism significantly more frequently than normal. I contend, then, that
friends demonstrate a rare frequency of genuine altruism toward one another.
Altruistic actions are thought to be morally good, and so they are candidates for the
principle of rarity. Most of us believe that altruism is morally good. I suppose if you thought
that altruistic actions were always morally bad, then my argument wouldn’t go through for you;
but I am willing to bet that most of you, if not all, won’t bite that bullet. You might also think
that perhaps the fact that we act out of principle much more frequently in friendships – we act
on the principle that we ought to help our friends – makes friendships more valuable. However,
as we have seen from the Ultimatum Game, acting out of principle happens frequently, so the
principle of rarity wouldn’t apply here. Also, acting out of principle isn’t unique to friendships.
We act out of principle in countless situations, so it is hard to see why principled actions would
make friendships in particular more valuable.
What makes friendships valuable, then, is rather that they contain a higher-than-normal
frequency of genuine altruism, and genuine altruism is extremely rare. In this world of mostly
Champion Briefs 43
self-interested behavior, when Jon or Nathaniel consistently behave genuinely altruistically

toward me, and I toward them, I value these friendships so much more. The same applies to
loving relationships. If I love Jenny, then I will behave genuinely altruistically toward her much
more frequently than I would with other people, and she will do the same to me if she loves
me.
This is a way to see the glass as half full. Sure it’s the case that most of the time we act
to satisfy self-interested desires; but this makes our friendships and loving relationships rare
havens for altruism – haven that we should, and I think do, cherish deeply.
Champion Briefs 44
Works Cited
Ayala, Francisco. Evolution of Ethics; what can evolution tell us about morality? 12/5/17.
https://humansandnature.org/the-evolution-of-ethics/
Oniell, John. Self-Interest. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2001.
https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/self-interest/v-1
Steuber, Karsten. Empathy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2019.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/empathy/#EmpAltMot
Tippens, Daniel. Why self-interest makes relationships valuable. Philosophy Now. 2016.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/112/Why_Self-
Interest_Makes_Relationships_Valuable

Champion Briefs 45
Champion Briefs
2022-2023
Big Questions Brief
Pro Arguments
Pro Arguments Big Questions 22-23

PRO: Self-interest led to historical developments
Argument: Many developments in human history which we consider constitutive of the human
experience are the result of rational self-interest.
Warrant: Self interest is prosocial
Elias Beck. “Economics in the Industrial Revolution” August 2019. History Crunch.
https://www.historycrunch.com/economics-in-the-industrial-revolution.html#/
“Capitalism was a central component of classical liberalism in the societies of the

Industrial Revolution. Classical liberalism was an ideology that was based on
economic individualism and the principles of: economic freedom, private ownership,
competition, self-interest and self-reliance. In general, all of these principles focused
on little or no government intervention in the economy and as much economic liberty
for individuals as possible. This contrasted with the previously mentioned mercantilism,
which favored heavy government regulation and intervention. The economic ideals of
classical liberalism first emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries and quickly shifted
European society from left-sided mercantilism to right-sided capitalism. Classical liberal
societies were also based on the economic principles of laissez-fair capitalism. Often,
laissez-faire capitalism is also referred to as free market capitalism or market capitalism.
Simply put, laissez-faire translates to ‘leave us alone’ meaning that the government
should remain out of the economy and instead allow individuals to freely carry out their
own economic affairs. Historically, laissez-faire capitalism was most common during the
18th and 19th centuries in the timeframe of the Industrial Revolution. As such, England
during the Industrial Revolution is considered to be an example of a classical liberal
society. At the time, it was a revolutionary idea, because in the previous centuries,
mercantilism had been the dominant economic system which was discussed
Champion Briefs 47
previously. However, prominent thinkers, including Adam Smith, began to argue

against mercantilism in favor of an economic system with more freedom for
individuals. The development of capitalism as an economic system, sought to reject
the idea of government control of the economy and instead put the focus on
individuals.”
Warrant: The industrial revolution required a shift away from non-capitalist ideas
“As the 18th century went along, some people began to reject the principles of
mercantilism. For example, in 1776 Scottish economist Adam Smith published his
famous written work “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations” which is just often shortened to “Wealth of Nations”. The book challenged
the idea that the government should control the economy and instead proposed the
idea of free trade and competition with a lesser role of the government. The ideas of
this book would eventually lay the foundation for the principles of capitalism, which is
an economic system that supports the idea of free trade and choice as a way of
achieving prosperity. The emergence of capitalism was vitally important to the start of
industrialization and the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism caused the Industrial
Revolution because industrialization required significant work and investment from
individuals and not necessarily the government. For example, in Britain, where the
Industrial Revolution began, wealthy entrepreneurs were important because they
used their wealth to create factories and mines. This investment from individuals,
whose actions were guided by the profit motive, would not have been possible
without the emergence of capitalism. Furthermore, as the Industrial Revolution began
the individualistic principles of capitalism helped create a climate wherein
Champion Briefs 48
industrialization exploded, and eventually spread worldwide.”
Warrant: Self-interest oriented capitalism has led to many historical innovations
Emily Skarbek. “Capitalism and Economic Growth.” Independent Institute. April 2010.
https://www.independent.org/issues/article.asp?id=2769
“Unless one is ashamed of unprecedented increases in income, rising life expectancy,

greater education, and more political freedom, there is no reason to be a fair-weather
fan of capitalism. Sprawling free markets in countries that became more capitalist over
the last 25 years have meant many more people enjoy improvements in well being
and opportunities to advance human capabilities. There is no evidence that countries
that eschewed freer markets and embraced substantially greater state control
performed better on any of these major indicators. On the contrary, those countries
that adopt increased taxation, increased regulation, fiscal mismanagement and
enormous public debt have performed demonstrably worse. From a global
perspective, we have witnessed remarkable progress of mankind through the
increased acceptance of free market policies in both rich and poor countries. Before
the industrial revolution, 80% of the world’s population lived in abject poverty. By
1980, that number has fallen to 34.8% and by 2000, less than 20% of the population
lives on less than $1 a day. In five years, the number is expected to fall to 10% if free
trade is allowed to flourish.”
Warrant: Global history has been demonstrably improved by self interest
Champion Briefs 49
“In just the past 25 years increased private ownership, increased free trade, and lower
taxes all came at the hands of politicians like Deng Xiaoping in China, Margaret
Thatcher in England, and Ronald Reagan in United States. In the years following the
adoption of these policies by these global leaders, per capita income nearly doubled
from 1980 to 2005; Tariffs fell and trade increased; Schooling and life expectancy grew
rapidly, while infant mortality and poverty fell just as fast. In the average country that
became more capitalist over the last 25 years, the average citizen gained a 43% increase
in income, nearly half a decade in life expectancy, and a 2-year increase in the average
years of schooling. In my lifetime alone, freer markets have improved the lives of billions
of people from all walks of life. When we look back at our own history, the tremendous
economic growth that Americans experienced from the time of the original Tea Party
up to 1914 was the result of economic freedom from government regulation, open
boarders for free immigration, and very few trade restrictions on the global flow of
goods, services, and capital.”
Analysis: Use this argument to demonstrate that many important historical events, which are
crucial for the modern human condition, are inexorably tied to self-interest. Self-interest should
be regarded as integral to human behavior because it defines to structures that give our lives
meaning.
Champion Briefs 50
PRO: Self Interest creates desirable outcomes
Argument: Self interest leads people to better themselves and underlies many of the
developmental processes that human beings believe are fundamental to living a good life.
Robert Litan. “Adam Smith preached self-interest—and self-help, too.” January 2015.
Brookings Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/adam-smith-
preached-self-interest-and-self-help-too/
“Like many people, I thought Smith was the original champion of why acting in one’s
self-interest was good for society–ostensibly because it allowed each person or firm to
specialize in what he or it did best and then trade for whatever else was required. But
the self-interest that Smith made famous can be a powerful force for good in one’s
personal life. According to Smith, many of us do good things because we want others
to approve and admire us. Mr. Roberts explores implications of this and other Smith
insights. Mr. Roberts’s witty, candid take on Smith is filled with his own wisdom.
Gurus, theologians and economists alike might learn a thing or two from him and the
first modern economist.”
Warrant: Self-interest forms the basis for reciprocal kindness
Alex Johnson. “Rational self-interest benefits all” Clarion. April 2012.

https://duclarion.com/2012/05/rational-self-interest-benefits-all-6/
“The inherent value of self-interest is frequently diluted and diminished into the fallacy
of “selfishness,” but self-interest, rationally understood, benefits individuals, the
community as well as the society in general. Self-interest is a positive and socially
Champion Briefs 51
beneficial concept when applied in a healthy and conscious manner. What do I mean
by “rational self-interest?” In this context, the sort of self-interest that is actually
beneficial. While things like drugs and other destructive substances may seem “in
one’s interest” at the moment they’re used, they have no long-term benefit and are
inherently and objectively harmful. Thus, rational self-interest is different from
hedonism and pleasure, and not to be confused with egotism. The best example of
rational self-interest applied is a market setting; it is in this environment that self-
interest makes sense. After all, 18th-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith penned
in his magnum opus “The Wealth of Nations” that “It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to
their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love,
and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”.”
Warrant: Self interest drives concern for others

“Even 200 years ago, it was understood that what motivates the market and individual
actors is their self-interest. This is the fundamental basis of the economy, as people
are not motivated by altruism-it is a profit incentive, the notion of making money for
its own sake which drives people. There is nothing wrong with this motivation, as
profit allows one to support oneself, one’s family and even contribute to the
community and to charity. Self-interest, rightly understood, is a strong force for good in
our society, as what benefits one person often benefits the entire community, or even
society, at-large. It is critical to understand the ethics of self-interest. One must keep the
community in mind while making these decisions, as strong individuals make a strong
community to support those less fortunate. If one acts in a selfish way and burns
bridges, destroying connections and crushing dreams to reach the “top of the ladder,”
Champion Briefs 52
the climb to the top and progress that’s made there is utterly meaningless. Without
concern for others, self-interest has no power because it’s nearly impossible to
achieve great things and large profits without help, collaboration and advice of those
in the community.
Rational self-interest would not promote anarchy, but rather harmony in a capitalist
system, because every man and woman would look out for themselves, ensuring fair
transactions and shrewd consumers.”
Warrant: Economic growth is key to social justice
George Smith. “Self Interest and Social Order” CATO. April 2018.
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/self-interest-social-
order.pdf
“Because the immediate motivation of much economic activity is self-interest, such

activity is not thought to be as noble as art or science. However, if it is true that self-
interested activity in the market creates value and benefits others, then why isn’t it as
noble as these other human endeavors? Why are the acts of inspired creativity that
invented and marketed the personal computer, or even Velcro, any less noble than
the creation of art or music or the pursuit of science? All of those activities benefit
others and are driven by the creator’s urge to produce. The only difference is that
entrepreneurs are frequently explicitly and overtly driven by a particular type of self-
interest, namely financial. But why does it matter what the motivation is, if the results
are beneficial? Why do we care so much about why people do things instead of the
results they produce? Would the personal computer be any more important or more
useful had it been invented by monks seeking to serve others, rather than by business
people and engineers seeking profit and the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity?”
Champion Briefs 53
Analysis: Use this argument to demonstrate that our world, driven by self interest, has
produced many prosocial results. Explain to the judge that self interest is the foundation of not
only the greedly parts of our lives, but also the most social aspects.
Champion Briefs 54
PRO: Self Interest Pervades Human Society
Argument: Human society is powerfully organized around principles of self-interest. This is

commanding evidence that self-interest is a driving force of human behavior.
Warrant: Humans have established many social institutions based on self interest.
David Boaz. “Freedom, Selfishness, and Cooperation.” January 2011. CATO Institute.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/freedom-selfishness-cooperation
“It might be nice if love could bring about all the complex tasks of cooperation and
competition by which we achieve our purposes, without all the emphasis on self-
interest and individual rights, and many opponents of liberalism have offered an
appealing vision of society based on universal benevolence. But as Adam Smith
pointed out, “in civilized society [man] stands at all times in need of the cooperation
and assistance of great multitudes,” yet in his whole life he could never befriend a
small fraction of the number of people whose cooperation he needs. If we depended
entirely on benevolence to produce cooperation, we simply couldn’t undertake
complex tasks. Reliance on other people’s self-interest, in a system of well-defined
property rights and free exchange, is the only way to organize a society more
complicated than a small village. The market is an essential element of civil society. The
market arises from two facts: that human beings can accomplish more in cooperation
with others than alone and that we can recognize this. If we were a species for whom
cooperation was not more productive than isolated work, or if we were unable to
discern the benefits of cooperation, then we would remain isolated and atomistic. As
Ludwig von Mises explained, “Each man would have been forced to view all other men
as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have
brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors.” Without the possibility
Champion Briefs 55
of mutual benefit from cooperation and the division of labor, neither feelings of
sympathy and friendship nor the market order itself could arise.”
Warrant: Self-interest forms the basis to resist coercion
“Throughout the market system individuals and firms compete to cooperate better.
The rapid feedback of the market process provides incentives for successful forms of
organization to be copied and unsuccessful forms to be discouraged. Cooperation is as
much a part of the market system as competition. Both are essential elements of the
simple system of natural liberty, and most of us spend far more of our time cooperating
with partners, coworkers, suppliers, and customers than we do competing. The real
issue is not compassion but coercion. Is it compassionate to take from some by force
in order to give to others? No, it’s compassionate to give of yourself, and coercive to
take from others. Is it “generosity,” as the governor of Vermont says, for a few
wealthy people to urge a tax increase on the wealthy? No, it would be generous for
Ben and Jerry and their 50 wealthy friends to voluntarily donate money to “help meet
basic human needs” (as I’m sure they do); proposing to tax others is the exercise of
force, not generosity.”
Warrant: Self interest provides for a natural organizing model for human societies
order.pdf
Champion Briefs 56
“But I never promise you that I will act in a certain manner, nor do you promise me.
Hume compared this situation to two men rowing a boat. Each man exerts labor on the
supposition that the other man will do likewise, and each adjusts his movements to the
movements of the other—but all of this occurs without an exchange of promises or an
explicit agreement between the two men. The cooperation is spontaneous and
implicitly understood, not planned in advance and expressed in promises or a
contract. b. Property rights—like language and money—evolved over time and were
established as conventions, as people came to respect them routinely, as a matter of
habit.”
Warrant: Self interest is gives rise to second-order social organizations such as justice
order.pdf
“Hume stressed that the “convention” of respecting property rights does not arise from
a contract among members of society. Rather, it arises from a sense of common interest
that induces people to regulate their conduct by certain rules. I observe that it is in my
interest to respect the property rights of another person, provided he respects mine.
And he is also aware of the advantage to be gained from this reciprocity. Therefore, as
we each become aware of the advantages of reciprocity, we adjust our behavior
accordingly, without ever consulting each other or making an explicit pact wherein we
exchange promises. There is, Hume conceded, a kind of agreement involved in this
social convention, but it does not involve mutual promises. My actions are taken with a
view to your actions and are predicated on the expectation that you will behave.”
Analysis: Use this argument to show the judge how self interest has given rise to all manner of
social institutions that are important and elemental to modern society. Make the argument
that human behavior is driven by self interest because that is how we have chose to organize
ourselves.
Champion Briefs 57
PRO: Self Interest is Evolutionary
Argument: Capitalism, the dominant mode of economic organization, is based on human self-
interest. The success of capitalism is based on its compatibility with the fundamentals of human
nature.
Warrant: Biology is driven by self interest
Ursula Goodenough. “Cultures 'R' Us: Evolution, Self Interest And Wanting What We
Have.” January 2012. NPR.
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2010/10/28/130885298/cultures-r-us
“Continuing this week’s 13.7 focus (here and here and here) on our self-absorbed
human predicament, let me offer a few evolutionary perspectives on how we got here
and how we might move forward. All organisms, by definition, are laden with self-
interest. Self-maintenance, self-protection, self-reproduction -- these are biological
imperatives. This mandate is often stated as “surviving to produce fertile offspring,”
but organisms that only eke out survival are far less likely to be the ancestors of large
lineages than are organisms that flourish in a given ecosystem. Nor is “flourishing” a
synonym for that old canard “the fittest.” Rather, it connotes being well adapted to
the particular environmental circumstances in which one finds oneself. Social
organisms remain self-interested, but in addition, they also cooperate in such vital
activities as food acquisition and predator protection. Hence their mandate is both to
flourish as an individual and to flourish in community. Sociality has evolved numerous
times: Bacteria secrete signaling molecules to regulate group-related activities (quorum
sensing); butterflies migrate; fish swim in schools; birds join together to chase off the
circling hawk; wolves hunt in packs.”
Warrant: Self-interested regulates environmental fitness
Champion Briefs 58
“Social behaviors are in most cases “instinctive,” but in some cases organisms inherit
the capacity to learn social behaviors. Primates, in particular, develop minds capable
of keeping track of friendships and favors and mastering the nuances of fluctuating
social hierarchies, behaviors that enhance the stability and hence the flourishing of
their troops. Importantly, natural selection doesn’t “care” whether behavior is
hardwired or learned; it only “cares” whether the outcome is adaptive. Navigating the
demands of self-interest versus group cooperation can be fraught with conflicting
impulses, and the option to go-it-alone is frequently taken in the context of stress.
Under such circumstances, social organisms typically hunker down and engage in self-
interested survival patterns, the default behavior of all creatures. Stress invariably
arises when organisms find themselves in environments that fail to mesh with what
their genetic scripts anticipated. Unexpected ecosystems fail to provide the necessary
context for pulling together the social behaviors that were selected to generate
flourishing communities in expected contexts.”
Lauren Hall. “Self Interest Rightly Understood” Adam Smith Works. April 2018.
https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/self-interest-rightly-understood
“The impartial spectator (Smith’s version of a conscience), which is built up over long
experience, generally looks kindly on the pursuit of self-interest. It is, after all, nothing
more than what everyone pursues. At the same time, the impartial spectator, impartial
as he is, draws a sharp line between self-interest that is neutral in its effects on others
Champion Briefs 59
and self-interest that harms others to benefit oneself. Such selfish behavior, Smith
argues, creates strong disapprobation in our fellow man: “To disturb his happiness
merely because it stands in the way of our own, to take from him what is of real use to
him merely because it may be of equal or of more use to us, or to indulge, in this
manner, at the expence of other people, the natural preference which every man has
for his own happiness above that of other people, is what no impartial spectator can
go along with.” The impartial spectator enforces external limits on self-interest, not
the least of which is the condemnation of harming others for one’s own benefit. Self-
interest is defensible as long as it is consistent with the demands of justice, and justice
demands that we refrain from harming others.”
Warrant: Self interest is compatible with other important human emotions
“Smith observed that humans are most sympathetic toward those who are most
closely tied to their own safety and happiness. This creates a powerful link between
sympathy and self-interest.[vi] When society consists of family, friends, and
acquaintances, the gap between sympathy and self-interest is small indeed. Precisely
because our self-interest is bound up in the happiness of those we care about, their
happiness becomes part of what we pursue in our desire to better our own condition.
The benefits of localized self-interest extend beyond those we love. Self-interest is the
invisible hand that, when combined with sympathy, forms the moral order on which the
economic order rests. Smith argues “[t]hat wisdom which contrived the system of
human affections, as well as that of every other part of nature, seems to have judged
that the interest of the great society of mankind would be best promoted by directing
the principal attention of each individual to that particular portion of it, which was
most within the sphere both of his abilities and of his understanding.” The purpose of
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self-interest is not only to drive the larger economic engine of society. It also ensures
that individuals direct their moral energy in a way that is consistent with their limited
abilities and knowledge..”
Analysis: Use this analysis to abstract the debate away from contemporary institutions and
return to first principles. Emphasize the historicity of the approach to convince the judge that
self interest is an important driver of human behavior.
Champion Briefs 61
PRO: Capitalism is Based on Self Interest
Argument: Capitalism, the dominant mode of economic organization, is based on human self-
nature.
Warrant: Capitalism is driven by self interest
Staff. “The Role of Self-Interest and Competition in a Market Economy.” January 2012.
Federal Reserve of St. Louis. https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-
lowdown-podcast-series/episode-3-the-role-of-self-interest-and-competition-in-
a-market-economy
“In fact, most of the economic activity we see around us is the result of self-interested
behavior. Adam Smith described it this way in his book, The Wealth of Nations: "It is
not from the benevolence (kindness) of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we
expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." So why does the baker
choose to bake? The answer is self-interest. The baker wants to earn enough money to
feed his family and buy the things he wants and the most effective way he has found to
do that is to bake bread for you. In fact his bread has to be good enough and the
service friendly enough that you are willing to give up your money freely in exchange
for his bread. The baker while serving his self-interest has produced a good that is very
valuable to you. The miracle of a market system is that self-interest produces behavior
that benefits others. Is being self-interested greedy? Is it immoral? While the term self-
interest has negative connotations, it does not necessarily imply greedy or immoral
behavior. Self-interest just means that you seek your goals. In fact, your self-interest
might lead you to study hard for your math test, give money to your favorite charity
or volunteer at a local school.”
Champion Briefs 62
Warrant: Self-interested competition creates good outcomes
a-market-economy
“Doesn't self-interest lead to price gouging, corruption and cheating? Sometimes it

does, but most often it is held in check by competition. Because other self-interested
people are competing in the marketplace, my self-interest is held in check. For
example, if I were a baker, the only way I would be able to earn your dollars is to
produce bread that is better, cheaper or more convenient than the bread produced by
the other bakers in town. If I were to increase my price too much, you would likely buy
bread from my competitors. If I were to treat you poorly when you enter my store, you
would likely buy from my competitors. If my bread were moldy or inferior in any way,
you will likely buy from my competitors. In order to earn your money I must provide a
high quality good or service at a reasonable price. You will notice that this assumes I
have competitors. If I were the only baker in 100 miles, I might be able to charge a high
price, sell inferior products, or treat my customers rudely - but even in that case,
another self-interested person might see an opportunity to earn a profit and open a
competing bakery in town. Thus, competition is the regulator, a check on self-interest
because it restrains my ability to take advantage of my customers.”
Warrant: Alternative economic models have not worked out
Kay James. “Socialism vs. Capitalism: One Clear Winner” The Heritage Foundation. April
2018. heritage.org/international-economies/commentary/socialism-vs-
capitalism-one-clear-winner
Champion Briefs 63
“The experiment with '21st-century socialism' as introduced by the late President

Hugo Chavez, a self-described champion of the poor who vowed to distribute the
country's wealth among the masses, and instead steered the nation toward the
catastrophe the world is witnessing under his handpicked successor (Nicolas) Maduro,
has been a cruel failure." That's putting it mildly. And the track record elsewhere isn't
much better. From Albania and Angola to Vietnam and Yemen, socialism has produced
little but violence, starvation and misery. Some defenders point to Norway and other
Scandinavian countries that enjoy a degree of prosperity well above the ones already
mentioned. But as columnist David Harsanyi points out, you can hardly call countries
that are "operating generous welfare states programs propped up by underlying vibrant
capitalism" poster children for socialism. The fact remains that wherever unalloyed
socialism has been tried, the result has been disastrous for the citizens it's inflicted on.
Take any economy run by an all-powerful state, and it's only a question of when, not if,
it winds up being run completely into the ground.”
Warrant: Capitalist societies are better at supporting human beings than the alternavs
“Contrast that with the experience of those who live in capitalist societies, where
rights are protected, life spans are longer, and people enjoy a higher standard of
living. The Index of Economic Freedom, which has graded every country in the world
annually for nearly 25 years, bears this out. Again and again, it finds per capita
incomes are much higher in nations that are more economically free. Economies rated
"free" or "mostly free" in the latest edition enjoy incomes more than double the
average levels in other countries, and more than five times higher than the incomes of
people living in "repressed" economies such as Venezuela and Cuba. The evidence is
Champion Briefs 64
hard to refute. Consider what Bono, humanitarian and rock singer, says he's learned in
the course of spearheading numerous anti-poverty initiatives over the years: "As a
person who's spent nearly 30 years fighting to get people out of poverty, it was
somewhat humbling to realize that commerce played a bigger job than development. I'd
say that's my biggest transformation in 10 years: understanding the power of commerce
to make or break lives. By "power of commerce," of course, he means capitalism.”
Analysis: Our economic system pervades our lives. Use this argument to illustrate how
important self-interest is in shaping the economic world around us, and that systems less
predicated on sself-interesthave consistently failed.
Champion Briefs 65
PRO: Self-Interest Encompasses Friendship
Argument: Relationships are one of the most complex and foundational institutions of the
human condition. Self-interest plays an important role in growing and maintaining this crucial
institution.
Warrant: Friendships are beneficial to the health
Stephany Papas. “7 Ways Friendships Are Great for Your Health.” January 2012.
LiveScience. https://www.livescience.com/53315-how-friendships-are-good-for-
your-health.html
“People who have strong social relationships are less likely to die prematurely than
people who are isolated. In fact, according to a 2010 review of research, the effect of
social ties on life span is twice as strong as that of exercising, and equivalent to that of
quitting smoking. In the review, researchers examined 148 previous studies on social
links and mortality, which together included more than 300,000 participants. These
studies found that measures of the strength of people's social relationships, from their
number of friends to their integration into the community, were all linked to decreased
mortality. Researchers think that friendships and health are linked through the body's
processing of stress, Yang said. In the short term, stress is a good thing. If you're being
chased by a lion, you want your body to respond with heightened alertness, a pounding
heart and a flood of get-up-and-go hormones like norepinephrine. Likewise, if you've
got a virus, you want your immune system to kick into gear and attack the intruder
with specialized cells and inflammation. But the chronic stress that can come with
isolation can switch on these processes for long periods of time, causing physical wear
and tear on the body, Yang said.”
Warrant: Friendships increase longevity
Champion Briefs 66
Stephany Papas. “7 Ways Friendships Are Great for Your Health.” January 2012.
LiveScience. https://www.livescience.com/53315-how-friendships-are-good-for-
your-health.html
“Yang and her colleagues studied this health effect by comparing the biological stats
of people who reported being isolation with those who reported having lots of friends
across their life span. Using four large studies of hundreds to thousands of people each,
ages 12 to 91, the researchers compared biomarkers such as blood pressure, body mass
index, waist circumference and levels of the inflammation marker C-reactive protein.
They found that these measures of health were worse in people who also had weaker
social ties, reporting their work in January 2015 in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. For example, among the people in the study who were in
old age, a lack of social connections more than doubled the risk of high blood pressure
(raising it by 124 percent). For comparison, having diabetes raised the risk of high blood
pressure by much less (70 percent). Traditionally, it's been tough to determine if
friendships and other social links are the cause of poor health, or if poor health causes
isolation. The advantage of Yang and her colleagues' research is that they had data
that spanned years, Yang said.”
Warrant: Friendship formation is associated with wealth accretion
Juliana Kaplan. “If you want to get rich, make rich friends.” Business Insider. February 13
2020. https://www.businessinsider.com/want-to-get-rich-make-rich-friends-
harvard-reserach-study-2022-8
“If you want to earn more, it pays to have friends who are richer than you. That's
because being friends with them is an important determinant of your economic
mobility, according to two new studies from Harvard economist Raj Chetty. Chetty and
Champion Briefs 67
his team examined the social networks of 72.2 million Facebook users ages 25 to 44 to
create their own three categories of "social capital." The first is how connected lower-
income people are with higher-income people — what they call "economic
connectedness." The next is what they call "social cohesion," which basically gauges
whether someone's friend group has cliques, and if friends within that person's
network are mutual friends with each other. The third measure is "civic engagement,"
which looks at whether someone participates in civic organizations like volunteer
groups, or trusts them. The researchers find that, out of those three ways of measuring
social capital, the only one actually linked to upward economic mobility is friendships
with people from a higher socioeconomic status. In fact, if lower-income kids grew up
in areas that have the same economic connectedness as higher-income kids'
neighborhoods, their future earnings increase by an average of 20%.”
Warrant: Friendship is linked to social mobility
Juliana Kaplan. “If you want to get rich, make rich friends.” Business Insider. February 13
2020. https://www.businessinsider.com/want-to-get-rich-make-rich-friends-
harvard-reserach-study-2022-8
“Kids who grow up in areas where there's a higher rate of friendships between people
of low and high socioeconomic status "have much higher rates of upward mobility."
For instance, one of the studies contrasts Minneapolis and Indianapolis. In Minneapolis,
people from a low-socioeconomic background have a much greater share of friendships
with high-socioeconomic people, compared to a far lower share in Indianapolis. Because
of that, lower-income kids in Minneapolis make more money in adulthood. By the time
they're 35, kids from Minneapolis reach a higher income percentile bracket, making
about $34,300 in 2015 dollars compared to $24,700 for kids in Indianapolis. That also
means that, for people living in lower-income neighborhoods, their upward mobility is
Champion Briefs 68
not impinged upon by simply living in a lower-income neighborhood; it means that

they have fewer chances to interact with and befriend higher-income people.”
Analysis: Although many people see friendship as a purely prosocial institution, it has deep
roots in self interest. Argue that if friendships are tracable to self-interest, everything is.
Champion Briefs 69
PRO: Self-Interest Encompasses Family Relationships
Argument: Family relationships are held out as the archetypal institution which exceeds the
orbit of self-interested behavior. Under closer inspection, however, even these intimate
personal connections cannot escape the gravitic effect of self-interest.
Warrant: People form family relationships out of self-interest
Kim Parker. “Parenthood and happiness: It’s more complicated than you think.” January
2014. Pew Research. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2014/02/07/parenthood-and-happiness-its-more-complicated-than-you-
think/
“Another recent study from the U.K.’s Open University found that couples without
children tend to be happier with their relationships and feel more valued by their
partners than those with children. And Jennifer Senior’s new book All Joy and No Fun:
The Paradox of Modern Parenthood explores what the author sees as a historical shift
toward “child-centric” parenting and the impact this is having on parents’ happiness.
The Pew Research Center has lots of data on parenthood, marriage and happiness.
There’s no doubt that these three elements of life are related—even interwoven. Our
data show that there is a much stronger link between marriage and happiness than
there is between parenthood and happiness. Married adults, regardless of whether or
not they have children, are much more likely than non-married adults to say they are
very happy with their lives. This is due in part to the fact that married adults tend to
be better off financially than single people, and income and financial security are also
positively correlated with happiness. Even so, marriage seems to contribute to overall
happiness, even when these other factors are held constant. A November 2012 Pew
Research survey found that among married adults, 36% of those with children and 39%
of those with no children were “very happy” with their life. By contrast, 23% of non-
Champion Briefs 70
married adults with children and 22% of non-married childless adults said they were
very happy. Single parents were more likely than any other group to say they were “not
too happy” with their life (25%).”
Warrant: Raising a child is associated with more happiness
Kim Parker. “Parenthood and happiness: It’s more complicated than you think.” January
2014. Pew Research. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2014/02/07/parenthood-and-happiness-its-more-complicated-than-you-
think/
“To be sure, raising children tends to coincide with middle age—a stage of life that can
be stressful on many levels. Research on happiness has found that midlife can be a bit
of a valley—that the trajectory of happiness takes a U-shape over the life cycle. The
happiest adults, on average, are younger and older ones. Our poll also asked parents to
rate the job they were doing raising their children. In general, we found that those who
gave themselves high ratings as parents were among the most likely to say they were
very happy with their life. The reverse was true, too. All of this suggests that, while
parenthood in and of itself may not be the ticket to happiness, how mothers and
fathers see themselves as parents is clearly linked to their overall sense of well-being.”
Warrant: Family formation is associated with wealth accretion
Allison Linn. “Why married people tend to be wealthier: It's complicated.” USA Today.
February 13. https://www.today.com/money/why-married-people-tend-be-
wealthier-its-complicated-1c8364877
“Couples also are able to take advantage of economies of scale – anything from buying
just one dishwasher to relying on one another’s health insurance. That allows them to
Champion Briefs 71
build wealth more quickly than their peers who are single, divorced or living together
romantically. “You have further advantages,” said Pamela Smock, director of the
Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Smock said those advantages go beyond just sharing expenses. People who are married
also are able to divide up responsibilities in financially beneficial ways. For example, a
married man may be able to work 12 hours a day to please his bosses and get
promoted, because he and his wife can divide household duties so he can get ahead.
That’s not as much of an option for a single parent. The economic advantages also tend
to be greater for those who are married than for those who are living together
romantically, said Jay Zagorsky, a research scientist at The Ohio State University who has
studied wealth trends by marital status. He said that while some people are in long-
term, unmarried relationships, many cohabitating couples may not yet have
committed to the idea that they will be together forever. That means they aren’t
combining resources as significantly as married couples.”
Warrant: The difference in wealth can be significant
Allison Linn. “Why married people tend to be wealthier: It's complicated.” USA Today.
February 13. https://www.today.com/money/why-married-people-tend-be-
wealthier-its-complicated-1c8364877
“The wealth differences can be significant. Zagorsky’s research has shown that people
who got and stayed married each had about double the wealth of single people who
never married. Together, the couple’s wealth was four times that of a single person’s.
Other data also shows that married people see stronger financial advantages than just a
doubling of wealth. According to the Census Bureau, in 2010 the median net worth for a
married couple between the ages of 55 and 64 was $261,405. That compares to $71,428
for a man heading a household, and $39,043 for a woman heading a household..”
Champion Briefs 72
Analysis: The family is often held up as an archetypal institution that is based on a desire other
than self-interest. Use this argument as a test case for how even the most altruistic or
community-minded institutions can also be deeply rooted in self-interest.
Champion Briefs 73
PRO: Enlightened Self-Interest
Argument: Enlightened self-interest, which cannot be reduced to selfishness, is the primary

driver of human behavior.
Warrant: Enlightened self-interest is most consistent with human development.
Jeremy A. Frimer, Lawrence J. Walker, William L. Dunlop, Brenda H. Lee, Amanda Riches.
“The integration of agency and communion in moral personality: Evidence of
enlightened self-interest.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101:1,
July 2011.
This prediction of the adaptive integration of A and C, however, entails a paradox. When
A is operationalized as motives of power and achievement (promoting the interests of
the self) and C as motives of universalism and benevolence (promoting the interests of
others), A and C entail a mutually oppositional dualism. How can one advance one’s
own situation and the plight of others simultaneously? How do moral exemplars
integrate these dialectical themes? The reconciliation model (Frimer & Walker, 2009)
explains this paradox within a developmental framework. For all young persons,
future moral exemplars included, development involves the strengthening and
elaboration of these motives in a mutually segregated fashion. Research with a
“normal” sample showed that, typically, one or the other motive (but rarely both) is
active at a given time (Fournier et al., 2009). However segregated these motives are,
they are not independent; throughout this initial developmental phase, they remain in
mutual tension. This tension poses little trouble for either pursuit until the modalities
become highly elaborated and begin to vie for the motivational, attentional, and
temporal resources of the person. At this point, Erikson’s (1968) crisis of conviction
emerges, manifest as a dualistic choice between excellence (A) and compassion (C)
and illustrated by quandaries such as “Should I get ahead in my job, or be there for my
Champion Briefs 74
kid’s soccer game?” “Do I play to win, or play fair?” “Will I make a lot of money, or do
something for my community?” The reconciliation model holds this period of conflict,
likely arising in adolescence or emerging adulthood, to be a critical period of personality
development. This crisis is particularly important because multiple resolutions are
available. Stagnation or regression to earlier forms presents one possibility; attenuating
one motive (C) to provide growing room for the other (A) is a second common, however
nefarious, resolution. The latter is manifest as the champion of capitalism, unmitigated
agency—rampant greed, materialism, and lust for power—what Bakan (1966, p. 14)
unambiguously defamed as “the villain.” The most adaptive resolution, however, is the
creative reconciliation of the tension between A and C and their mutual integration.
This reconciliatory move entails the insight that, with some reconfiguration, A and C can
be most efficiently and effectively achieved in tandem—that when self-interest is
understood not purely in material or interpersonal terms (as financial gain or social
dominance) but perhaps in more psychological terms (e.g., as moral elevation; Haidt,
2003), then promoting the interests of others may be the most adaptive way to better
one’s own condition. The notion of enlightened self-interest seems to be somewhat
compatible with evolutionary approaches to prosocial motivation (see e.g., Dawkins,
1976). To some extent, enlightened self-interest as a causal mechanism for good
behavior relieves of duty the motive (or concept) of altruism. In comparison to more
dualistic models of moral functioning (see e.g., Kohlberg, 1984; Schwartz, 1992), this
approach provides a clearer, more parsimonious mechanistic link between moral
thought and moral behavior.
Warrant: Altruists’ deep satisfaction in helping others proves enlightened self-interest.
Elizabeth Svoboda. “Altruism as Enlightened Self-Interest.” Psychology Today.

November 25, 2013. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-makes-
hero/201311/altruism-enlightened-self-interest
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One perk of writing about heroism and altruism is that you meet so many remarkable
people who change the way you look at the world. While researching my book, I spoke
with extreme altruist Christoph von Toggenburg, who has devoted his life to others in a
variety of ways—from raising money for homeless Romanian children to biking across
Europe and Asia to help leprosy sufferers. I went into our conversation assuming von
Toggenburg had incredible willpower, that he was able to maintain laser focus on his
altruistic mission even when he didn't feel like it. But what he actually said surprised me:
He goes to great lengths to help others mostly because he enjoys it so much. He
doesn't think altruists should view themselves as martyrs who sacrifice the good
things in life for others' benefit—that approach, he says, isn't sustainable. “If I would
only do something for others, it would drain my energy very quickly,” he told me. “The
energy comes when there's something in it for you.” University of Winnipeg
psychologist Jeremy Frimer’s research supports von Toggenburg's suggestion that
altruism is often a win-win proposition. Frimer studied a group of people who devoted
themselves to helping others and compared them with a group of control participants.
While the lifelong altruists were highly concerned with others' well-being, as might be
expected, their generosity also brought them great personal satisfaction. Frimer calls
this marriage of self- and other-oriented motives “enlightened self-interest.” Such
enlightened self-interest is part of what allows people like von Toggenburg to sustain
their contributions for years on end. If helping people is truly a drag, something you
want to get through before moving on to something else, it’s going to be tough to stay
generous unless you have boundless willpower. But if you look forward to bonding with
high school mentees on the weekends because you genuinely enjoy their company,
getting up at 7 am for volunteer meetings will seem far less onerous. “The best way to
increase altruistic acts might be to rely on a self-interested motive,” says Georgetown
philosopher Judith Lichtenberg. “This is Aristotle's idea—to get people to want to do
those things.” Von Toggenburg has learned that most people are happy to be generous
when they find fulfillment in it. To cut expenses in running his Colour the World
foundation, which benefits leprosy victims and others in need, he's recruited Price
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Waterhouse Coopers employees to provide administrative services for free. While they
might not be getting monetary payment, they get the reward of knowing they're
contributing to a large-scale humanitarian effort. “It doesn't cost them that much time,
but it makes them feel good,” he says. “They have the satisfaction: ‘We have
contributed to some good cause.’” It's that sense of deep satisfaction that makes some
altruists “lifers”: They're so steeped in the joy that comes from helping others that they
can't imagine doing anything else. Von Toggenburg feels responsible for his fellow
humans' welfare, but he also sees the altruistic life as the happiest kind of life there is.
“You arrive at your own satisfaction and your own motivation. The more you have little
successes, the more you will be encouraged to step up. We make such a big deal out of
it, but it can be so simple.”
Warrant: Enlightened self-interest explains humans’ motivation to enter professions like

medicine. Serving others is essentially based on self-interest.
Laura Vearrier. “Enlightened Self-Interest in Altruism (ESIA).” HEC Forum 32, 2020.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10730-020-09406-8
The ESIA model acknowledges that egoism and altruism are intertwined, dynamic
motivators of behavior. In the enlightened self-interest approach, the interests of the
group are also the interests of the self. The physician–patient relationship is a dyad in
which egoism and altruism may converge in an enlightened way that acknowledges that
the interests of one are the interests of the whole. Students pursue medicine for self-
fulfillment in cognitive, emotional, technical, and social desires—all of which can then
be used to benefit others. When the needs of the self are fulfilled, one can serve
others, which in turn is a self-interest, as service to others can be deeply rewarding
and provide a sense of accomplishment, pride, and interconnectedness. ESIA is a
paradigm shift from the historical view of egoism and altruism as opposing motivations
where altruism is self-sacrifice in the self-flagellation culture of medical school. This
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paper will present the threats to altruism, explore the interface of egoism and altruism
in a clinical vignette, and then present the ESIA framework as an educational approach
to aligning the interests of providers and patients to move from surviving to thriving in
order to promote altruism.
Warrant: Enlightened self-interest best explains people’s motivation to take pandemic

precautions that protect others and themselves.
John T. Roddy, MD and Jesse Muehlbauer. “Redefining Self-Interest – The US Response

to COVID-19.” Wisconsin Medical Journal 119:3, September 2020.
https://wmjonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/119/3/147-1.pdf
While wearing a mask has the benefit of protecting the wearer from infection, its
greater utility is likely in preventing spread to others, assuming that the wearer is an
asymptomatic carrier or presymptomatic. Social distancing is often inconvenient and
can be costly, but, according to predictions, will decrease the cost of this pandemic in
lives and inevitable effects on the economy.1 Such measures benefit the group, which
in turn benefits the individual. Radical, broadly adopted measures to halt the spread
will likely result in earlier safe reopening of businesses and social gatherings and will
serve to get us all back to the pursuit of life, liberty, and personal happiness. Those who
ignore basic precautions in the name of protecting their rights practice a form of self-
interest that is more like self-destruction, in contrast to the enlightened self-interest
of those who intentionally practice mask wearing and social distancing. Regrettably,
the consequences of such actions rarely stay contained within the household. In the
battle against misinformation, wellmeaning health leaders have inadvertently left out
a powerful tool in their rhetorical arsenal—the concept of enlightened self-interest.
The argument that it is selfish not to wear a mask ignores the fact that it is in one’s
own self-interest to wear a mask. Personal efforts to stem the effects of this pandemic
are both inherently selfish in the enlightened sense, as well as the responsibility of
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individuals who are their own health agents and advocates for their community. An
expression frequently used in favor of social responsibility goes, “I don’t know how to
explain to you that you should care about other people.” Perhaps what we need is to
reframe the argument – “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about
yourself.”
Warrant: Enlightened self-interest best explains corporate philanthropy.
Alexi Harding. “Why philanthropy is a matter of enlightened self-interest.” Alliance.

December 18, 2017, https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/philanthropy-
matter-enlightened-self-interest/
To quote Alexis de Tocqueville, a French statesmen, enlightened self-interest simply

means that “each…knows when to sacrifice some of his private interests to save the
rest; we want to save everything, and often we lose it all.” De Tocqueville noted that
Americans didn’t give simply for the sake of others; instead, they understood that
their fates were bound up with those of others. Unlike the short-sighted brokers of
today, early Americans realized that we were all part of the same society. Given our
interdependence, the rich couldn’t wall themselves off completely, no matter how many
gated communities or doomsday bunkers guarded they built. Some of the best
practitioners of enlightened self-interest were the least expected ones. Henry Ford
famously raised the wages of workers to $5 a day ($120 in 2017) and cut their workday
to 8 hours. As a result, not only did Ford cut down on the rampant turnover at his
factories, he was also helped create the middle class and the consumer economy, as this
pay hike provided workers with the necessary money (and time) to consume.
Unfortunately, few of today’s CEOs or shareholders are playing a similar sort of long
game–to their detriment. Ironically, one arm of the business community that seems to
donate more is not individual investors, but corporations. Despite some key exceptions,
multinationals have moved towards a corporate citizen model, reconciling their profit-
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making with social needs. Today, there are even benefit corporations (B Corp), for-
profit entities which strive to make positive contributions to society. Essentially,
benefit corporations can’t abandon their philanthropic bent–because this is built into
their business model. Still, as The New Yorker makes clear, this comes with certain
upsides, such as less pressure from investors and perfect alignment with the socially-
conscious mindsets of most Millennials. Lest you think B Corps are a waste of time, note
that some very successful companies fall into this category. Examples include Warby
Parker, a pioneering eyeglasses firm that emphasizes sustainability and high labor
standards, online marketplace Etsy, and outdoor apparel retailer Patagonia–all very
profitable organizations. There are some 1,200 B Corps today, and any aspiring B Corps
must pass a rigorous screening process to join their ranks. Ultimately, there’s no single
reason behind why the wealthy donate to social causes. To put it simply, giving is good
business, as demonstrated by the rise of B Corps. More succinctly (and controversially),
philanthropy is a matter of survival; a polarized, unequal society is a vulnerable one, a
fact that we cannot ignore forever. Let’s hope the titans of industry keep this valuable
lesson in mind.
Analysis: Enlightened self-interest is the concept that helping others and bettering oneself are
inherently connected with each other. If enlightened self-interest is the reason why humans
take apparently altruistic actions, humans are thus primarily motivated by self-interest.
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PRO: Reciprocal Altruism
Argument: The evolutionary theory of reciprocal altruism demonstrates that when humans do
help others, they are primarily motivated by self-interest.
Warrant: Reciprocal altruism is the only theory supported by natural selection and observations
in other animals.
Joan B. Silk. “Reciprocal Altruism.” Current Biology 23:18, 2013. Pages R827-R828.
What is reciprocal altruism? In 1971, Robert Trivers coined the term ‘reciprocal
altruism’ to describe a process that favors costly cooperation among reciprocating
partners. In principle, altruism confounds the basic logic of evolution by natural
selection because individuals incur fitness costs while providing benefits to others.
Altruistic traits can evolve only when some cue allows altruists to direct benefits
selectively to other altruists, and thereby increase the relative fitness of altruists.
Three types of cues provide a basis for such assortment: recent common descent,
proximity in viscous populations, and previous behavior. The first two types of cues are
the foundation of kin selection, and the last cue is the basis of reciprocal altruism. The
past behavior of other individuals provides a cue about whether they may carry genetic
alleles that lead to altruistic behavior. Altruism can be favored if recipients restrict help
to those from whom they receive help —I’ll scratch your back if (and only if) you’ll
scratch mine. Could you give some examples? Textbook examples of reciprocal altruism
include male baboons forming coalitions to gain access to sexually receptive females
that are being mate-guarded by high ranking males. Craig Packer found that males most
often supported the males from whom they received the most support. Gerald
Wilkinson reported that when vampire bats return to their roosts after successful
foraging trips, they sometimes regurgitate food for hungry nestmates. Wilkinson found
food sharing was most often directed to kin and those that also shared food with the
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donor. Other well-known examples include egg trading by simultaneous

hermaphroditic fish, predator inspection by schooling fish and the exchange of
grooming in kind or for agonistic support in Old World monkeys and apes (Figure 1).
Warrant: Individuals are most likely to make charitable donations that are tax deductible, which
proves reciprocal altruism and the primacy of self-interest.
Indu Khurana. “Legitimacy and Reciprocal Altruism in Donation-Based Crowdfunding:

Evidence from India.” Journal of Risk and Financial Management. 2021.
Furthermore, the economic theory of charitable giving also provides evidence that
people regularly donate in an expectation of some benefit or an incentive in return.
The donation made to charities for reasons other than pure humanitarian or altruistic
motives is often known as reciprocal altruism. One of the most common examples of
reciprocal altruism is the tax deduction that originates after giving funds to specific
entities and specific causes (Rose-Ackerman 1996). Therefore, in the traditional
charitable funding market, donors show preference to entities that demonstrate
legitimacy and incentivize the very act of donation by reducing their overall tax bill (Van
Slyke and Brooks 2005). However, the literature on crowdfunding has so far not isolated
the factors that impact donor motivation, primarily where various entities compete for
the funding and simultaneously generate different levels of satisfaction for each donor.
At any given point in time, there are multiple entities, like individuals or non-profit
organizations (NPOs), seeking funding for numerous campaigns across the crowdfunding
platforms. The presence of different entities across numerous campaigns adds
complexities in understanding the donor behavior and the factors that motivate them
(Salido-Andres et al. 2021). This study, therefore, builds upon the economic theory of
charitable giving and extends the framework of legitimacy and reciprocal altruism to
examine the factors that impact the success of donation-based crowdfunding campaigns
(Andreoni 1989, 1990; RoseAckerman 1996). The economic theory has been applied in a
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similar context to examine donor motivation across the microlending crowdfunding

platforms (Gleasure and Feller 2016; Ly and Mason 2012). However, there is little work
that extends the fundamentals of economic theory in donation-based crowdfunding,
especially for developing economies (Li et al. 2018). Specifically, this study seeks
answers to the two main questions—whether the legitimacy of the fund seeker plays a
role in donation-based crowdfunding, if yes, how do fund seekers signal that legitimacy.
The study uses around 450 crowdfunding campaigns run on Ketto, one of India’s largest
crowdfunding websites. Ketto generates two signals on the campaign home page that
indicate, first, if an individual or an NPO runs the campaign, and second if that specific
NPO provides tax deduction benefit or not. For the second signal, Ketto runs a special
banner on the home page of the campaign that says “Tax-Benefit” if the donor can claim
a tax deduction (see Figure 1). These signals are then used to classify campaigns into
three categories—campaigns run by (i) individuals, (ii) NPOs that offer a tax benefit, and
(iii) NPOs that offer no tax benefit. Thereafter, multiple regression analysis is employed
to ascertain who receives the highest amount of funding—individuals or NPOs; and then
which type of NPOs get funding—NPOs that offer tax-benefit or NPOs that do not offer
tax-benefit. The results show that donors reveal a rank ordering in their charitable
campaign selection and funding level. First, legitimacy provides a competitive
advantage, and campaigns run by NPOs receive a higher amount of funding than
campaigns run by individuals. Second, within NPOs, campaigns that offer tax-
deductibility receive the highest level of funding. Donors then fund NPOs that do not
offer any tax-deduction benefit, followed by campaigns run by individuals. Therefore,
NPOs that demonstrate legitimacy and signal it through causes that qualify for tax-
deductibility raise more money.
Warrant: Reciprocal altruism has the best explanatory power for humans’ altruistic behavior.
Robert L. Trivers. “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism.” The Quarterly Review of

Biology 46:1, March 1971, JSTOR.
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There is no direct evidence regarding the degree of reciprocal altruism practiced

during human evolution nor its genetic basis today, but given the universal and nearly
daily practice of reciprocal altruism among humans today, it is reasonable to assume
that it has been an important factor in recent human evolution and that the
underlying emotional dispositions affecting altruistic behavior have important genetic
components. To assume as much allows a number of predictions. (1) A complex,
regulating system. The human altruistic system is a sensitive, unstable one. Often it will
pay to cheat: namely, when the partner will not find out, when he will not discontinue
his altruism even if he does find out, or when he is unlikely to survive long enough to
reciprocate adequately. And the perception of subtle cheating may be very difficult.
Given this unstable character of the system, where a degree of cheating is adaptive,
natural selection will rapidly favor a complex psychological system in each individual
regulating both his own altruistic and cheating tendencies and his responses to these
tendencies in others. As selection favors subtler forms of cheating, it will favor more
acute abilities to detect cheating. The system that results should simultaneously allow
the individual to reap the benefits of altruistic exchanges, to protect himself from gross
and subtle forms of cheating, and to practice those forms of cheating that local
conditions make adaptive. Individuals will differ not in being altruists or cheaters but in
the degree of altruism they show and in the conditions under which they will cheat.
The best evidence supporting these assertions can be found in Kreb's (1970) review of
the relevant psychological literature. Although he organizes it differently, much of the
material supporting the assertions below is taken from his paper. All references to Krebs
below are to this review. Also, Hartshorne and May (1928- 1930) have shown that
children in experimental situations do not divide bimodally into altruists and "cheaters"
but are distributed normally; almost all the children cheated, but they differed in how
much and under what circumstances. ("Cheating" was defined in their work in a slightly
different but analogous way).
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Warrant: Evolution explains why humans are only altruistic under conditions of mutual benefit
and fairness.
Keith J. Yoder and Jean Decety. “Me first: Neural representations of fairness during
three-party interactions.” Neuropsychologia 147, October 2020.
A motivation for fairness constitutes a universal cornerstone of the moral sense.

Humans are deeply sensitive to issues of justice and fairness, both in their own lives and
the lives of others (DesChamps et al., 2016). This sense of fairness emerges during early
childhood (Cowell et al., 2019; Sloane et al., 2012; Ziv and Sommerville, 2017) and
across cultures (Huppert et al., 2019), although some aspects show variability (Blake et
al., 2015). However, successful social interactions often require individuals to balance
their own self-interest with the wants and needs of others within specific ecological
contexts. The interplay between self-interest and other-regarding concerns plays a
prominent role in behavioral economics. Arguably, the main function of morality is to
regulate an individual's social interactions with others in the general direction of
cooperation (Curry et al., 2019). Our moral intuitions about how to treat others and how
they ought to treat us are produced by a number of evolved systems, each specialized
for regulating different classes of social interactions (Cosmides et al., 2019). Though
moral cognitions and behaviors are routine, they rely on both heuristics (i.e., cognitive
short-cuts) and deliberate processing, involving neurocognitive computations for
updating and maintaining value orientations and social expectations, representing the
goals and beliefs of both self and others, and selecting adaptive responses while
accounting for specific social norms (Buckholtz and Marois, 2012; Decety and Yoder,
2017; Ruff and Fehr, 2014; Stallen et al., 2018). The standard microeconomic model of
the profit maximizing firm assigns essentially no role for prosociality and social
conscience. It assumes that people are mostly motivated by their material self-interest
and strive to maximize their own payoffs (e.g. Bolton and Ockenfels, 2000; Kahneman et
al., 1986). However, there is a vast literature in behavioral economics and psychology
Champion Briefs 85
documenting that many people are strongly motivated by fairness and reciprocity and
are willing to reward or punish other people at a considerable cost to themselves
(Gintis et al., 2005). This does not mean that the notion of self-interest as being an
important motivator of behavior should be abandoned altogether (van Dijk, 2013; van
Dijk et al., 2004). Rather, the empirical literature has supplemented this motive with
other motives that economists call social preferences (e.g., Bowles, 2016). Moreover,
while research in behavioral economics has revealed prosocial tendencies in human
interactions, some argue that people primarily pursue self-interest as long as they can
maintain the appearance of being fair (Caviola and Faulmüller, 2014). Indeed, prosocial
behavior declines when it is not observable by other affected parties or expectations to
behave prosocially are reduced (Engelmann et al., 2013; Leimgruber et al., 2012; List,
2007; Overgaauw et al., 2012). Evolutionary theory suggests that inequity aversion
(i.e., the negative reaction to inequitable rewards) is essential for establishing long-
term cooperation among genetically heterogeneous individuals (Bowles and Gintis,
2013; Brosnan and Bshary, 2016). Consistent with this view, inequity aversion has only
been observed in species which engage in repeated interactions with non-kin such as
chimpanzees, macaques, ravens, and crows (Brosnan, 2013; Wascher and Bugnyar,
2013). Importantly, humans are ultra-social and care deeply about fairness, and appear
to possess a genuine concern for the welfare of others which exists alongside their
own self-interest (Baumard et al., 2013; Crocker et al., 2017; Henrich et al., 2010;
Tomasello, 2014; Vermunt, 2014). In other words, prosocial and egoistic motivations
both shape decision-making but can conflict when individuals’ choices simultaneously
affect themselves and others (Volz et al., 2017).
Warrant: Pure altruism has no biological grounding.
Richard F. Taflinger. “Give Until It Hurts: Altruism and Advertising.” June 3, 1996.
https://public.wsu.edu/~taflinge/altruism.html
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BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF ALTRUISM On the surface, it may seem that altruism is contrary to
the usual biological imperatives of self-preservation, reproduction or greed. Being
altruistic may mean dying for others, foregoing your own chances at having or raising
young, or giving away your resources. However, mathematical models of altruistic
behavior show that such behavior is, in the long run, more beneficial for the
individual's genetic (if not personal) survival than strict selfishness is. "Acts of apparent
altruism are instead attributed chiefly to kin selection. The mother bird slowly flutters
from the fox, one wing bent as if broken, in order to lead the predator away from her
brood. She may lose her life, but multiple copies of very similar genetic instructions will
survive in the DNA of her chicks. A cost-benefit analysis has been made. The genes
dictate to the outer world of flesh and blood with wholly selfish motives, and real
altruism -- self-sacrifice for a non-relative -- is deemed a sentimental illusion." (Sagan
and Druyan, 1992, p. 112) This, of course, is reciprocal altruism. (Wispe, 1978) Many
animals practice altruism. For example, the marmot gathers in interrelated groups.
Some of the members of the group act as lookouts, placing themselves in potential
danger in order to give timely warning. Others act as nannies, foregoing having their
own young to raise other group members' young. Among wolves and wild dogs, only the
alpha male and female have pups; the other members of the pack work to raise them.
Note that the animals that practice altruism are social animals, those that gather in
mutually supportive groups. Loners, such as dik dik antelope and gibbons, or herd
animals such as gnus and elephant seals, are rarely altruistic since these animals are
rarely mutually supportive.(1) Social animals are usually interrelated and participate in
cooperative activities. That is, several generations of parents and young live together
and, more importantly, work together to better exploit their niche in the environment.
Cooperative behavior is more efficient than selfish behavior in gathering resources.
(see Chapter 8 for discussion) Occasionally, an animal will behave in what is an
apparently altruistic manner for a total stranger, sometimes not even of its own
species. For example, the honey seeker bird of Africa will lead a human to a bee hive,
pausing and looking back to be sure it's being followed. Such behavior would be
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altruism if it weren't for the fact that the bird is actually getting someone else to do
the work that it finds difficult -- getting the honey out of the hive. Usually, in return for
the bird's help in finding the hive, the human will give the bird a share of the honey.
Thus, the bird is actually being selfish -- doing a little of the work, and leaving the hard
part for someone else to do, for a disproportionate share of the rewards. Of course, in
any society that practices reciprocal altruism, there will be those individuals that take
advantage of the system. That is, they take but never return. However, this is usually
self-correcting, particularly in those animals that have long memories; "cry wolf" too
often, and no one comes to your aid, since it destroys the mutual trust that a society
depends on to exist. Such selfish individuals can be ostracized, banished, or even
destroyed for taking advantage of and thus disrupting the system.
Analysis: Reciprocal altruism is the concept that humans are evolutionarily disposed to help
others who are likely to help them back in return. This demonstrates that humans generally
only help others (in seemingly altruistic ways) if they are primarily motivated by self-interest.
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PRO: Self-Interest Inevitable
Argument: Self-interest is inevitable. Altruism is driven by self-interest at its foundation.
Warrant: Humans are never purely altruistic because altruistic motives always factor in costs
and benefits for oneself as well as others.
Dennis L. Krebs. “Altruism and Egoism: A False Dichotomy?” Psychological Inquiry 2:2,
1991. Pages 137-139.
In the same way that Batson and Shaw’s assumptions about the nature of human
motivation correspond to their qualitative definition of altruism, my assumptions about
motivation correspond to the quantitative distinctions I make. I would argue that no
motive consists entirely of the goal of enhancing the welfare of another exclusive of
concerns about the welfare of the self; therefore, no motive is purely altruistic.
However useful it may be to distinguish conceptually between the desire to enhance
the welfare of others and the desire to enhance the welfare of self, I would argue that
both desires always interact in the formation of behavioral goals. Note that I include
self-sacrifice (costs to self) in my definition of altruism. Batson and Shaw object to the
inclusion of self-sacrifice because (a) it shifts attention from motivation to
consequences and (b) self-benefits for helping may increase as costs increase. I don't
consider either concern problematic. I believe that all conceptions of altruism are based
on some reference to consequences. When Batson and Shaw refer to the welfare of
another, they are referring to positive consequences. They do not consider this a
problem because they treat these consequences as goals of behavior, not as results. But
people can intend to produce various combinations of net benefits to self and other as
easily as they can intend to enhance the welfare of others exclusive of the welfare of the
self. In fact, I would say, they always do. On my definition of altruism, behaviors directed
toward the en- hancement of the welfare of another increase in altruism in proportion
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to the anticipated costs to self: Risking your life to save a drowning person is more
altruistic than throwing him or her a lifesaver. Similarly, in response to Batson and
Shaw's second point, I would reduce the amount of altruism in high-cost acts of
helping in proportion to the extent to which self-benefits are anticipated (but not,
with Batson and Shaw, necessarily obtained). Batson and Shaw acknowledge that
individuals are sensitive to costs and benefits to self and other. They acknowledge
that pursuing altruistic goals may enhance the welfare of the altruist. They recognize
that perception of another's need may evoke both egoistic and altruistic motives and,
indeed, that the motivational forces of these motives may sum. And they surmise that
individuals engage in a "hedonic calculus" before behaving altruistically, in search of
the least costly means to the altruistic end. But these acknowledg- ments
notwithstanding, they insist that a single motive cannot be both altruistic and egoistic
because it would imply two ultimate goals. My point is that, inasmuch as individuals are
sensitive to the costs and benefits to themselves and to others of various courses of
action, both concerns will enter into their ultimate goals. Faced with an, individual in
need, I believe observers' ultimate goals always involve the inten- tion to obtain some
optimal balance between the other's welfare and the welfare of the self.
Warrant: Every conscious action gives us some degree of self-satisfaction. That means true
altruism can never exist.
Emily Strassburger. “True altruism doesn’t exist.” The Daily Nebraskan. October 26,
2017. https://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/point-true-altruism-doesn-t-
exist/article_18229e5a-b9ed-11e7-94f0-237a4be17806.html
Though these are only a few examples, the principle stays consistent. Each conscious
act leads to some degree of satisfaction. Whether intended or not, each action leads
to some sort of benefit for the actor. No matter how small the benefit may be, or how
significant the action is, true altruism cannot exist when the actor receives a benefit.
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This isn’t to say that having personal motives or receiving a benefit makes an action
any less noble. In most cases, people may intend to do something for another person
just to be a kind, decent human being. However, whether there is a conscious
understanding, each action results in some sort of benefit to the actor. By definition,
then, true altruism cannot exist. People can still do kind, selfless things for other people
without expecting a benefit or anything in return. Selflessness still exists. When you
donate money to a homeless person, you don’t expect them to mow your lawn down
the line. Humans don’t expect reciprocity from others for everything. This act is selfless,
but not truly altruistic. You have a little pat-on-the-back moment, even without
receiving anything directly from the individual on the street. The nonexistence of true
altruism doesn’t pose a significant problem. If an act is theoretically truly altruistic, the
receiver benefits while the person doing the action doesn’t even consider their own
situation. It could ultimately be beneficial to them, or horribly negative. In contrast, the
true state of human nature sees scenarios in which both parties involved benefit. Giving
money to animal shelters keeps their doors open and makes the donor feel good about
themselves. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but true altruistic behavior simply isn’t possible.
It doesn’t mean people are monsters, rather they are personally incentivized to help
others. We may not act sheerly out of benevolence, but we shouldn’t lose sleep over
it.
Warrant: Evolution has primed our brains to release oxytocin whenever we help others. We
only help others because it makes us feel good.
William Irwin. “Psychological Egoism and Self-Interest.” Reason Papers 39:2, Winter
2017. Gale Academic One File.
Clearly, I am not suggesting that everyone always coldly calculates what will be in their
self-interest. The decision-making process is usually much more subtle, and can even be
self-deceptive. Indeed, motivation is often so influenced by biochemistry that we do
Champion Briefs 91
not ourselves know why we do the things we do; it is not always completely
transparent to us what our motives are. And, of course, not everything we do follows
from deliberation. Rather, some things we do from unthinking habit. Indeed, lots of our
mental activity is unconscious. For example, we may eat something believing that we
have chosen to eat it because it is good for us, when the deeper reason is that, without
our knowing it, the item contains caffeine, which we find stimulating. Likewise, we may
think we are choosing to do something because it will help someone else, when in fact
the deeper motivation is that we desire the feeling that will accompany the release of
oxytocin upon helping the other person. If kicking old ladies produced oxytocin, we
would see a lot more of that behavior. But evolution has made it so that helping
others, particularly kin and those in close proximity, produces oxytocin. This is not to
say that we always consciously intend to produce a helper's high with the release of
oxytocin, but it is nonetheless foundational to our motivation--we would lose the
desire to help if there were no good feelings that resulted.
Analysis: Self-interest is inevitably the primary human motivation. Even when we think we’re
acting selflessly, we can trace some benefit to ourselves that’s driving the action.
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PRO: Self-Preservation
Argument: Humans are primarily driven by self-preservation, which is the essence of self-
interest.
Warrant: Self-preservation is the natural urge of humans---whenever we breathe, we’re acting

in self-interest.
Jay Richards. “Self-Interest vs. Selfishness.” American Enterprise Institute. October 26,
2009. https://www.aei.org/society-and-culture/self-interest-vs-selfishness/
One of my main beefs is that both champions and critics of capitalism mistakenly
conflate mere self-interest with the vice of selfishness. But mere self-interest, as Adam
Smith and others understood, isn’t immoral. In many cases, it’s praiseworthy, and is
frequently unavoidable. Whenever you breathe, after all, you’re acting in your self-
interest. One reader observed that some interpreters of the American founding also
make the mistake of treating mere self-interest as a vice: The founders saw the end of
government as the promotion of the public good and the protection of individual rights,
and they saw no contradiction between the two. To understand why this is so one must
understand that self-interest rightly understood is neutral, not vicious. Further, the right
understanding of the relation of self-interest away from greed and towards the good
needs to be promulgated. We act as if the founding generation and the likes of Adam
Smith are completely separate from ancient or medieval or Christian notions of virtue,
which is ludicrous. It is, in fact, a position that assumes the premises of the Left.
Anyhow, I don’t understand how Aristotle or Aquinas are treated as if they never spoke
of self-interest. For instance, Aquinas says: In man there is first of all an inclination to
good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances:
inasmuch as every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its
nature: and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of preserving human
Champion Briefs 93
life, and of warding off its obstacles, belongs to the natural law. Secondly, there is in
man an inclination to things that pertain to him more specially, according to that nature
which he has in common with other animals: and in virtue of this inclination, those
things are said to belong to the natural law, “which nature has taught to all animals”
[Pandect. Just. I, tit. i], such as sexual intercourse, education of offspring and so forth.
Thirdly, there is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason,
which nature is proper to him: thus man has a natural inclination to know the truth
about God, and to live in society. (Summa Theologica, I-II Q. 94, A. 2) These inclination[s]
are mutually dependent on each other and flow upwards. Plato talks about erotic desire
for the Good’s sake as the basis of philosophy. Yet modern thought cuts all this out of
the “ancients” and acts as if anyone who talks about self-interest and the necessary
denies virtue. As if admitting that self-preservation is the first natural, instinctual urge
makes one a Hobbesian.
Warrant: All humans act in self-interest, which is fundamental to self-preservation.
Maura Pennington. “Self Interest: The Most Life Enhancing Driver of Them All.” Forbes.
February 21, 2012.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurapennington/2012/02/21/self-interest-the-
most-life-enhancing-driver-of-them-all/?sh=12620f6f3a93
There isn’t a human being on earth that doesn’t act in his own self-interest every day
of his life. It is necessary both to our survival as a species and our individual happiness.
Yet there is an entire class of people who resist the idea that it is essential to preserve
our freedom to act in this way, to make choices that serve us best. They have detached
from their own lives, losing the concept of themselves into the swirling collective. Lost
with them is the virtue of acting in self-preservation. Society should be considered as a
Venn Diagram, circles of individual interests that overlap in part. Each person maintains
the distinct features of his life in the majority of his circle; it is only a small portion that
Champion Briefs 94
intersects with that of another. That area in the center can be called, to borrow the
beloved term of utilitarians and socialists, “the greater good.” That’s the portion that
can be regulated and moderated. As for the rest of the circle, it should be left alone.
Warrant: Humans are motivated primarily by keeping themselves safe and avoiding pain and
suffering.
Ted Sommer. “Understanding Human Motivation from a Cultural Perspective.” Faith

Technologies. February 7, 2012.
https://blog.faithtechnologies.com/blog_entries/understanding-human-
motivation-from-a-cultural-perspective/
Let’s start with the assumption that people are internally motivated to behave in the
safest manner possible. Humans have an innate drive for self-preservation. This can
be observed very early in infants, and any parent who has taken a toddler to get
vaccinated understands how strongly humans try to avoid pain and suffering. We
know that most injuries can be traced back to human error. The essential question
becomes: How do we reduce (and ultimately eliminate) human error? All people
operate on a balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Each behavior typically falls
into one bucket or the other, and our life ends up being a blend of both. In his book,
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink labels these as Type I
(intrinsic) and Type X (extrinsic). People who are primarily motivated by Type I behavior
thrive on self-determination, and would prefer to choose their own path and goals.
Type X behavior is motivated with traditional “carrot and stick” methods connecting
positive and negative reinforcement. Working safely is a perfect example of Type I
behavior. It really doesn’t matter what an employer’s rules are (or OSHA’s for that
matter) because those with that behavior have an inherent desire to go home at the
end of the day with all their fingers intact.
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Warrant: Pure altruism is self-destructive.
Richard F. Taflinger. “Give Until It Hurts: Altruism and Advertising.” June 3, 1996.
https://public.wsu.edu/~taflinge/altruism.html
SUMMARY Altruism is the last and weakest of the psychological appeals. Its weakness
lies in the fact that, in its pure form of self-destructive behavior for another's benefit,
it doesn't exist. What does exist is reciprocal altruism, in which self-destructive behavior
for another's benefit results in a return of one kind or another. Such behavior is evident
in social animals throughout the animal kingdom. It is clear is that, as an advertising
appeal, altruism can't stand alone. It must be linked with one or more other appeals,
preferably one of the strongest such as self-preservation or self-esteem. It is also clear
that pure altruism is a rare, if not non-existent, quality. People that do self-destructive
behavior for the benefit of others expect something in return. That the return is not
material is irrelevant: the appeal can carry immaterial rewards. Nonetheless, since
altruism appeals to the best in people as social creatures, advertising can use it to
accomplish a great deal to improve people's lives and societies in general.
Warrant: Pure altruism would lead to human extinction, if followed universally. Self-
preservation is the primary human motivation.
Kyle O’Shea. “Survival of the Selfish: Natural Selection and the Myth of Altruism.” The
Intellectual Standard 2:2, October 2012.
https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=tis
For example, the man that gives money to a homeless man on the street may not be
promoting his own survival, but he does receive a feeling of fulfillment, which in turn
improves his own life. This can be simplified to say that the man has traded money for
self-fulfillment. If this is true, then all good deeds can be simplified to trade agreements,
Champion Briefs 96
in which case they are not altruistic because the giver receives something in return. All
good deeds are intrinsically fulfilling, and if they weren't then there would be no
reason for animals to perform such deeds. If animals really were selfless, they would
not survive because they would be more concerned with the well being of others than
with themselves. They would be trading something for nothing, and would eventually
lose everything, including their lives. As explained by natural selection, trading
something for nothing is not a trait that would persist in a species, and so altruism could
not persist in nature. Humans as a species are biologically predisposed to act selfishly
and in the interest of self-preservation. As a result, humans are incapable of acting
purely altruistically because it would lead to their own extinction. Other animals
behave in the same way, and only act selflessly when it results in positive reinforcement
or is in the interest of the species as a whole. True altruism cannot exist in the long-run
because it would lead to the death of species.
Analysis: Self-interest is self-preservation. Because self-preservation is essential to human

existence, and the implicit basis of every action we take, self-interest is the primary motivator
of humans.
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PRO: Modern problems prove self-interest is the primary

motivation
Argument: Ongoing problems in the world today prove that humans are primarily driven by
self-interest.
Warrant: Self-interest is the primary driver of human resistance to actions addressing climate
change.
David Zilberman. “Self-interest, the denial of climate change, and resistance to

agricultural technology.” UC Berkeley Blog. September 25, 2017.
https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2017/09/25/self-interest-the-denial-of-climate-
change-and-resistance-to-agricultural-biotechnology/
I knew of very few scientists that were skeptics (their number has declined over time),
and some people denied climate change because of religious beliefs. One strategic
approach of politicians who didn’t want the US and developed countries to pay the
lion’s share of mitigation was to assume the role of skeptics, or even deniers of climate
change. But my impression is that many of the deniers are not ignorant and do believe
in science, but they do not want to pay. Someone once summarized it as “they are not
stupid they are mean.” I would not go that far though – they are driven by short term
self-interest. This is not a unique situation. For example, in retrospect we have found
that much of the denial of the health effects of cigarettes by tobacco companies used
the same logic.
Warrant: Self-interest is the primary driver of deep political divides.
Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban. “Self-Interest Is Often a Major Determinant of Issue
Attitudes.” Advances in Political Psychology 38:1, 2017.
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Based on various empirical findings, we resist the claim that self-interest ceased to play
a major role over the past decades. First, there is consensus that there are numerous
cases in which self-interest seems to be a (though not, of course, the only) major
determinant of political attitudes. Second, the growing literature on political attitudes
presents additional exceptions with some frequency. Third, when we examine some of
the specific examples presented in support of the view that selfinterest does not matter
much (e.g., that the unemployed do not typically have more favorable views towards
government assistance for the unemployed), we nonetheless find evidence that self-
interest does matter. (See the third section below.) Given all this, we think that self-
interest never stopped being a major determinant of issue attitudes in the sense
claimed by The American Voter. Further, we suggest that self-interest is a major
determinant of opinions in largely unrecognized ways. Indeed, as we explain in the
fourth section, rather than narrowing the conception of self-interest, our view,
influenced by evolutionary thinking, proposes that people have tangible interests
beyond those related to governmental economic redistribution (Weeden & Kurzban,
2014, 2016). This view understands various “cultural” and “social” issues to matter in
concrete ways in people’s lives. It matters to the wealthy and the poor whether the
government engages in different levels of progressive income redistribution. But this
does not exhaust the list of people’s tangible concerns. It matters to people with
different racial and religious identities whether governmental policies and public
pressures encourage or discourage bias against or in favor of people with their own
racial and religious identities. It matters to individuals with different levels of human
capital (e.g., education and test-taking ability) whether policies and pressures enhance
or diminish the role of human capital in determining social and economic advantages. It
matters to less educated natives whether policies and pressures encourage or
discourage the entry and hiring of similarly educated immigrants. It matters to
adventurously sexually active people whether policies and pressures place social costs
on nonmarital sex or make birth control or abortion services more difficult to obtain. As
Champion Briefs 99
we discuss in the fifth section, these kinds of matterings are plainly visible in the various
domain-specific demographic patterns of public opinion. People with current and likely
future needs for government assistance tend to be more likely to favor generous social
welfare programs. People tend to oppose discrimination against people with their own
characteristics, and people with high levels of meritocratic competence tend to prefer
meritocracy over group-based discrimination. People with Sex and the City lifestyles
tend to avoid religious groups (even when raised religious) and to prefer policies that
minimize costly stigmatization of their lifestyles and that provide for unfettered access
to birth control and abortion. Further, as we discuss in the sixth section, in addition to
being “major,” many of these demographic predictors have more secure claims to
being genuine causal “determinants” than do symbolic predictors such as party,
ideology, and (particularly) values. Do the demographic patterns of public opinion
necessarily imply self-interested motives? Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that people
tend to hold political issue positions that, if implemented, would plausibly produce
particular benefits to people like themselves over people not like themselves. Maybe,
for instance, people are in fact motivated to advocate positions that benefit most
people most of the time, and it’s just that occupying a certain social position skews
one’s view of how to go about achieving these widespread gains. Having said that, our
view is that the most promising work in psychology places concrete and competitive
social goals at the center of human motivation (Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2014;
Shiota & Kalat, 2012), such that their appearance as major factors in motivating
competing political issue positions would be satisfyingly consistent. But is “self-
interest” the best label to describe these patterns? We address this issue in more detail
below, but the key point is that political issue positions aren’t just symbolic or
ideological or principled or personality-driven; they’re also based on differently situated
people reacting to the concrete consequences of competing views. The demographic
patterns of the public’s issue opinions, we think, are evidence of individuals responding,
at least in general ways, to these concrete consequences.
Champion Briefs 100

Warrant: Self-interest is the primary driver of Wall Street greed in our unequal economy.
Simon Caulkin. “Guess what? Self-interest is bad for the economy.” The Guardian.
November 15, 2008.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/16/simon-caulkin-
management-economics
Self-interest as the driver that, like an invisible hand, permits individuals acting on their
own behalf to benefit society as a whole goes back to Adam Smith. But Smith at least
realised the drastic inequities it would cause and proposed measures, including
progressive taxes, to mitigate the worst effects. No such caution has been in evidence
since the 1960s as the concept has become the central belief around which all Anglo-
American corporate governance, and thence management as a whole, revolves. Self-
interest (and the need to guard against it) is the reason for dividing the chairman and
chief executive's role, just as it is for setting executive and non-exec directors against
each other; self-interest justifies and encourages individuals to demand vast pay
(including in the public sector) without thought for the consequences; finally, a near
religious faith in the power of self-interest to both motivate and police is the
foundation on which, as Greenspan now regrets, Wall Street's rocket scientists erected
the teetering superstructure of debt instruments crashing down around us. The real-
world consequences of a commercial universe with self-interest at its heart thus give
the lie to previous assumptions about how individuals and organisations work. In this
sense, Greenspan's mea culpa might be likened to the Vatican's admission in 1992 after
a 13-year inquiry that Galileo had, after all, been right ('It's official - the Earth moves
round the sun,' as the Chicago Sun-Times caustically put it at the time). Common sense
suggests a number of reasons why self-interest-centred commerce is as flawed a model
as an Earth-centred solar system. Self-interest contains within it the seeds of its own
destruction. It drives for reward, but once rewards reach a certain size it can no longer
function as a discipline. When rewards were less high, self-interest was tempered by the
Champion Briefs 101

need to nurture the reputation a career depended on. With salaries at current
stratospheric levels, however, self-interest provides no such restraint, since careers are
redundant.
Warrant: Dishonesty is primarily driven by self-interest.
Nina Mazar, On Amir, and Dan Ariely. “The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of
Self-Concept Maintenance.” Journal of Marketing Research XLV, December 2008.
GENERAL DISCUSSION People in almost every society value honesty and maintain high
beliefs about their own morality; yet examples of significant dishonesty can be found
everywhere in the marketplace. The standard cost–benefit model, which is central to
legal theory surrounding crime and punishment, assumes that dishonest actions are
performed by purely selfish, calculating people, who only care about external rewards.
In contrast, the psychological perspective assumes that people largely care about
internal rewards because they want, for example, to maintain their self-concept. On the
basis of these two extreme starting points, we proposed and tested a theory of self-
concept maintenance that considers the motivation from both external and internal
rewards. According to this theory, people who think highly of themselves in terms of
honesty make use of various mechanisms that allow them to engage in a limited amount
of dishonesty while retaining positive views of themselves. In other words, there is a
band of acceptable dishonesty that is limited by internal reward considerations. In
particular, we focus on two related but psychologically distinct mechanisms that
influence the size of this band—categorization and attention to standards—which we
argue have a wide set of important applications in the marketplace. Across a set of six
experiments we found support for our theory by demonstrating that when people had
the ability to cheat, they cheated, but the magnitude of dishonesty per person was
relatively low (relative to the possible maximum amount). We also found that, in
general, people were insensitive to the expected external costs and benefits associated
Champion Briefs 102

with the dishonest acts, but they were sensitive to contextual manipulations related to
the self-concept. In particular, the level of dishonesty dropped when people paid more
attention to honesty standards and climbed with increased categorization malleability
(Dana, Weber, and Kuang 2005). Some of the results provide more direct evidence for
the self-concept maintenance mechanism (Experiment 4) by showing that even though
participants knew that they were overclaiming, their actions did not affect their self-
concept in terms of honesty. Note also that, in contrast, predictors expected dishonest
actions to have a negative effect on the self-concept. This misunderstanding of the
workings of the self-concept also manifested in respondents’ inability to predict the
effects of moral reminders (Ten Commandments and honor code) and mediums
(tokens), suggesting that, in general, people expect others to behave in line with the
standard economic perspective of an external cost–benefit 6Note that our
manipulations in their general form may be viewed as priming. In this sense, our results
may generalize to a much larger class of manipulations that would curtail cheating
behavior and may be useful when, for example, the Ten Commandments or honor codes
are not a feasible solution, such as purchasing environments. trade-off and are
unappreciative of the regulative effectiveness of the self-concept.6 In principle, the
theory we propose can be incorporated into economic models. Some formalizations
related to it appear in recent economic theories of utility maximization based on models
of self-signaling (Bodner and Prelec 2001) and identity (Bénabou and Tirole 2004, 2006).
These models can be adopted to account for self-concept maintenance by incorporating
attention to personal standards for honesty (meta-utility function and salience
parameter s1, respectively) and categorization malleability (interpretation function and
probability 1 – λ, respectively). These approaches convey a slowly spreading conviction
among economists that to study moral and social norms, altruism, reciprocity, or
antisocial behavior, the underlying psychological motivations that vary endogenously
with the environment must be understood (see also Gneezy 2005). The data presented
herein offer further guidance on the development of such models. In our minds, the
interplay between these formal models and the empirical evidence we provide
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represents a fruitful and promising research direction. Some insights regarding the
functional from in which the external and internal rewards work together emerge from
the data, and these findings could also provide worthwhile paths for further
investigations in both economics and psychology. For example, the results of
Experiment 2 show that increasing external rewards in the form of increasing benefits
(monetary incentive) decreased the level of dishonesty (though insignificantly). This
observation matches findings from another matrix experiment in which we manipulated
two factors between 234 participants: the ability to cheat (control and recycle) and the
amount of payment to each participant per correctly solved matrix ($.10, $.50, $2.50,
and $5). In this 2 × 4 design, we found limited dishonesty in the $.10 and $.50 conditions
but no dishonesty in the $2.50 and $5 conditions. Furthermore, the magnitude of
dishonesty was approximately the same for $.10 and $.50. Together, these observations
raise the possibility of a step function–like relationship—constant, limited amount of
dishonesty up to a certain level of positive external rewards, beyond which increasing
the external rewards could limit categorization malleability, leaving no room for under-
the-radar dishonesty. In this way, dishonesty may actually decrease with external
rewards. Finally, it is worthwhile noting some of the limitations of our results. The first
limitation is related directly to the relationship between external and internal rewards.
Arguably, at some point at which the external rewards become very high, they should
tempt the person sufficiently to prevail (because the external reward of being
dishonest is much larger than the internal reward of maintaining a positive self-
concept). From that point on, we predict that behavior would be largely influenced by
external rewards, as the standard economic perspective predicts (i.e., ultimately, the
magnitude of dishonesty will increase with increasing, high external rewards).
Warrant: Crime is primarily driven by self-interest.
Paul Marcus. Book Review of A General Theory of Crime. William & Mary Law School
Scholarship Repository. 1991.
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https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.googl
e.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2468&context=facpubs
Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirsch define crime as "acts of force or fraud
undertaken in pursuit of self-interest. " This provides a good working definition in
considering both the available criminal justice statistics and the scholarly research in
the area. In analyzing crime, however, the authors destroy some popular and well-
entrenched myths about the causes of crime, the people who commit crimes, and what
can be done about them. They point out that contrary to the law-enforcement officer's
view of crime as a "glamorous and profitable" alternative to legal work, the fact is that
crime is' 'largely petty, typically not completed, and usually of little lasting or
substantial benefit to the offender. " 2 The authors take the view that most crimes
involve virtually no planning and, instead, are committed by immature individuals who
seek, on the spur of the moment, self-gratification through the criminal act.
Analysis: Many societal problems, from climate change to crime, are driven by self-interest. So
long as those problems persist, we can only conclude that humans are primarily motivated by
self-interest.
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PRO: Compassionate self-interest
Argument: Sympathy is part of self-interest
Warrant: Sympathy is self-interest.
Robert A. Black. “What Did Adam Smith Say About Self-Love?” Journal of Markets and
Morality 9:1. 2006.
Selfishness means to attend to one’s own interests without regard to, or at the
expense of, others. Self-interest and self-love, which Smith uses interchangeably at
times, probably for variety of expression, mean attending to one’s own interests but
not necessarily at others’ expense.2 Adam West (1969, 95) notes that Smith, in TMS,
viewed self-love in the context of Christ’s admonition to “love your neighbor as your
self” (see TMS, 25). More precisely, Smith saw self-love as a Stoic virtue:3 “Every man,
as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and
every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than any
other person” (TMS, 219). The Christian virtue was a corresponding and equal love for
one’s neighbor (see the editors’ note 1 in TMS, 23–24). Sympathy, for Smith, meant the
“fellow feeling with any passion” (as opposed to feeling only “pity and compassion” for
others; see TMS, 10). Feelings for another’s passion, whether joyous or tragic, start
with feelings for one’s own passions. For Smith, self-interest and sympathy are not
opposites. One’s “sympathies” are by nature first and foremost with [oneself] himself
and then with “the members of his own family” and with his “earliest friendships”
(TMS, 219). Personal sympathy could extend beyond immediate family and close
friends, and social sympathy could reach beyond one’s own nation, but the feelings
diminish as the reach extends. The greater is the reach of one’s sympathies, the greater
is the virtue. As the editors of TMS describe, sympathy and self-interest are not
comparable but operate at different levels: one is a governor and the other a motivator.
Champion Briefs 106

“Sympathy is the core of Smith’s explanation of moral judgment. The motive to action
[such as self-interest] is an entirely different matter” (TMS, 21–22). To sympathize with
the passions of another is to “approve of the passions” (TMS, 16). To sympathize with
the social passions of “generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship
and esteem, all of the social and benevolent affections” is virtuous (TMS, 38). To
disapprove of unsocial passions of “hatred and resentment” or to sympathize with the
victim of unsocial passions are both virtuous (TMS, 34). Another virtue for Smith is to
control our own passions, including the “selfish passions” of our own “grief and joy.”
The “selfish passions” of one’s own “grief and joy” are neither as virtuous as the social
passions nor as disagreeable as the unsocial passions (TMS, 40).
Warrant: Self-interest is more influential in studies.
Jing Jie, Pinchao Luo, Mengdi Zhuang, et al. “Self-Interest Induces Counter-Empathy at
the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs.” Frontiers in
Psychology. February 25, 2019.
In summary, our results indicate that the participants exhibited empathic responses
when others were treated unfairly. In the money distribution task, the participants’
empathic responses were aroused spontaneously when they saw the coplayer’s facial
expression, regardless of whether their personal interest was involved, and especially at
the beginning of their emotional responses. In the late stage of empathy, however,
when self-interest was involved, the participants were more concerned about their
own outcomes compared with others’ benefits, which reduced their empathic
responses toward the coplayers. These results confirm that empathic responses are
indeed regulated by the involvement of self-interest at the late stage of empathy. The
participants showed a strong preference for self-gain. They preferred advantageous
inequity for themselves, although the outcome might have been disadvantageous
inequity for the coplayer. These findings are partially similar to the results of previous
studies that have examined competitive situations; those results indicate that when
Champion Briefs 107

individuals participate in a competitive task, they are most affected by their own
outcomes. In comparison to strangers, participants’ empathic responses toward close
friends were only salient when they did not directly participate in a gambling game
(Leng and Zhou, 2010; Ma et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2014b). Research also suggests that
the larger the extent of self-benefit involvement, the more likely it is that egoism will
influence one’s affective response toward others’ monetary outcomes (Wang et al.,
2014a). Our findings complement those studies; that is, in demonstrating on the
contrary that people are not wholly concerned about personal interests. They can also
be affected by other people’s emotional states, producing empathic responses at an
initial stage.
Warrant: Sympathy alone is insufficient to motivative just and virtuous actions, as it can be
manipulated towards harmful actions.
Luke Glanville. “Self-Interest and the Distant Vulnerable.” Ethics & International Affairs
30:3, September 12, 2016. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ethics-
and-international-affairs/article/selfinterest-and-the-distant-
vulnerable/5939E4F75D5B71A4C9BA4AD7BDB98AEA
It is also worth emphasizing that a pleasure-based understanding of self-interest ought

not to be conceived as a substitute for ethical argument any more than either a narrow
or enlightened understanding of self-interest should be.Footnote 63 The moral-sense
theorists of the Scottish Enlightenment argued that our emotional responses to the
suffering of others provide us with moral guidance as to how we ought to act.Footnote
64 However, as Kant countered, our emotional inclinations frequently fail to conform
to morality, such as in instances where nature has “placed little sympathy in the heart
of this or that man” so that he is “by temperament indifferent to the sufferings of
others.”Footnote 65 In recent years, emotions theorists have not only examined this
problem of indifference and the related challenge of “compassion fatigue,” but they
have also explained how collective feelings of pleasure and pride can at times be
Champion Briefs 108

cultivated for controversial programs, such as Live Aid in 1985, or even mobilized for
perverse purposes, such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003.Footnote 66 A pleasurable
feeling derived from actions directed toward others is no guarantee that the action is
moral. As indicated earlier, Leibniz himself insisted that supposedly benevolent or
charitable behavior that generates feelings of pleasure needs to be “conformed to
wisdom” and to a right understanding of virtue if it is to be considered just.Footnote
67 Thus, even when they embrace a pleasure-based understanding of the national
interest, political leaders are still morally obligated to carefully examine whether
policies aimed at protecting the distant vulnerable are wise, appropriate, and genuinely
helpful. But if they have done their ethical due diligence, then leaders are in a position
to exercise moral leadership to encourage their publics to recognize the interest that
they have in enjoying the emotional fruits of aiding strangers in need.
Analysis: Sympathy does not motivate human selflessness, but instead it is a part of human
self-interest. Caring about others and acting accordingly is not a selfless act, and we do so out
of our own interest in another person’s safety and presence.
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PRO: Self-Interest motivates activism
Argument: Activism is driven by self-interest.
Warrant: Self-interest motivates effective consumer activism, which should be recognized as

legitimate political engagement.
Margaret Scammell. “The Internet and Civic Engagement: The Age of the Citizen-
Consumer.” Political Communication 17:4, 2000.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584600050178951?journalCo
de=upcp20
The proposition to be argued is this: The act of consumption is becoming increasingly

suffused with citizenship characteristics and considerations. Citizenship is not dead, or
dying, but found in new places, in life-politics, as Anthony Giddens (1991) calls it, and in
consumption. The site of citizens’ political involvement is moving from the production
side of the economy to the consumption side. As workers, most of us have less power
now for all the familiar reasons: technological revolution and economic globalization,
abetted by the deregulating governments of the 1980s and 1990s that systematically
dismantled many of the legal rights of labor unions. As consumers, though, we, at least
in the developed North, have more power than ever. We have more money and more
choice among a wider variety of options of how to spend our hard-earned cash and
precious leisure time. We are better-informed shoppers than ever before. Consumer
rights and interest groups and their advice are now daily in our mainstream mass
media. Environmental lobbyists and activists are no longer left-field, but have a clear
and central place in public debate and have demonstrated their ability to score direct
hits against the multi-nationals: Shell and dumping of waste in the oceans, Monsanto
and genetically modified foods, Nike and the pay and working conditions in its Third
World suppliers’ factories. Just as globalization squeezes orthodox avenues for
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politics, through the state and organized labor, so new ones are being prized open, in
consumer power. It is no longer possible to cut the deck neatly between citizenship
and civic duty, on one side, and consumption and self interest, on the other. They are
not at opposite ends of the spectrum: The citizen is politically interested, informed, and
outward-looking, while the consumer is self-interested, isolated, and inward-looking.
Typically, the citizen is the hero figure of democracy, active, public-spirited, and rational.
But what of the consumer?
Warrant: Self-interest motivates serving for one’s country.
Todd C. Helmus, S. Rebecca Zimmerman, Marek N. Posard, et al. “Life as a Private: A

Study of the Motivations and Experiences of Junior Enlisted Personnel in the
U.S> Army.” RAND Corporation. 2018.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2200/RR22
52/RAND_RR2252.pdf
The military is a unique organizational construct in American life. While it is a profession

like many others, it is more than simply a job— the military is also an institution. Noted
sociologist Charles Moskos wrote that, “members of an institution are often viewed as
following a calling; they generally regard themselves as being different or apart from the
broader society and are so regarded by others.” Moskos conceived of two roles,
institution and occupation (I/O). Institutional values are defined by values and norms
that transcend the self-interest of service members in pursuit of some higher good
(e.g., service to one’s country). The occupational values are defined by self-interested
motivations found within the marketplace (e.g., salary and benefits). According to
Moskos, the advent of the All-Volunteer Force in 1973 created tension between
institutional and occupational values for the American military, causing a rapid shift
toward the military as a workplace and the loss of much of its institutional basis. David
Segal referred to “pragmatic professionals,” meaning that personnel hold both
Champion Briefs 111

institutional and occupational values as they serve. We found evidence of this balance
in many of the soldiers we interviewed.6
Warrant: Egoism can also motivate volunteering.
Linda S. Hartenian and Bryan Lilly. “Egoism and Commitment: A Multidimensional

Approach to Understanding Sustained Volunteering.” Journal of Managerial
Issues 21:1, Spring 2009. JSTOR.
While this study does not demonstrate that any causal relationship exists, we have
been able to show that positive correlations exist between egoism and commitment.
This finding provides some support for believing that egoistic individuals will develop
attitudes that can lead to longer-term relationships with an agency. We also are not
able to con-clude that egoism is more important than altruism, or vice versa, but we
have been able to show that those who study egoism should use a multidimensional
conceptualization of egoism. Interestingly, recent medical research found that what is
good for us and what is good for others are tracked by the same area of the brain. This
suggests that egoism and altruism are intertwined physiologically, and hence pitting
one against the other may not make sense (Harbaugh et al, 2007). Finally, as noted
above, knowledge about a volunteer's egoistic orientation will not fully explain his or
her level of commitment to an agency. In subsequent paragraphs, we discuss the
usefulness of egoism as a partial explanatory variable. As noted by Omoto and Snyder
(1995), positive outcomes can accrue to agencies who enlist the help of egoistic
volunteers. True, an egoistic volunteer may not remain as long as an altruistic
volunteer. Other factors about the situation, however, may determine whether the
time an egoistic individual spends in the agency really matters. These might include the
im- mediacy of the need for assistance by the agency or the specialized skill a volunteer
brings to the agency. What if, for example, the volunteer brings a critical skill to an
agency that agency personnel lack (e.g., ability to facilitate a strategic planning session)?
The outcome for the volunteer may be to build a network of organizational
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connections or to add one more agency to his or her resume. Just because these
outcomes have been experienced by the volunteer does not diminish the importance
of the volunteer's contribution to the agency and the recipients of the agency's
services. Our study provides some good news for agencies that recognize that some of
its volunteers have egoistic reasons for being there. Specific instances arise when an
agency would want volunteers to be strong on the Outward, Inward, and Experiential
Egoism dimensions. For example, agencies may turn to those volunteers who scored
high on Experiential Ego- ism for roles as community advocates or community educators
or to assist with fund-raising activities associated with capital campaigns, operations,
special projects, and scholarships. Ex- periential Egoism is correlated with two
dimensions of commitment, Identification and Internalization. Likely the agency will
need to groom these volunteers before they are able to assume the roles mentioned
earlier. Nonetheless, volunteers who desire personal growth experiences and
acquiring new skills would be particularly good candidates for mentoring in any of
those roles.
Warrant: Self-interest directly and indirectly serves others’ well-being in the market.
Joe Carter. “Why ‘national service’ is misguided nationalism.” Acton Institute. April 18,
2019. https://blog.acton.org/archives/108105-why-national-service-is-
misguided-nationalism.html
Unfortunately, they are not alone. Suggestions that we implement full-time national
service for the young are frequently made by honorable people, such as former Army
Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the late William F. Buckley, Jr. (who wrote a book outlining
his proposal). What such people often miss is the way that in a free society there are
better ways for us to serve our country and our neighbors. For example, Chad W.
Seagren, who earned a PhD in economics from George Mason University and holds the
rank of major in the Marine Corps, explains why participation in the division of labor
serves society: The market so readily provides us with products we desire that we often
Champion Briefs 113

overlook the crucial role that service plays in our lives. The fact that the shelves of your
local grocery store are consistently stocked with milk surprises no one. But the process
that brings milk from the dairy to your local retailer is incredibly complex and requires
the cooperation of millions of individuals. This process not only succeeds in bringing
milk and myriad other products to the masses, but also, in the last 300 years, has raised
the standard of living to heights that were unimaginable only a few generations ago. In
industrialized countries, it has eliminated abject poverty and starvation. It has greatly
increased the availability and quality of medical care, vastly extending life spans. Don
Boudreaux, an economics professor at George Mason University, regularly points out
the seemingly mundane, but ultimately remarkable, ways in which the capitalist market
has improved the environment for humans. The free market is responsible for the wide
availability of housing structures to protect people from the elements; climate control
such as heating and air conditioning; indoor plumbing; personal hygiene items such as
soap and shampoo; and appliances that allow for the safe and clean storage of food, to
name just a few. And contrary to popular belief, the market actually enables people to
care for the environment, a luxury that becomes attainable only when societies become
sufficiently wealthy. The market is so integral to our relationships with other
individuals in society and so effectively provides both necessities and luxuries that it is
easy to overlook the extent to which people depend on it. Similarly, few realize the
contributions that millions of people make every day to this essential social institution.
On the surface it may seem like Seagren is referring to something completely different
from national service. And in a sense, he is. Seagren is talking about how the markets
provide ways to serve the needs and interests of our neighbors in a direct manner by,
as Adam Smith would say, serving our own self-interest.
Warrant: Dedication to causes is compatible with enlightened self-interest.
James A. Stieb. “Clearing up the Egoist Difficulty with Loyalty.” Journal of Business Ethics
63:1, January 2006. JSTOR.
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First, if I am right, loyalty has always been pursuing the best interest of X. When my
interests and X's coincide, there is no difference between pursuing my best interest or
my pursuing X's. Someone who postpones inevitable discharges out of some
"transcendental" motive and not, say, to soften the blow or follow the law is being
"irrational." Likewise one should replace employees with better labor and respond to
"better" job offers if (all things weighed in) the employees or the jobs really are "better"
(and not just monetarily). However, there is no "replacing" loyalty with enlightened self
interest. Loyalty is an expression of enlightened self-interest. One cannot "replace"
something with itself. The problem is that so many authors from Baron to Duska and
Carbone have implicitly assumed or expressly argued that loyalty is sacrifice or as
Duska says: "Loyalty depends on ties that demand self sacrifice with no expectation of
reward,..." (p. 244). Baron maintains that we are loyal to people and personal
relationships and not causes and ideals. However, it is essential for Baron and other
authors to see just how persons and personal relationships are nothing without the
causes and ideals they instantiate. These causes and ideals are not "transcendent,"
they are "immanent" in the people and relationships and are only "separable in
thought." Some of these causes and ideals are toughness, compassion, liberality,
stubbornness, and so on. It is possible to be truly loyal to more than one party because
many of the "sacrifices" supposed to be loyal (like voting for the "company candidate")
simply drop out as unnecessary. Maybe this is what Carbone meant when he said that
we should replace the old notion of loyalty that says I am loyal to X iff [if and only if] I
will do anything for X.
Analysis: Activism is in part motivated by an individual’s desire to improve their conditions.

Volunteering, charity work, and political action are all linked to an individual’s self-interests.
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PRO: Self-Interest is self-love.
Argument: Self-interest is an accurate descriptor of human self-love and self-regard.
Warrant: “Self-interest” accurately describes humans’ pursuit of pleasure, as well as states such
as knowledge that are valuable independently of desire.
Robert Shaver. “Egoism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2021.

https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=egoism
All forms of egoism require explication of “self-interest” (or “welfare” or “well-being”).

There are three main theories. Preference or desire accounts identify self-interest with
the satisfaction of one’s desires. Often, and most plausibly, these desires are restricted
to self-regarding desires. What makes a desire self-regarding is controversial, but there
are clear cases and counter-cases: a desire for my own pleasure is self-regarding; a
desire for the welfare of others is not. Objective accounts identify self-interest with the
possession of states (such as virtue or knowledge) that are valuable independently of
whether they are desired. Hybrid accounts give a role to both desires (or pleasure) and
states that are valuable independently of whether they are desired. For example,
perhaps the increase to my well-being brought about by a satisfied desire (or a pleasure)
itself increases insofar as it is a desire for (or pleasure in) knowledge. Or perhaps the
increase to my well-being brought about by a piece of knowledge itself increases insofar
as I desire (or take pleasure in) it. Hedonism, which identifies self-interest with pleasure,
is either a preference or an objective account, according to whether what counts as
pleasure is determined by one’s desires. Psychological egoism claims that each person
has but one ultimate aim: her own welfare. This allows for action that fails to maximize
perceived self-interest, but rules out the sort of behavior psychological egoists like to
target — such as altruistic behavior or motivation by thoughts of duty alone. It allows
for weakness of will, since in weakness of will cases I am still aiming at my own
Champion Briefs 116

welfare; I am weak in that I do not act as I aim. And it allows for aiming at things other
than one’s welfare, such as helping others, where these things are a means to one’s
welfare. Psychological egoism is supported by our frequent observation of self-
interested behavior. Apparently altruistic action is often revealed to be self-interested.
And we typically motivate people by appealing to their self-interest (through, for
example, punishments and rewards).
Warrant: Self-interest is understood to include self-love.
Michael Emmett Brady. “Adam Smith’s Prudence (self interest-self love) Was the
Bedrock Foundation and Necessary Condition for the Attainment of All Other
Virtues in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.” Social
Science Research Network. March 29, 2018.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3152154#:~:text=There%
20can't%20be%20too,level%2C%20nothing%20else%20is%20possible.
“First, self-interest is here to be understood in broad terms. The breadth of the

definition adopted here concurs with Jacob Viner's (1927, 212-13): "Self-interest meant
to Smith not only the desire for wealth, but self-love in all its possible manifestations."
Second, self-love and self-interest will be here considered equivalent terms, a choice
corroborated by their common interchangeable use. In the index at the end of The
Wealth of Nations, Smith defines what we usually refer to as the "self-interest" of the
butcher, baker, and brewer as "self-love." Furthermore, the underlying claim of this
essay is simply that in both books there is some self-interest. .. Let us now look at the
role of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In
particular, let us look at the best that can happen when self-interest is present. George
Stigler ([1971] 1982,136) captures the essence, the presence, and the beneficial effects
of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations, claiming that "the Wealth of Nations is a
stupendous palace erected upon the granite of self-interest." Not much needs to be
added to the abundant literature dealing with how, in the book, "Give me that which I
Champion Briefs 117

want and you shall have this which you want" (I.ii.2) is the self-interested principle
that allows the poorest man in a commercial society to be better off than a king in a
noncommercial society (Li. 11). Even undergraduate principles textbooks cite how
Smith's butchers, bakers, and brewers (I.ii.2), following their self-interest, are led by an
invisible hand to do not only what is good for them, but also what is good for society
(IV.ii). This positive account of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations generally places
Smith within the tradition of the so-called Scottish Enlightenment, offering an
alternative to religious and civic humanist descriptions and prescriptions for social
order, and associating Smith, correctly or not, with thinkers ranging from Montesquieu
to Mandeville and Jeremy Bentham.5 ”(Paganelli,2008,pp.367-368)
Warrant: Self-love collapses to self-interest. While misguided, it is ultimately how humans act.
Syazreen Yustman. “The thin line between self-love and self-interest.” Penwings
Publishing. July 9, 2021. https://penwings.com/the-thin-line-between-self-love-
and-self-interest/
For someone who is tremendously driven with the concept of self-love, it is easier to
be influenced with the distorted idea of self-love today. They put themselves as the
protagonist and expect things to go as they wish. For them, the world revolves around
them. Why, you may ask? Simply because they believe that they deserve it, due to self-
love. People are so misguided with the ideologies of self-love, they neglect the feelings
of other individuals. When a person is obsessed with the idea of self-love, the act of
self-love transforms into self-interest. They would use this ideology as an excuse to
justify unpopular behaviours, when in fact, self-love is for people to be content with
what they have, and the ability for them to move on regardless of the situation. Even
though self-love practices putting yourself as the priority, that does not mean caring and
being kind to others are deprioritized. Think about how social media has warped and
changed the notion of self-love.
Champion Briefs 118

Analysis: “Self-Interest” includes actions of self-care, and it would be impossible for us to

engage in self-love without it. The motivation to improve oneself stems from the interests of
the self.
Champion Briefs 119

Champion Briefs
2022-2023
Big Questions Brief
Pro Responses to
Con Arguments
Pro Responses to Con Arguments Big Questions 22-23
A/2: Sympathy
Answer: Sympathy being an innate human trait does not disprove that humans are primarily
motivated by self-interest.
Warrant: Sympathy is not the opposite of self-interest---but self-interest limits the reach of
sympathy.
Morality 9:1. 2006.
Selfishness means to attend to one’s own interests without regard to, or at the
expense of, others. Self-interest and self-love, which Smith uses interchangeably at
times, probably for variety of expression, mean attending to one’s own interests but
not necessarily at others’ expense.2 Adam West (1969, 95) notes that Smith, in TMS,
viewed self-love in the context of Christ’s admonition to “love your neighbor as your
self” (see TMS, 25). More precisely, Smith saw self-love as a Stoic virtue:3 “Every man,
as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and
every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than any
other person” (TMS, 219). The Christian virtue was a corresponding and equal love for
one’s neighbor (see the editors’ note 1 in TMS, 23–24). Sympathy, for Smith, meant the
“fellow feeling with any passion” (as opposed to feeling only “pity and compassion” for
others; see TMS, 10). Feelings for another’s passion, whether joyous or tragic, start
with feelings for one’s own passions. For Smith, self-interest and sympathy are not
opposites. One’s “sympathies” are by nature first and foremost with [oneself] himself
and then with “the members of his own family” and with his “earliest friendships”
(TMS, 219). Personal sympathy could extend beyond immediate family and close
friends, and social sympathy could reach beyond one’s own nation, but the feelings
diminish as the reach extends. The greater is the reach of one’s sympathies, the greater
Champion Briefs 121

is the virtue. As the editors of TMS describe, sympathy and self-interest are not
comparable but operate at different levels: one is a governor and the other a motivator.
“Sympathy is the core of Smith’s explanation of moral judgment. The motive to action
[such as self-interest] is an entirely different matter” (TMS, 21–22). To sympathize with
the passions of another is to “approve of the passions” (TMS, 16). To sympathize with
the social passions of “generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship
and esteem, all of the social and benevolent affections” is virtuous (TMS, 38). To
disapprove of unsocial passions of “hatred and resentment” or to sympathize with the
victim of unsocial passions are both virtuous (TMS, 34). Another virtue for Smith is to
control our own passions, including the “selfish passions” of our own “grief and joy.”
The “selfish passions” of one’s own “grief and joy” are neither as virtuous as the social
passions nor as disagreeable as the unsocial passions (TMS, 40).
Warrant: Self-interest has a stronger influence on people---experiments prove that it reduces

empathetic responses towards others’ suffering.
Jing Jie, Pinchao Luo, Mengdi Zhuang, et al. “Self-Interest Induces Counter-Empathy at
the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs.” Frontiers in
Psychology. February 25, 2019.
In summary, our results indicate that the participants exhibited empathic responses
when others were treated unfairly. In the money distribution task, the participants’
empathic responses were aroused spontaneously when they saw the coplayer’s facial
expression, regardless of whether their personal interest was involved, and especially at
the beginning of their emotional responses. In the late stage of empathy, however,
when self-interest was involved, the participants were more concerned about their
own outcomes compared with others’ benefits, which reduced their empathic
responses toward the coplayers. These results confirm that empathic responses are
indeed regulated by the involvement of self-interest at the late stage of empathy. The
Champion Briefs 122

participants showed a strong preference for self-gain. They preferred advantageous

inequity for themselves, although the outcome might have been disadvantageous
inequity for the coplayer. These findings are partially similar to the results of previous
studies that have examined competitive situations; those results indicate that when
individuals participate in a competitive task, they are most affected by their own
outcomes. In comparison to strangers, participants’ empathic responses toward close
friends were only salient when they did not directly participate in a gambling game
(Leng and Zhou, 2010; Ma et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2014b). Research also suggests that
the larger the extent of self-benefit involvement, the more likely it is that egoism will
influence one’s affective response toward others’ monetary outcomes (Wang et al.,
2014a). Our findings complement those studies; that is, in demonstrating on the
contrary that people are not wholly concerned about personal interests. They can also
be affected by other people’s emotional states, producing empathic responses at an
initial stage.
Warrant: Sympathy alone is insufficient to motivative just and virtuous actions, as it can be
manipulated towards harmful actions. The CON also neglects “compassion fatigue.”
It is also worth emphasizing that a pleasure-based understanding of self-interest ought

not to be conceived as a substitute for ethical argument any more than either a narrow
or enlightened understanding of self-interest should be.Footnote 63 The moral-sense
theorists of the Scottish Enlightenment argued that our emotional responses to the
suffering of others provide us with moral guidance as to how we ought to act.Footnote
64 However, as Kant countered, our emotional inclinations frequently fail to conform
Champion Briefs 123

to morality, such as in instances where nature has “placed little sympathy in the heart
of this or that man” so that he is “by temperament indifferent to the sufferings of
others.”Footnote 65 In recent years, emotions theorists have not only examined this
problem of indifference and the related challenge of “compassion fatigue,” but they
have also explained how collective feelings of pleasure and pride can at times be
cultivated for controversial programs, such as Live Aid in 1985, or even mobilized for
perverse purposes, such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003.Footnote 66 A pleasurable
feeling derived from actions directed toward others is no guarantee that the action is
moral. As indicated earlier, Leibniz himself insisted that supposedly benevolent or
charitable behavior that generates feelings of pleasure needs to be “conformed to
wisdom” and to a right understanding of virtue if it is to be considered just.Footnote
67 Thus, even when they embrace a pleasure-based understanding of the national
interest, political leaders are still morally obligated to carefully examine whether
policies aimed at protecting the distant vulnerable are wise, appropriate, and genuinely
helpful. But if they have done their ethical due diligence, then leaders are in a position
to exercise moral leadership to encourage their publics to recognize the interest that
they have in enjoying the124motionnal fruits of aiding strangers in need.
Warrant: Sympathy can’t overcome ingroup/outgroup distinctions that end up marginalizing

those most in need.
C. Daniel Batson, Nadia Ahmad, and Jo-Ann Tsang. “Four Motives for Community
Involvement.” Journal of Social Issues 58:3, 2002. https://www.baylorisr.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/11/tsang_motives.pdf
Problems. Collectivist motives are not problem-free as a source of action for the
common good. Typically, we care about collectives of which we are members, an us.
Identifying with a group or collective usually involves recognition of an outgroup, a
them, who is not us. Indeed, some have suggested that a them-us comparison is
Champion Briefs 124

necessary to define a collective (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). The problem is that concern to
meet our needs may lead to callous indifference to their needs. For example, when
AIDS was initially labeled as a gay disease, many outside the gay community felt little
inclination to help. It was their problem.
Analysis: Sympathy does not motivate human selflessness, and it can be manipulated towards
harmful ends. Self-interest is empirically the stronger motivator of human actions, and it is not
incompatible with productive forms of sympathy.
Champion Briefs 125

A/2: Complex Motivations
Answer: Even if human motivations are complex, appealing to humans’ self-interest is what
gets things done.
Warrant: Appealing to other humans’ self-interest is the basis of all economic exchange.
Morality 9:1. 2006.
What, then, did Adam Smith say about self-love? The full context shows that he did not
encourage the butcher, the brewer, and the baker to be more selfish. Nor did he excuse
apparently selfish behavior as due to the impersonal nature of market exchange. The
emphasis of Klay and Lunn (2003, 558), for instance, is on the different moralities of
personal and impersonal exchange. This distinction may apply elsewhere in WN, but not
here. Smith’s example explains exchange with village shopkeepers, perhaps through
barter. Furthermore, the perspective is not that of the shopkeeper at all but that of the
beggar or customer standing in need of food and drink. Efforts to convince shopkeepers
to be more benevolent and ethical in their dealings do not violate the sense of this
passage for it is directed toward the customer: You will be more able to meet your
needs and wants if you appeal to the self-interest, rather than to the benevolence, of
others. Had Smith taken the perspective of the shopkeepers, he might well have
written: It is not from the benevolence of the customer that the butcher, the brewer, or
the baker make their livings, but from an appeal to the customer’s desire for a good
product at a fair price. To meet his own needs, the butcher must not plead about how
poorly his family is doing but about how well he will cut the meat and trim the fat. Is the
choice here really between benevolent or self-interested exchange? No! The choice
Smith poses is between self-interested appeals to others’ selflove (through exchange)
or self-interested appeals to others’ benevolence (through begging). Amartya Sen
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(1993) interprets Smith as saying that selfinterest is the motivation for exchange,
particularly exchange of commodities. In these passages, however, Smith notes that
self-interest is also the motive for begging. The appeal to self-interest is more efficient
than begging for securing the necessities of life. Appealing to others’ self-interest
ensures a steadier and more-balanced supply of necessities in a world of complex
production. The desire for steady, balanced supplies of necessities—not merely self-
interest— is the mainspring of mutual exchange.
Warrant: Counter-examples against egoism aren’t enough to prove altruism---if humans are
mostly egoistic, and helping behaviors can be explained by habitual systems, the PRO’s theory
of psychology is still correct.
John Doris, Stephen Stich, and Lachlan Walmsley. “Empirical Approaches to Altruism.”
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2020.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-empirical/#EgoiVsAltrDebaPsyc
Another possibility is that some helping behavior might not be motivated by ultimate
desires at all. Gęsiarz and Crockett (2015) argue that, in addition to the goal-directed
system, behavior, including helping behavior, is sometimes produced by what they call
the habitual and Pavlovian systems. The habitual system leads to actions that have the
highest expected value based on previous life experiences rather than possible
consequences indicated by features of the current situation. As a result, helping
behavior may be repeated in the future and in circumstances in which motivating
factors like the promise of rewards are absent if the behavior has been rewarded in the
past. Like the habitual system, the Pavlovian system produces behavior with the highest
expected value based on the past. Unlike the habitual system, however, the Pavlovian
system produces behavior that has been successful in the evolutionary past, rather
than in an individual’s past. This means that behavioral dispositions that have led to
reproductive success in a individual’s evolutionary past may have become innate or
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“hard-wired” through natural selection. If it is indeed the case that some helping
behavior is produced by the habitual or Pavlovian systems, then egoism is false. And if
some helping behavior is egoistically motivated and the rest is produced by the
habitual and Pavlovian systems, then altruism is also false. 7. The Bottom Line Batson
and his collaborators have accomplished a great deal. They have formulated a
sophisticated altruist hypothesis, the empathy-altruism hypothesis, that can be tested
against competing egoist hypotheses, and they have designed experiments making a
strong case that many of those egoist hypotheses are false. But to show that altruism is
true, it is not enough to show that specific egoist hypotheses can’t explain specific
episodes of helping behavior. Nor would it be enough to show that all plausible
versions of egoism are false. It must also be shown that episodes of helping behavior
that can’t be explained egoistically can’t be explained by another process, such as
principalistic ultimate motivation or ultimate motivation by a non-moral norm. In
addition, the defender of altruism must show that non-egoistic episodes of helping
behavior are not the product of the habitual or Pavlovian systems. None of Batson’s
experiments were designed to rule out these non-egoistic options or others that might
be suggested. So there is still much work to be done. On a more positive note, it seems
that Batson and his associates have shown quite conclusively that the methods of
experimental psychology can move the debate forward. Indeed, one might argue that
Batson has made more progress in this area during the last four decades than
philosophers using the traditional philosophical methodology of a priori arguments
buttressed by anecdote and intuition have made in the previous two millennia. Their
work powerfully demonstrates the utility of empirical methods in moral psychology;
philosophical moral psychologists debating the altruism-egoism question have always
made empirical claim, and it is now evident that the human sciences possess resources
to help us empirically assess those empirical claims.
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Warrant: PRO does not dispute that humans want to do well by other people, but the primary
motivation is not self-denial or self-overcoming.
Mark Mercer. “In Defence of Weak Psychological Egoism.” Erkenntnis 55, 2001. Springer
Link.
That strong psychological egoism is false does not, of course, imply that selfless
altruism is possible. Still, that it is false does, in the absence of another viable egoistic
account of motivation, render unsupported the contention that no action is entirely
selfless. Weak psychological egoism, then, because it is a viable egoistic account of
motivation, provides new principled support for that contention. Those who, like Nagel,
McDowell and Rachels, maintain that selfless action is possible, who maintain that, on
occasion, agents can transcend or be indifferent to their self-regarding ends, must meet
the challenge of describing how and where weak psychological egoism goes wrong. This
is one way in which the doctrine of weak psychological egoism is of philosophical
interest. But what about the charge that egoistic doctrines of other-regarding desires
and actions are cynical doctrines? Is the world of the person who accepts the thesis that
everything intentionally done is done in expectation of reward really different from the
world of the person who rejects this thesis? What does the world look like through the
eyes of the weak psychological egoist? Is the egoist’s world the world of the pessimist,
while that of his opposite is the world of the optimist? Daniel Dennett instructs us, when
we set out to investigate issues regarding the possibility and nature of free action, not
to feed the bugbears.11 What he means is that we should avoid inflating the
significance of those issues for everyday moral issues and our prospects of living happy,
meaningful lives. This instruction applies just as well to philosophical issues concerning
the nature of motivation.12 We ought not fool ourselves into thinking that terribly much
in morals or our self-image as agents in the world rests on whether weak psychological
egoism is true or not, or whether we believe it is or is not. The world looks pretty much
the same to both egoists and others – or, at least, differences between the two in how it
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looks are better traced to other beliefs and attitudes. Still, there are some differences in
general outlook between the two sides of this issue, and it is right that we try to get
clear on them. Strong psychological egoism is said by many of its critics to be a cynical
doctrine, for its partisans must inevitably be suspicious of their neighbours’ designs, and
themselves be somewhat if not entirely opportunistic. However, not even those who
accept strong psychological egoism need deny that sometimes people aim in their
actions to do well by others, and that sometimes they succeed in their aim. Nor need
any sort of psychological egoist take a dim view of other people’s happiness. What
psychological egoists deny is that instances of aiming to do well by others are ever,
from the agent’s own point of view and overall, instances of self denial or self
overcoming. The agent who does well by others does so at least in expectation of, if
not directly for, personal reward. Thus, the person who does well by others is not to be
applauded or commended or cherished as embodying attitudes of self denial or self
overcoming. She might, however, be applauded or commended or cherished as one
who likes to do well by others. Between psychological egoism and cynicism, then, stands
one’s attitude toward selflessness. One who prizes it and yet, as a psychological egoist,
thinks it impossible, might well cast a jaundiced eye on his neighbours and himself. One
who does not think highly of it in the first place, however, will be no more cynically
suspicious of others or disappointed in himself than the evidence he has of others’ or his
own dissembling and opportunism warrants.
Analysis: CON’s argument that human psychology is too complex to argue that self-interest is
primary ignores the powerful influence of self-interest over key spheres of life, like the market.
Altruism also ignores plausible alternative explanations of helping behavior.
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A/2: Service and civic duty
Answer: Service to higher causes is compatible with self-interest as the primary motivation.
Warrant: Self-interest motivates effective consumer activism, which should be recognized as

legitimate political engagement.
Margaret Scammell. “The Internet and Civic Engagement: The Age of the Citizen-
Consumer.” Political Communication 17:4, 2000.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584600050178951?journalCo
de=upcp20
The proposition to be argued is this: The act of consumption is becoming increasingly

suffused with citizenship characteristics and considerations. Citizenship is not dead, or
dying, but found in new places, in life-politics, as Anthony Giddens (1991) calls it, and in
consumption. The site of citizens’ political involvement is moving from the production
side of the economy to the consumption side. As workers, most of us have less power
now for all the familiar reasons: technological revolution and economic globalization,
abetted by the deregulating governments of the 1980s and 1990s that systematically
dismantled many of the legal rights of labor unions. As consumers, though, we, at least
in the developed North, have more power than ever. We have more money and more
choice among a wider variety of options of how to spend our hard-earned cash and
precious leisure time. We are better-informed shoppers than ever before. Consumer
rights and interest groups and their advice are now daily in our mainstream mass
media. Environmental lobbyists and activists are no longer left-field, but have a clear
and central place in public debate and have demonstrated their ability to score direct
hits against the multi-nationals: Shell and dumping of waste in the oceans, Monsanto
and genetically modified foods, Nike and the pay and working conditions in its Third
World suppliers’ factories. Just as globalization squeezes orthodox avenues for
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politics, through the state and organized labor, so new ones are being prized open, in
consumer power. It is no longer possible to cut the deck neatly between citizenship
and civic duty, on one side, and consumption and self interest, on the other. They are
not at opposite ends of the spectrum: The citizen is politically interested, informed, and
outward-looking, while the consumer is self-interested, isolated, and inward-looking.
Typically, the citizen is the hero figure of democracy, active, public-spirited, and rational.
But what of the consumer?
Warrant: The CON neglects the occupational motivations that influence military service.
Todd C. Helmus, S. Rebecca Zimmerman, Marek N. Posard, et al. “Life as a Private: A

Study of the Motivations and Experiences of Junior Enlisted Personnel in the
U.S> Army.” RAND Corporation. 2018.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2200/RR22
52/RAND_RR2252.pdf
The military is a unique organizational construct in American life. While it is a profession

like many others, it is more than simply a job— the military is also an institution. Noted
sociologist Charles Moskos wrote that, “members of an institution are often viewed as
following a calling; they generally regard themselves as being different or apart from the
broader society and are so regarded by others.” Moskos conceived of two roles,
institution and occupation (I/O). Institutional values are defined by values and norms
that transcend the self-interest of service members in pursuit of some higher good
(e.g., service to one’s country). The occupational values are defined by self-interested
motivations found within the marketplace (e.g., salary and benefits). According to
Moskos, the advent of the All-Volunteer Force in 1973 created tension between
institutional and occupational values for the American military, causing a rapid shift
toward the military as a workplace and the loss of much of its institutional basis. David
Segal referred to “pragmatic professionals,” meaning that personnel hold both
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institutional and occupational values as they serve. We found evidence of this balance
in many of the soldiers we interviewed.6
Warrant: Egoism can also motivate volunteering.
Linda S. Hartenian and Bryan Lilly. “Egoism and Commitment: A Multidimensional

Approach to Understanding Sustained Volunteering.” Journal of Managerial
Issues 21:1, Spring 2009. JSTOR.
While this study does not demonstrate that any causal relationship exists, we have
been able to show that positive correlations exist between egoism and commitment.
This finding provides some support for believing that egoistic individuals will develop
attitudes that can lead to longer-term relationships with an agency. We also are not
able to con-clude that egoism is more important than altruism, or vice versa, but we
have been able to show that those who study egoism should use a multidimensional
conceptualization of egoism. Interestingly, recent medical research found that what is
good for us and what is good for others are tracked by the same area of the brain. This
suggests that egoism and altruism are intertwined physiologically, and hence pitting
one against the other may not make sense (Harbaugh et al, 2007). Finally, as noted
above, knowledge about a volunteer’s egoistic orientation will not fully explain his or
her level of commitment to an agency. In subsequent paragraphs, we discuss the
usefulness of egoism as a partial explanatory variable. As noted by Omoto and Snyder
(1995), positive outcomes can accrue to agencies who enlist the help of egoistic
volunteers. True, an egoistic volunteer may not remain as long as an altruistic
volunteer. Other factors about the situation, however, may determine whether the
time an egoistic individual spends in the agency really matters. These might include the
im- mediacy of the need for assistance by the agency or the specialized skill a volunteer
brings to the agency. What if, for example, the volunteer brings a critical skill to an
agency that agency personnel lack (e.g., ability to facilitate a strategic planning session)?
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The outcome for the volunteer may be to build a network of organizational

connections or to add one more agency to his or her resume. Just because these
outcomes have been experienced by the volunteer does not diminish the importance
of the volunteer’s contribution to the agency and the recipients of the agency’s
services. Our study provides some good news for agencies that recognize that some of
its volunteers have egoistic reasons for being there. Specific instances arise when an
agency would want volunteers to be strong on the Outward, Inward, and Experiential
Egoism dimensions. For example, agencies may turn to those volunteers who scored
high on Experiential Ego- ism for roles as community advocates or community educators
or to assist with fund-raising activities associated with capital campaigns, operations,
special projects, and scholarships. Ex- periential Egoism is correlated with two
dimensions of commitment, Identification and Internalization. Likely the agency will
need to groom these volunteers before they are able to assume the roles mentioned
earlier. Nonetheless, volunteers who desire personal growth experiences and
acquiring new skills would be particularly good candidates for mentoring in any of
those roles.
Warrant: Self-interest directly and indirectly serves others’ well-being in the market.
Joe Carter. “Why ‘national service’ is misguided nationalism.” Acton Institute. April 18,
2019. https://blog.acton.org/archives/108105-why-national-service-is-
misguided-nationalism.html
Unfortunately, they are not alone. Suggestions that we implement full-time national
service for the young are frequently made by honorable people, such as former Army
Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the late William F. Buckley, Jr. (who wrote a book outlining
his proposal). What such people often miss is the way that in a free society there are
better ways for us to serve our country and our neighbors. For example, Chad W.
Seagren, who earned a PhD in economics from George Mason University and holds the
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rank of major in the Marine Corps, explains why participation in the division of labor
serves society: The market so readily provides us with products we desire that we often
overlook the crucial role that service plays in our lives. The fact that the shelves of your
local grocery store are consistently stocked with milk surprises no one. But the process
that brings milk from the dairy to your local retailer is incredibly complex and requires
the cooperation of millions of individuals. This process not only succeeds in bringing
milk and myriad other products to the masses, but also, in the last 300 years, has raised
the standard of living to heights that were unimaginable only a few generations ago. In
industrialized countries, it has eliminated abject poverty and starvation. It has greatly
increased the availability and quality of medical care, vastly extending life spans. Don
Boudreaux, an economics professor at George Mason University, regularly points out
the seemingly mundane, but ultimately remarkable, ways in which the capitalist market
has improved the environment for humans. The free market is responsible for the wide
availability of housing structures to protect people from the elements; climate control
such as heating and air conditioning; indoor plumbing; personal hygiene items such as
soap and shampoo; and appliances that allow for the safe and clean storage of food, to
name just a few. And contrary to popular belief, the market actually enables people to
care for the environment, a luxury that becomes attainable only when societies become
sufficiently wealthy. The market is so integral to our relationships with other
individuals in society and so effectively provides both necessities and luxuries that it is
easy to overlook the extent to which people depend on it. Similarly, few realize the
contributions that millions of people make every day to this essential social institution.
On the surface it may seem like Seagren is referring to something completely different
from national service. And in a sense, he is. Seagren is talking about how the markets
provide ways to serve the needs and interests of our neighbors in a direct manner by,
as Adam Smith would say, serving our own self-interest.
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Warrant: Dedication to causes is compatible with enlightened self-interest.
James A. Stieb. “Clearing up the Egoist Difficulty with Loyalty.” Journal of Business Ethics
63:1, January 2006. JSTOR.
First, if I am right, loyalty has always been pursuing the best interest of X. When my
interests and X’s coincide, there is no difference between pursuing my best interest or
my pursuing X’s. Someone who postpones inevitable discharges out of some
“transcendental” motive and not, say, to soften the blow or follow the law is being
“irrational.” Likewise one should replace employees with better labor and respond to
“better” job offers if (all things weighed in) the employees or the jobs really are “better”
(and not just monetarily). However, there is no “replacing” loyalty with enlightened self
interest. Loyalty is an expression of enlightened self-interest. One cannot “replace”
something with itself. The problem is that so many authors from Baron to Duska and
Carbone have implicitly assumed or expressly argued that loyalty is sacrifice or as
Duska says: “Loyalty depends on ties that demand self sacrifice with no expectation of
reward,…” (p. 244). Baron maintains that we are loyal to people and personal
relationships and not causes and ideals. However, it is essential for Baron and other
authors to see just how persons and personal relationships are nothing without the
causes and ideals they instantiate. These causes and ideals are not “transcendent,”
they are “immanent” in the people and relationships and are only “separable in
thought.” Some of these causes and ideals are toughness, compassion, liberality,
stubbornness, and so on. It is possible to be truly loyal to more than one party becau“e
many of the”"sacrifice“" supposed to be loyal (like voting for the “company candidate”)
simply drop out as unnecessary. Maybe this is what Carbone meant when he said that
we should replace the old notion of loyalty that says I am loyal to X iff [if and only if] I
will do anything for X.
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Analysis: CON argues that humans’ service to causes above themselves disproves PRO’s theory
of motivation. But civic duty, military service, and loyalty to causes in general are all consistent
with self-interest.
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A/2: Self-Defeating Actions
Answer: The fact that humans sometimes make decisions against their self-interest does not
disprove that self-interest is the primary driver of human behavior.
Warrant: The Law of Effect proves that humans will repeat self-interested behaviors that are
followed by reward.
Hugh LaFollette. “The Truth in Psychological Egoism.” In Reason and Responsibility,

1998. https://www.hughlafollette.com/papers/egoism.htm
The embedded insight in psychological egoism is this: a person will continually engage in
an activity only if it has the effect of satisfying what she perceives to be in her self-
interest. This thesis differs from the traditional version of psychological egoism in three
significant respects, all of which were isolated in the previous discussion. First, it does
not assert that a person is always motivated by promotion of her self interest; it only
claims she will not continually act in ways that do not have the effect of promoting her
self-interest. That is, even though self-interest may not motivate an individual, the
achievement of those interests will psychologically reinforce that behavior. As Daniel
Dennett puts it, ‘the Law of Effect (…that actions followed by reward are repeated…) is
not just part of a possible explanation of human behavior, but of any possible
adequate explanation of behavior.’ (8)
Warrant: Even self-defeating or harmful actions are still pursued in self-interest.
William Irwin. “Psychological Egoism and Self-Interest.” Reason Papers 39:2, Winter
2017. Gale Academic One File.
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Of course, it may not be our happiness, but rather something else in our self-interest,
that we are pursuing. (30) Butler discusses the situation in which a person pursues
revenge even though it will ultimately leave the person himself worse off. (31) This
would seem to suggest that Butler is correct in arguing that we sometimes ultimately
want something external to us for its own sake, in this case the harm done to another
person through revenge. This is not correct, however. Rather, the person seeks
revenge in order to satisfy a desire that he cannot bring himself to ignore. He thus
considers pursuit of revenge to be in his self-interest; it is a desire that he ultimately
endorses. He recognizes that scratching that itch will leave a scar, but concludes that
scratching the itch is nonetheless what he wants to do. He would prefer that it leave no
scar, but he is irrationally overcome with the emotional desire to scratch the itch
despite the inevitable scar.
Warrant: Humans are primarily motivated by their perceived self-interest, even if that’s
different from their objective self-interest.
Thomas DeMichele. “People Tend to Act Out of Perceived Self Interest.” Fact/Myth.
September 27, 2018. http://factmyth.com/factoids/people-tend-to-act-out-of-
perceived-self-interest/
It isn’t true that everyone acts out of self interest, but generally people tend to act in
accord with their perceived self interest and “moral sentiments.”[1][2][3] That is,
people generally act out of what they think to be their self interest (their needs, wants,
and moral sentiments; AKA their basic instincts and needs, their feelings, wants of
happiness, needs of social approval, drive for competition and cooperation). This is true
even if they have been indoctrinated by the interest of another, even if what they
perceive to be their self interest is not actually in their interest by some measures (for
example if their interest is moral, but it would hurt them financially), even if that
interest doesn’t align with a general hierarchy of needs (even if they put pride before
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healthcare for example),[4] and even if that interest only concerns one single thing
another might find unimportant (like putting Duty or Friendship over the interest of
accumulating vast amounts of wealth, or conversely, like putting $20 before Duty,
Friendship, or Honor). Humans are generally driven by their moral sentiment, but not
every human has the same moral hierarchy. Some love the aesthetics, some are lovers
of wisdom. Who are we to judge? The idea of democracy is that, when uncorrupted, the
law of averages and large numbers kicks in to make free systems work. The problem
isn’t there, the problem is instead with corruption. Still, problems aside, the core
concept here, that people act out of perceived self interest, is demonstrably true (to
the extent studies can prove such things; see citations below).
Analysis: Even though humans often make decisions which are antithetical to their own
objective interests, humans are still primarily motivated by their perceived self-interest, which
is all PRO needs to prove. The intent is self-interest, even if the outcome doesn’t match.
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A/2: “Self-Interest” Inaccurate
Answer: Self-interest is an accurate descriptor of human self-love and self-regard.
Warrant: “Self-interest” accurately describes humans’ pursuit of pleasure, as well as states such
as knowledge that are valuable independently of desire.

All forms of egoism require explication of “self-interest” (or “welfare” or “well-being”).

There are three main theories. Preference or desire accounts identify self-interest with
the satisfaction of one’s desires. Often, and most plausibly, these desires are restricted
to self-regarding desires. What makes a desire self-regarding is controversial, but there
are clear cases and counter-cases: a desire for my own pleasure is self-regarding; a
desire for the welfare of others is not. Objective accounts identify self-interest with the
possession of states (such as virtue or knowledge) that are valuable independently of
whether they are desired. Hybrid accounts give a role to both desires (or pleasure) and
states that are valuable independently of whether they are desired. For example,
perhaps the increase to my well-being brought about by a satisfied desire (or a pleasure)
itself increases insofar as it is a desire for (or pleasure in) knowledge. Or perhaps the
increase to my well-being brought about by a piece of knowledge itself increases insofar
as I desire (or take pleasure in) it. Hedonism, which identifies self-interest with pleasure,
is either a preference or an objective account, according to whether what counts as
pleasure is determined by one’s desires. Psychological egoism claims that each person
has but one ultimate aim: her own welfare. This allows for action that fails to maximize
perceived self-interest, but rules out the sort of behavior psychological egoists like to
target — such as altruistic behavior or motivation by thoughts of duty alone. It allows
for weakness of will, since in weakness of will cases I am still aiming at my own
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welfare; I am weak in that I do not act as I aim. And it allows for aiming at things other
than one’s welfare, such as helping others, where these things are a means to one’s
welfare. Psychological egoism is supported by our frequent observation of self-
interested behavior. Apparently altruistic action is often revealed to be self-interested.
And we typically motivate people by appealing to their self-interest (through, for
example, punishments and rewards).
Warrant: Prefer the broadest definition of self-interest, which is most consistent with common
usage and reflects market exchange.
Michael Emmett Brady. “Adam Smith’s Prudence (self interest-self love) Was the
Bedrock Foundation and Necessary Condition for the Attainment of All Other
Virtues in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.” Social
Science Research Network. March 29, 2018.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3152154#:~:text=There%
20can't%20be%20too,level%2C%20nothing%20else%20is%20possible.
“First, self-interest is here to be understood in broad terms. The breadth of the

definition adopted here concurs with Jacob Viner’s (1927, 212-13): “Self-interest meant
to Smith not only the desire for wealth, but self-love in all its possible manifestations.”
Second, self-love and self-interest will be here considered equivalent terms, a choice
corroborated by their common interchangeable use. In the index at the end of The
Wealth of Nations, Smith defines what we usually refer to as the “self-interest” of the
butcher, baker, and brewer as “self-love.” Furthermore, the underlying claim of this
essay is simply that in both books there is some self-interest. .. Let us now look at the
role of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In
particular, let us look at the best that can happen when self-interest is present. George
Stigler ([1971] 1982,136) captures the essence, the presence, and the beneficial effects
of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations, claiming that “the Wealth of Nations is a
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stupendous palace erected upon the granite of self-interest.” Not much needs to be
added to the abundant literature dealing with how, in the book, “Give me that which I
want and you shall have this which you want” (I.ii.2) is the self-interested principle
that allows the poorest man in a commercial society to be better off than a king in a
noncommercial society (Li. 11). Even undergraduate principles textbooks cite how
Smith’s butchers, bakers, and brewers (I.ii.2), following their self-interest, are led by an
invisible hand to do not only what is good for them, but also what is good for society
(IV.ii). This positive account of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations generally places
Smith within the tradition of the so-called Scottish Enlightenment, offering an
alternative to religious and civic humanist descriptions and prescriptions for social
order, and associating Smith, correctly or not, with thinkers ranging from Montesquieu
to Mandeville and Jeremy Bentham.5 ”(Paganelli,2008,pp.367-368)
Warrant: Self-love collapses to self-interest. While misguided, it is ultimately how humans act.
Syazreen Yustman. “The thin line between self-love and self-interest.” Penwings
Publishing. July 9, 2021. https://penwings.com/the-thin-line-between-self-love-
and-self-interest/
For someone who is tremendously driven with the concept of self-love, it is easier to
be influenced with the distorted idea of self-love today. They put themselves as the
protagonist and expect things to go as they wish. For them, the world revolves around
them. Why, you may ask? Simply because they believe that they deserve it, due to self-
love. People are so misguided with the ideologies of self-love, they neglect the feelings
of other individuals. When a person is obsessed with the idea of self-love, the act of
self-love transforms into self-interest. They would use this ideology as an excuse to
justify unpopular behaviours, when in fact, self-love is for people to be content with
what they have, and the ability for them to move on regardless of the situation. Even
though self-love practices putting yourself as the priority, that does not mean caring and
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being kind to others are deprioritized. Think about how social media has warped and
changed the notion of self-love.
Analysis: “Self-interest” accurately captures human self-regard and the pursuit of desires and
preferences. Even if the opposite of self-interest is not self-destruction, humans are still
primarily self-interested.
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A/2: Noncapitalist Societies are Successful
Answer: Alternatives to Capitalism Fail
Warrant: Capitalism is more successful than other systems
Lee Edwards. “Three Nations That Tried Socialism and Rejected It”. Heritage Foundation.
October 2019. https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/three-
nations-tried-socialism-and-rejected-it
“The Soviet failure has been well documented by historians. In 1985, General
Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev took command of a bankrupt disintegrating empire.
After 70 years of Marxism, Soviet farms were unable to feed the people, factories
failed to meet their quotas, people lined up for blocks in Moscow and other cities to
buy bread and other necessities, and a war in Afghanistan dragged on with no end in
sight of the body bags of young Soviet soldiers. The economies of the Communist
nations behind the Iron Curtain were similarly enfeebled because they functioned in
large measure as colonies of the Soviet Union. With no incentives to compete or
modernize, the industrial sector of Eastern and Central Europe became a monument to
bureaucratic inefficiency and waste, a “museum of the early industrial age.” As the New
York Times pointed out at the time, Singapore, an Asian city-state of only 2 million
people, exported 20 percent more machinery to the West in 1987 than all of Eastern
Europe..”
Warrant: Historical examples prove socialism is flawed
Lee Edwards. “Three Nations That Tried Socialism and Rejected It”. Heritage Foundation.
October 2019. https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/three-
nations-tried-socialism-and-rejected-it
Champion Briefs 145

“As we have seen from our examination of Israel, India, and the United Kingdom, the
economic system that works best for the greatest number is not socialism with its
central controls, utopian promises, and OPM (other people’s money), but the free-
market system with its emphasis on competition and entrepreneurship. All three
countries tried socialism for decades, and all three finally rejected it for the simplest of
reasons—it doesn’t work. Socialism is guilty of a fatal conceit: It believes its system
can make better decisions for the people than they can for themselves. It is the end
product of a 19th-century prophet whose prophecies (such as the inevitable
disappearance of the middle class) have been proven wrong time and again.”
Warrant: Trade and wealth generation is natural
Will Wilkinson. “Capitalism and Human Nature.” CATO Institute. March 2005.
https://www.cato.org/policy-report/january/february-2005/capitalism-human-
nature
“Trade and mutually beneficial exchange are human universals, as is the division of
labor. In their groundbreaking paper, “Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange,”
Cosmides and Tooby point out that, contrary to widespread belief, hunter-gatherer life
is not “a kind of retro-utopia” of “indiscriminate, egalitarian cooperation and sharing.”
The archeological and ethnographic evidence shows that hunter-gatherers were
involved in numerous forms of trade and exchange. Some forms of hunter-gatherer
trading can involve quite complex specialization and the interaction of supply and
demand.”
Warrant: Capitalism comes from fundamental human drives as well as culture
Champion Briefs 146

Will Wilkinson. “Capitalism and Human Nature.” CATO Institute. March 2005.
https://www.cato.org/policy-report/january/february-2005/capitalism-human-
nature
“It is easy to see a kind of in vitro capitalism in the evolved human propensity to
recognize property rights, specialize in productive endeavors, and engage in fairly
complex forms of social exchange. However, the kind of freedom and wealth we enjoy
in the United States remains a chimera to billions. While our evolved capacities are the
scaffolding upon which advanced liberal capitalism has been built, they are, quite
plainly, not enough, as the hundreds of millions who live on less than a dollar a day can
attest. The path from the EEA to laptops and lattes requires a great cultural leap. In
recent work, Nobel Prize-winning economists Douglass North and Vernon Smith have
stressed that the crucial juncture is the transition from personal to impersonal
exchange..”
Analysis: Use this response to show that even if some societies have experimented in
alternatives to capitalism, self-interest based organization remains the dominant strain of
human growth.
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A/2: Humans are driven by social approval
Answer: Humans are not driven by social approval
Warrant: Self-interest is broad and inclusive of social virtues
Cropanzano, Russell & Goldman, Barry & Folger, Robert. (2005). Self-interest: Defining
and understanding a human motive. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 26. 985 -
991. 10.1002/job.353.
“Colquitt and Greenberg (2001) proposed a second alternative interpretation of the

Kahneman et al.(1986) and Turillo et al. (2001) results— that individuals might abide
by norms of justice in order to ‘protect their self-images or to avoid feelings of guilt’
(p. 221). These authors identified both guilt reduction and self-image maintenance as
self-interested goals aimed at satisfying desires. Note that this framework does not
specify the source of such goals: Why would a completely self-interested person feel
guilty at overlooking someone else’s injustice toward another person? Self-interested
explanations require careful attention to the questions asked. For example, it is
obvious that punishers had the goal of punishing. They acted purposefully, seeking to
achieve the results displayed by the option they chose. The goal of punishing thus
represents acting from a form of immediate ‘interest’ aroused at the time. Once
participants had decided to punish, their self-interest consisted of following through
on it. However, an important question remains. We need to know if individuals
formulating an urge to punish did so by considering which goal options might best
reflect their self-interests. Put differently, we still need an account of why third-party
observers would want to enforce fairness norms in the first place.”
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Warrant: The Family intersects self-interest in many ways
Cropanzano, Russell & Goldman, Barry & Folger, Robert. (2005). Self-interest: Defining
and understanding a human motive. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 26. 985 -
991. 10.1002/job.353.
“Consider the implications from broadening a definition of self-interest. Heretofore

we have been dis-cussing various instigating factors (e.g., economic gain, helping
others, moral sentiments based on duties of principle). Actions concordant with such
instigations indicate that a self wants some result. Therefore, even if someone longs to
help others or uphold justice, he or she is still self-interested in this loose sense of
pursing a personally pleasing goal. As Holley (1999, p. 42) explains this perspective:
‘person must be motivated by self-interested desires because what moves her to act is
always her own desire.”
Warrant: Humans embody many antisocial behaviors
Andrew Day. “What is anti-social behaviour?.” Psycholopedia. March 2021.

https://psychlopaedia.org/society/what-is-anti-social-behaviour/
“Anti-social behaviours are acts that create community concern. These range from
misuses of public space, such as fighting or drug use and dealing, to disregard for
community safety, such as dangerous driving or drunk and disorderly behaviour.
Other examples include acts that cause environmental damage, such as graffiti or
litter. Anti-social behaviour can range from what is socially unacceptable through to acts
that break the law. It is most common in late adolescence but can progress to
entrenched criminal behaviour in adulthood..”
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Warrant: Antisocial behavior has many causes
Andrew Day. “What is anti-social behaviour?.” Psycholopedia. March 2021.

https://psychlopaedia.org/society/what-is-anti-social-behaviour/
“A whole range of different theories in both psychology and criminology seek to explain
why people behave in an anti-social way. In psychology, the focus is often on the
differences between individual offenders – understanding why one person acts anti-
socially, whereas another from a similar background does not. Psychologists are
particularly interested in understanding patterns of behaviour as well as how people
think about themselves and other people, and how they respond when they
experience strong emotions. So, they focus on understanding personal beliefs
surrounding morality and ethical behaviour, and how a lack of self control or empathy
might influence how someone behaves. They may also be interested in understanding
how anti-social behaviour is normalised in families and within the school environment,
and the impact of major life events, such as a family separation or death. Broader social
issues including disadvantage, housing and wider cultural norms are also relevant..”
Analysis: Use this response to show that a drive for social acceptance cannot be the key to the
human subject because we embody so many deeply rooted antisocial traits.
Champion Briefs 150

A/2: Humans are driven by family
Answer: Desire for a family is self-interest
Warrant: Self-interest is broad
Robert C. Binkley and Frances W. Binkley, “What is Right with Marriage: An Outline of
Domestic Theory” Appleton Publishers. 1929.
https://www.wallandbinkley.com/rcb/works/marriage/11-chapter09.html
“The principles and method of economics can be brought to bear upon the problem of
self-interest in the family only on condition that these principles are understood in
their broadest possible sense. It is not economics as a science of the appropriation of
material things, nor the new, nonpsychological, statistical economics, but economics
as a way of stating psychologically the problem of conflict of interest that will he
useful in the analysis of the domestic situation. The familiar dictum that “economics
has to do with making a living” is after all an inadequate statement of the scope and
application of classical economic theory. The greater part of its content does not relate
to the primitive processes which are actually necessary to the maintenance of human
life, but to the operation of a certain intricate system which correlates innumerable
activities of civilized man. Most of these activities relate only indirectly to alimentation
and warmth – the brute facts of getting a living. The facts which economics sets before
us have a maximum of meaning in the business of the stockbroker. The “natural
economy” of primitive peoples hardly constitutes a subject matter for economic theory
of any kind, and is usually relegated to the attention of anthropologists.”
Warrant: The Family intersects self-interest in many ways
Champion Briefs 151

Robert C. Binkley and Frances W. Binkley, “What is Right with Marriage: An Outline of
Domestic Theory” Appleton Publishers. 1929.
https://www.wallandbinkley.com/rcb/works/marriage/11-chapter09.html
“There are three ways in which the concepts of economics can be applied to the study
of the family. First, we can regard the family as an economic individual; or we can
treat the separate family members as economic individuals and think of them as
seeking some “good” which inheres in family life; or, third, we can regard the family as
an economic system in itself. The hypothesis that the family is an economic individual is
familiar to us through the writers who discuss the so-called “economic functions” of the
family. When the housewife spins and weaves and the children work on the farm, the
family is a productive unit. When the wife and children do nothing at all but spend
father’s money, the family is still a consuming unit. In both cases it can be regarded as
an economic individual, which is rich or poor, successful or unsuccessful, compared with
other families in the economic system.”
Warrant: People can be kinder to friends
Robert Pagliarnini. “Greed is Good: Why You Need to Tap Into Your Inner Gordon
Gekko.” CBS News. March 2021. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/greed-is-
good-why-you-need-to-tap-into-your-inner-gordon-gekko/
“Friends become increasingly important to health and happiness as people age,

according to new research in the journal Personal Relationships. They’re so crucial, in
fact, that having supportive friendships in old age was found to be a stronger predictor
of wellbeing than having strong family connections. The new paper explores the
findings of two studies about relationships. In the first, involving more than 270,000
people in nearly 100 countries, author William Chopik found that both family and friend
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relationships were associated with better health and happiness overall. But at advanced
ages, the link remained only for people who reported strong friendships.”
Warrant: Family can create draining obligations
“The benefits of having close pals may also be stronger for older people because, by
that point, those friendships have stood the test of time. “You have kept those people
around because they have made you happy, or at least contributed to your wellbeing
in some way,” says Chopik. “Across our lives, we let the more superficial friendships
fade, and we’re left with the really influential ones.” But Chopik says the power of
friendship on physical and mental health is often ignored in research—especially in
older people, where relationships with spouses and children are often considered more
important. And while it’s true that family members are often the people who provide
caregiving support to the elderly, he says this can also create a sense of obligation.
These relationships are certainly beneficial and often vital, Chopik adds. But they may
not provide as much joy as those with long-time friends do.”
Analysis: Use this response to cast doubt on the proposition that family is the single most
important organizing principle for society. The role of friends is paramount and can be just as
vital.
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A/2: Humans fail to make self-interested decisions
Answer: Humans often act out of self interest
Warrant: Prosocial activity is self interested
Semyon Dukach. “3 Examples Of Self-Interested Pursuits That Benefited All Of

Humanity” Forbes. July 2021.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/semyondukach/2019/09/06/3-examples-of-self-
interested-pursuits-that-benefited-all-of-humanity/?sh=6626032316e9
“For most of human history, the world has been a zero-sum game. Your neighbor’s gain
meant your loss. If he had more land, it meant that you had less land, and thus less
resources. But after the industrial revolution, economic output skyrocketed, and the
world dynamic shifted: suddenly everyone was getting a bigger piece of the pie, and the
world became a positive-sum game. Today, you can eat your cake and your neighbor
can eat his too. However, this new positive-sum world has only been around for 1% of
human history, so we are still pretty new to the concept. Most people do not hold the
view that another nation’s accomplishments are also beneficiary to their own. During
this transitory period between the zero-sum and positive-sum world, the international
community has been able to accomplish a few goals that have provided benefits to
everyone. The following achievements stand as examples for what humanity is capable
of when the end result benefits both the self and the other. In other words, they are
examples of when nations decided to cooperate with each other for self-interested
reasons, yet still produced results that benefitted the rest of humanity.”
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Warrant: The international space station is a prosocial project that stemmed from self interest
Semyon Dukach. “3 Examples Of Self-Interested Pursuits That Benefited All Of

Humanity” Forbes. July 2021.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/semyondukach/2019/09/06/3-examples-of-self-
interested-pursuits-that-benefited-all-of-humanity/?sh=6626032316e9
“The International Space Station is, of course, a classic example of global collaboration
in pursuit of knowledge and discovery. Its creation is the result of 30 years, 100 billion
dollars, and 15 countries. The ISS has hosted astronauts from 18 different nations who
research subjects like biology, earth science and the effectiveness of different
technologies in space. Research at the ISS has resulted in everything from the creation
of advanced water filtration systems, to developing drugs for muscular dystrophy, to
robotics used in surgery, to the development of better vaccines. And while some
research is deliberately conducted in space in order to benefit the people on Earth,
many of these discoveries were just byproducts of projects that were intended to
develop technology for the space station. The engineers who invented water filtration
systems for the ISS did not do so to benefit the developing world–they invented them so
humans could journey further into the universe. But that shared international drive to
explore beyond our planet has benefited humanity in ways we could have never
predicted. The bottom line is, it is in your self-interest for as many people in the world
as possible to be working on problems that affect you: disease, environmental
erosion, artificial intelligence, space travel. The more people that share a goal, the
more likely it is to be accomplished. And the more people in the world working towards
a goal, the more likely it is to be reached. It’s possible that we are entering an era where
international collaboration on the world’s most pressing problems isn’t just a rare
scenario to showcase, but rather the new status quo. Are we ready to take this new
positive-sum world to the next level?”
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Warrant: Greed is mostly good
“The problem is not that we're too greedy, it's that we're not greedy enough! Sure,
there are the occasional Bernie Madoffs and John Edwardses that lose themselves in
their excessive desire -- that will do anything to achieve their goal -- but that's not the
issue most of us face. Our problem is that we are plagued by not caring, wanting, or
being voracious enough in the pursuit of our own goals. The solution? Stop putting
yourself last and stop sacrificing your goals and dreams. Any successful entrepreneur
is greedy. They have an insatiable desire to see their product come to market. They
want to see their invention in the hands of as many people as possible. They want
their book to hit the New York Times bestseller list. They will do whatever it takes to
achieve their goal. They will stay up later and get up earlier. They'll say no more often..”
Warrant: Self interest, broadly defined, encompasses prosocial behavior
“Greed was the foundation for this country. The brave souls who risked their life to
settle in a new country did so out of self interest. Our forefathers recognized the
importance of self-interest in the Declaration of Independence where they
emphasized our unalienable right to pursue happiness. Greed is good not just for your
own life but for others as well. By elevating your life, you can radically elevate your
family's life, your community, and yes, even the world. Mother Teresa was greedy -- she
Champion Briefs 156

had an unquenchable thirst for serving the poorest of the poor. Missionaries are
greedy in their quest to spread their religious beliefs. You just need to get greedy. You
need to focus so intently on what it is you want that your desire seeps out of your
pores.”
Analysis: Use this response to appeal to your judge’s sense of history and tradition by recasting
great moments in our collective past as exercises in self interest.
Champion Briefs 157

A/2: Humans are driven by moral responsibility
Answer: Moral responsibility is mere egoism
Warrant: Charitable giving is self interested
Staff. “Study: People will donate more to charity if they think something’s in it for
them.” Big Think. July 2021. https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/altruism-charity/
“Even the best charities with the longest records of doing great fundraising work have to
spend some time making sure that the next donation checks will keep coming in. One
way to do this is by showing potential donors all the good things the charity did over the
previous year. But there may be a better way. A new study by researchers in the United
States and Australia suggests that appealing to the benefits people will receive
themselves after a donation nudges them to donate more money than appealing to
the greater good.”
Warrant: HSR is a wasteful, ineffective way to create jobs
Staff. “Study: People will donate more to charity if they think something’s in it for
them.” Big Think. July 2021. https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/altruism-charity/
“The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, utilized the Pick.Click.Give program
in Alaska. This program allows Alaska residents who qualify for dividends from the
Alaska Permanent Fund, a yearly payment ranging from $800 to $2000 in recent years,
to donate a portion of it to various in-state non-profit organizations. The researchers
randomly assigned households to either a control group or to receive a postcard in the
mail encouraging them to donate a portion of their dividend to charity. That postcard
could come in one of two forms, either highlighting the benefits to others or the
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benefits to themselves. Those who got the postcard touting self-benefits were 6.6
percent more likely to give than those in the control group and gave 23 percent more
on average. Those getting the benefits-to-others postcard were slightly more likely to
give than those receiving no postcard, but their donations were no larger.”
Warrant: Human cruelty is pervasive
Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez. “Unmasking the Motives of the Good Samaritan”
January 2021. Santa Clara University.
https://www.scu.edu/mcae/publications/iie/v2n1/samaritan.html
“A lot of people blame cruelty on dehumanization. They say that when you fail to
appreciate the humanity of other people, that’s where genocide and slavery and all
sorts of evils come from. I don’t think that’s entirely wrong. I think a lot of real awful
things we do to other people arise from the fact that we don't see them as people. But
the argument I make in my New Yorker article is that it’s incomplete. A lot of the cruelty
we do to one another, the real savage, rotten terrible things we do to one another,
are in fact because we recognize the humanity of the other person. We see other
people as blameworthy, as morally responsible, as themselves cruel, as not giving us
what we deserve, as taking more than they deserve. And so we treat them horribly
precisely because we see them as moral human beings.”
Warrant: A lot of aggression stems from natural human interactions
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“I think you're right. We have this horrible tendency to overestimate the extent to
which we're the moral standouts, we're the brave ones. This has some nasty social
consequences. There was a great article that came out in the Washington Post last week
about people who say, “I'm confused about the people who have been sexually
assaulted, because if it happened to me, I would say no way, and I would put the person
in their place, and I would speak out.” This attitude is oftentimes scorn towards people
who get harassed. They’re somehow morally weak, or maybe they’re just not telling
the truth.”
Analysis: Use this response to cast doubt on the idea that moral justice could possibly be an
alternative organizing principle for human society.
Champion Briefs 160

A/2: Self-interest facilitates inequality
Answer: Many developments in human history which we consider constitutive of the human
experience are the result of rational self-interest.
“Capitalism was a central component of classical liberalism in the societies of the

Industrial Revolution. Classical liberalism was an ideology that was based on
economic individualism and the principles of: economic freedom, private ownership,
competition, self-interest and self-reliance. In general, all of these principles focused
on little or no government intervention in the economy and as much economic liberty
for individuals as possible. This contrasted with the previously mentioned mercantilism,
which favored heavy government regulation and intervention. The economic ideals of
classical liberalism first emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries and quickly shifted
European society from left-sided mercantilism to right-sided capitalism. Classical liberal
societies were also based on the economic principles of laissez-fair capitalism. Often,
laissez-faire capitalism is also referred to as free market capitalism or market capitalism.
Simply put, laissez-faire translates to ‘leave us alone’ meaning that the government
should remain out of the economy and instead allow individuals to freely carry out their
own economic affairs. Historically, laissez-faire capitalism was most common during the
18th and 19th centuries in the timeframe of the Industrial Revolution. As such, England
during the Industrial Revolution is considered to be an example of a classical liberal
society. At the time, it was a revolutionary idea, because in the previous centuries,
mercantilism had been the dominant economic system which was discussed
previously. However, prominent thinkers, including Adam Smith, began to argue
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against mercantilism in favor of an economic system with more freedom for

individuals. The development of capitalism as an economic system, sought to reject
the idea of government control of the economy and instead put the focus on
individuals.”
Warrant: The industrial revolution required a shift away from non-capitalist ideas
“As the 18th century went along, some people began to reject the principles of
mercantilism. For example, in 1776 Scottish economist Adam Smith published his
famous written work “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations” which is just often shortened to “Wealth of Nations”. The book challenged
the idea that the government should control the economy and instead proposed the
idea of free trade and competition with a lesser role of the government. The ideas of
this book would eventually lay the foundation for the principles of capitalism, which is
an economic system that supports the idea of free trade and choice as a way of
achieving prosperity. The emergence of capitalism was vitally important to the start of
industrialization and the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism caused the Industrial
Revolution because industrialization required significant work and investment from
individuals and not necessarily the government. For example, in Britain, where the
Industrial Revolution began, wealthy entrepreneurs were important because they
used their wealth to create factories and mines. This investment from individuals,
whose actions were guided by the profit motive, would not have been possible
without the emergence of capitalism. Furthermore, as the Industrial Revolution began
the individualistic principles of capitalism helped create a climate wherein
industrialization exploded, and eventually spread worldwide.”
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Warrant: Self-interest oriented capitalism has led to many historical innovations
“Unless one is ashamed of unprecedented increases in income, rising life expectancy,

greater education, and more political freedom, there is no reason to be a fair-weather
fan of capitalism. Sprawling free markets in countries that became more capitalist over
the last 25 years have meant many more people enjoy improvements in well being
and opportunities to advance human capabilities. There is no evidence that countries
that eschewed freer markets and embraced substantially greater state control
performed better on any of these major indicators. On the contrary, those countries
that adopt increased taxation, increased regulation, fiscal mismanagement and
enormous public debt have performed demonstrably worse. From a global
perspective, we have witnessed remarkable progress of mankind through the
increased acceptance of free market policies in both rich and poor countries. Before
the industrial revolution, 80% of the world’s population lived in abject poverty. By
1980, that number has fallen to 34.8% and by 2000, less than 20% of the population
lives on less than $1 a day. In five years, the number is expected to fall to 10% if free
trade is allowed to flourish.”
Warrant: Global history has been demonstrably improved by self interest
“In just the past 25 years increased private ownership, increased free trade, and lower
taxes all came at the hands of politicians like Deng Xiaoping in China, Margaret
Thatcher in England, and Ronald Reagan in United States. In the years following the
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adoption of these policies by these global leaders, per capita income nearly doubled
from 1980 to 2005; Tariffs fell and trade increased; Schooling and life expectancy grew
rapidly, while infant mortality and poverty fell just as fast. In the average country that
became more capitalist over the last 25 years, the average citizen gained a 43% increase
in income, nearly half a decade in life expectancy, and a 2-year increase in the average
years of schooling. In my lifetime alone, freer markets have improved the lives of billions
of people from all walks of life. When we look back at our own history, the tremendous
economic growth that Americans experienced from the time of the original Tea Party
up to 1914 was the result of economic freedom from government regulation, open
boarders for free immigration, and very few trade restrictions on the global flow of
goods, services, and capital.”
Analysis: Use this argument to demonstrate that many important historical events, which are
crucial for the modern human condition, are inexorably tied to self-interest. Self-interest should
be regarded as integral to human behavior because it defines to structures that give our lives
meaning.
Champion Briefs 164

A/2: Unchecked Self-interest leads to disaster
Answer: Self interest leads people to better themselves and underlies many of the
developmental processes that human beings believe are fundamental to living a good life.
Robert Litan. “Adam Smith preached self-interest—and self-help, too.” January 2015.
Brookings Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/adam-smith-
preached-self-interest-and-self-help-too/
“Like many people, I thought Smith was the original champion of why acting in one’s
self-interest was good for society–ostensibly because it allowed each person or firm to
specialize in what he or it did best and then trade for whatever else was required. But
the self-interest that Smith made famous can be a powerful force for good in one’s
personal life. According to Smith, many of us do good things because we want others
to approve and admire us. Mr. Roberts explores implications of this and other Smith
insights. Mr. Roberts’s witty, candid take on Smith is filled with his own wisdom.
Gurus, theologians and economists alike might learn a thing or two from him and the
first modern economist.”
Warrant: Self-interest forms the basis for reciprocal kindness

“The inherent value of self-interest is frequently diluted and diminished into the fallacy
of “selfishness,” but self-interest, rationally understood, benefits individuals, the
community as well as the society in general. Self-interest is a positive and socially
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beneficial concept when applied in a healthy and conscious manner. What do I mean
by “rational self-interest?” In this context, the sort of self-interest that is actually
beneficial. While things like drugs and other destructive substances may seem “in
one’s interest” at the moment they’re used, they have no long-term benefit and are
inherently and objectively harmful. Thus, rational self-interest is different from
hedonism and pleasure, and not to be confused with egotism. The best example of
rational self-interest applied is a market setting; it is in this environment that self-
interest makes sense. After all, 18th-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith penned
in his magnum opus “The Wealth of Nations” that “It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to
their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love,
and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”.”
Warrant: Self interest drives concern for others

“Even 200 years ago, it was understood that what motivates the market and individual
actors is their self-interest. This is the fundamental basis of the economy, as people
are not motivated by altruism-it is a profit incentive, the notion of making money for
its own sake which drives people. There is nothing wrong with this motivation, as
profit allows one to support oneself, one’s family and even contribute to the
community and to charity. Self-interest, rightly understood, is a strong force for good in
our society, as what benefits one person often benefits the entire community, or even
society, at-large. It is critical to understand the ethics of self-interest. One must keep the
community in mind while making these decisions, as strong individuals make a strong
community to support those less fortunate. If one acts in a selfish way and burns
bridges, destroying connections and crushing dreams to reach the “top of the ladder,”
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the climb to the top and progress that’s made there is utterly meaningless. Without
concern for others, self-interest has no power because it’s nearly impossible to
achieve great things and large profits without help, collaboration and advice of those
in the community.
Rational self-interest would not promote anarchy, but rather harmony in a capitalist
system, because every man and woman would look out for themselves, ensuring fair
transactions and shrewd consumers.”
Warrant: Economic growth is key to social justice
order.pdf
“Because the immediate motivation of much economic activity is self-interest, such

activity is not thought to be as noble as art or science. However, if it is true that self-
interested activity in the market creates value and benefits others, then why isn’t it as
noble as these other human endeavors? Why are the acts of inspired creativity that
invented and marketed the personal computer, or even Velcro, any less noble than
the creation of art or music or the pursuit of science? All of those activities benefit
others and are driven by the creator’s urge to produce. The only difference is that
entrepreneurs are frequently explicitly and overtly driven by a particular type of self-
interest, namely financial. But why does it matter what the motivation is, if the results
are beneficial? Why do we care so much about why people do things instead of the
results they produce? Would the personal computer be any more important or more
useful had it been invented by monks seeking to serve others, rather than by business
people and engineers seeking profit and the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity?”
Champion Briefs 167

Analysis: Use this answer to demonstrate that our world, driven by self interest, has produced
many prosocial results. Explain to the judge that self interest is the foundation of not only the
greedly parts of our lives, but also the most social aspects.
Champion Briefs 168

A/2: Self-Interest is overstated
Answer: Human society is powerfully organized around principles of self-interest. This is

commanding evidence that self-interest is a driving force of human behavior.
Warrant: Humans have established many social institutions based on self interest.
“It might be nice if love could bring about all the complex tasks of cooperation and
competition by which we achieve our purposes, without all the emphasis on self-
interest and individual rights, and many opponents of liberalism have offered an
appealing vision of society based on universal benevolence. But as Adam Smith
pointed out, “in civilized society [man] stands at all times in need of the cooperation
and assistance of great multitudes,” yet in his whole life he could never befriend a
small fraction of the number of people whose cooperation he needs. If we depended
entirely on benevolence to produce cooperation, we simply couldn’t undertake
complex tasks. Reliance on other people’s self-interest, in a system of well-defined
property rights and free exchange, is the only way to organize a society more
complicated than a small village. The market is an essential element of civil society. The
market arises from two facts: that human beings can accomplish more in cooperation
with others than alone and that we can recognize this. If we were a species for whom
cooperation was not more productive than isolated work, or if we were unable to
discern the benefits of cooperation, then we would remain isolated and atomistic. As
Ludwig von Mises explained, “Each man would have been forced to view all other men
as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have
brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors.” Without the possibility
Champion Briefs 169

of mutual benefit from cooperation and the division of labor, neither feelings of
sympathy and friendship nor the market order itself could arise.”
Warrant: Self-interest forms the basis to resist coercion
“Throughout the market system individuals and firms compete to cooperate better.
The rapid feedback of the market process provides incentives for successful forms of
organization to be copied and unsuccessful forms to be discouraged. Cooperation is as
much a part of the market system as competition. Both are essential elements of the
simple system of natural liberty, and most of us spend far more of our time cooperating
with partners, coworkers, suppliers, and customers than we do competing. The real
issue is not compassion but coercion. Is it compassionate to take from some by force
in order to give to others? No, it’s compassionate to give of yourself, and coercive to
take from others. Is it “generosity,” as the governor of Vermont says, for a few
wealthy people to urge a tax increase on the wealthy? No, it would be generous for
Ben and Jerry and their 50 wealthy friends to voluntarily donate money to “help meet
basic human needs” (as I’m sure they do); proposing to tax others is the exercise of
force, not generosity.”
order.pdf
Champion Briefs 170

“But I never promise you that I will act in a certain manner, nor do you promise me.
Hume compared this situation to two men rowing a boat. Each man exerts labor on the
supposition that the other man will do likewise, and each adjusts his movements to the
movements of the other—but all of this occurs without an exchange of promises or an
explicit agreement between the two men. The cooperation is spontaneous and
implicitly understood, not planned in advance and expressed in promises or a
contract. b. Property rights—like language and money—evolved over time and were
established as conventions, as people came to respect them routinely, as a matter of
habit.”
Warrant: Self interest is gives rise to second-order social organizations such as justice
order.pdf
“Hume stressed that the “convention” of respecting property rights does not arise from
a contract among members of society. Rather, it arises from a sense of common interest
that induces people to regulate their conduct by certain rules. I observe that it is in my
interest to respect the property rights of another person, provided he respects mine.
And he is also aware of the advantage to be gained from this reciprocity. Therefore, as
we each become aware of the advantages of reciprocity, we adjust our behavior
accordingly, without ever consulting each other or making an explicit pact wherein we
exchange promises. There is, Hume conceded, a kind of agreement involved in this
social convention, but it does not involve mutual promises. My actions are taken with a
view to your actions and are predicated on the expectation that you will behave.”
Analysis: Use this response to show the judge how self interest has given rise to all manner of
social institutions that are important and elemental to modern society. Make the argument
that human behavior is driven by self interest because that is how we have chose to organize
ourselves.
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A/2: Humans are cooperative by nature
Answer: Capitalism, the dominant mode of economic organization, is based on human self-
nature.
Warrant: Biology is driven by self interest
“Continuing this week’s 13.7 focus (here and here and here) on our self-absorbed
human predicament, let me offer a few evolutionary perspectives on how we got here
and how we might move forward. All organisms, by definition, are laden with self-
interest. Self-maintenance, self-protection, self-reproduction -- these are biological
imperatives. This mandate is often stated as “surviving to produce fertile offspring,”
but organisms that only eke out survival are far less likely to be the ancestors of large
lineages than are organisms that flourish in a given ecosystem. Nor is “flourishing” a
synonym for that old canard “the fittest.” Rather, it connotes being well adapted to
the particular environmental circumstances in which one finds oneself. Social
organisms remain self-interested, but in addition, they also cooperate in such vital
activities as food acquisition and predator protection. Hence their mandate is both to
flourish as an individual and to flourish in community. Sociality has evolved numerous
times: Bacteria secrete signaling molecules to regulate group-related activities (quorum
sensing); butterflies migrate; fish swim in schools; birds join together to chase off the
circling hawk; wolves hunt in packs.”
Warrant: Self-interested regulates environmental fitness
Champion Briefs 172

“Social behaviors are in most cases “instinctive,” but in some cases organisms inherit
the capacity to learn social behaviors. Primates, in particular, develop minds capable
of keeping track of friendships and favors and mastering the nuances of fluctuating
social hierarchies, behaviors that enhance the stability and hence the flourishing of
their troops. Importantly, natural selection doesn’t “care” whether behavior is
hardwired or learned; it only “cares” whether the outcome is adaptive. Navigating the
demands of self-interest versus group cooperation can be fraught with conflicting
impulses, and the option to go-it-alone is frequently taken in the context of stress.
Under such circumstances, social organisms typically hunker down and engage in self-
interested survival patterns, the default behavior of all creatures. Stress invariably
arises when organisms find themselves in environments that fail to mesh with what
their genetic scripts anticipated. Unexpected ecosystems fail to provide the necessary
context for pulling together the social behaviors that were selected to generate
flourishing communities in expected contexts.”
“The impartial spectator (Smith’s version of a conscience), which is built up over long
experience, generally looks kindly on the pursuit of self-interest. It is, after all, nothing
more than what everyone pursues. At the same time, the impartial spectator, impartial
as he is, draws a sharp line between self-interest that is neutral in its effects on others
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and self-interest that harms others to benefit oneself. Such selfish behavior, Smith
argues, creates strong disapprobation in our fellow man: “To disturb his happiness
merely because it stands in the way of our own, to take from him what is of real use to
him merely because it may be of equal or of more use to us, or to indulge, in this
manner, at the expence of other people, the natural preference which every man has
for his own happiness above that of other people, is what no impartial spectator can
go along with.” The impartial spectator enforces external limits on self-interest, not
the least of which is the condemnation of harming others for one’s own benefit. Self-
interest is defensible as long as it is consistent with the demands of justice, and justice
demands that we refrain from harming others.”
Warrant: Self interest is compatible with other important human emotions
“Smith observed that humans are most sympathetic toward those who are most
closely tied to their own safety and happiness. This creates a powerful link between
sympathy and self-interest.[vi] When society consists of family, friends, and
acquaintances, the gap between sympathy and self-interest is small indeed. Precisely
because our self-interest is bound up in the happiness of those we care about, their
happiness becomes part of what we pursue in our desire to better our own condition.
The benefits of localized self-interest extend beyond those we love. Self-interest is the
invisible hand that, when combined with sympathy, forms the moral order on which the
economic order rests. Smith argues “[t]hat wisdom which contrived the system of
human affections, as well as that of every other part of nature, seems to have judged
that the interest of the great society of mankind would be best promoted by directing
the principal attention of each individual to that particular portion of it, which was
most within the sphere both of his abilities and of his understanding.” The purpose of
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self-interest is not only to drive the larger economic engine of society. It also ensures
that individuals direct their moral energy in a way that is consistent with their limited
abilities and knowledge..”
Analysis: Use this analysis to abstract the debate away from contemporary institutions and
return to first principles. Emphasize the historicity of the approach to convince the judge that
self interest is an important driver of human behavior.
Champion Briefs 175

A/2: Self-Interest corrupts economic systems
Answer: Capitalism, the dominant mode of economic organization, is based on human self-
nature.
Warrant: Capitalism is driven by self interest
a-market-economy
“In fact, most of the economic activity we see around us is the result of self-interested
behavior. Adam Smith described it this way in his book, The Wealth of Nations: "It is
not from the benevolence (kindness) of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we
expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." So why does the baker
choose to bake? The answer is self-interest. The baker wants to earn enough money to
feed his family and buy the things he wants and the most effective way he has found to
do that is to bake bread for you. In fact his bread has to be good enough and the
service friendly enough that you are willing to give up your money freely in exchange
for his bread. The baker while serving his self-interest has produced a good that is very
valuable to you. The miracle of a market system is that self-interest produces behavior
that benefits others. Is being self-interested greedy? Is it immoral? While the term self-
interest has negative connotations, it does not necessarily imply greedy or immoral
behavior. Self-interest just means that you seek your goals. In fact, your self-interest
might lead you to study hard for your math test, give money to your favorite charity
or volunteer at a local school.”
Champion Briefs 176

Warrant: Self-interested competition creates good outcomes
a-market-economy
“Doesn't self-interest lead to price gouging, corruption and cheating? Sometimes it

does, but most often it is held in check by competition. Because other self-interested
people are competing in the marketplace, my self-interest is held in check. For
example, if I were a baker, the only way I would be able to earn your dollars is to
produce bread that is better, cheaper or more convenient than the bread produced by
the other bakers in town. If I were to increase my price too much, you would likely buy
bread from my competitors. If I were to treat you poorly when you enter my store, you
would likely buy from my competitors. If my bread were moldy or inferior in any way,
you will likely buy from my competitors. In order to earn your money I must provide a
high quality good or service at a reasonable price. You will notice that this assumes I
have competitors. If I were the only baker in 100 miles, I might be able to charge a high
price, sell inferior products, or treat my customers rudely - but even in that case,
another self-interested person might see an opportunity to earn a profit and open a
competing bakery in town. Thus, competition is the regulator, a check on self-interest
because it restrains my ability to take advantage of my customers.”
Warrant: Alternative economic models have not worked out
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“The experiment with '21st-century socialism' as introduced by the late President

Hugo Chavez, a self-described champion of the poor who vowed to distribute the
country's wealth among the masses, and instead steered the nation toward the
catastrophe the world is witnessing under his handpicked successor (Nicolas) Maduro,
has been a cruel failure." That's putting it mildly. And the track record elsewhere isn't
much better. From Albania and Angola to Vietnam and Yemen, socialism has produced
little but violence, starvation and misery. Some defenders point to Norway and other
Scandinavian countries that enjoy a degree of prosperity well above the ones already
mentioned. But as columnist David Harsanyi points out, you can hardly call countries
that are "operating generous welfare states programs propped up by underlying vibrant
capitalism" poster children for socialism. The fact remains that wherever unalloyed
socialism has been tried, the result has been disastrous for the citizens it's inflicted on.
Take any economy run by an all-powerful state, and it's only a question of when, not if,
it winds up being run completely into the ground.”
Warrant: Capitalist societies are better at supporting human beings than the alternavs
“Contrast that with the experience of those who live in capitalist societies, where
rights are protected, life spans are longer, and people enjoy a higher standard of
living. The Index of Economic Freedom, which has graded every country in the world
annually for nearly 25 years, bears this out. Again and again, it finds per capita
incomes are much higher in nations that are more economically free. Economies rated
"free" or "mostly free" in the latest edition enjoy incomes more than double the
average levels in other countries, and more than five times higher than the incomes of
people living in "repressed" economies such as Venezuela and Cuba. The evidence is
Champion Briefs 178

hard to refute. Consider what Bono, humanitarian and rock singer, says he's learned in
the course of spearheading numerous anti-poverty initiatives over the years: "As a
person who's spent nearly 30 years fighting to get people out of poverty, it was
somewhat humbling to realize that commerce played a bigger job than development. I'd
say that's my biggest transformation in 10 years: understanding the power of commerce
to make or break lives. By "power of commerce," of course, he means capitalism.”
Analysis: Our economic system pervades our lives. Use this to illustrate how important self-
interest is in shaping the economic world around us, and that systems less predicated on sself-
interesthave consistently failed.
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Champion Briefs
2022-2023
Big Questions Brief
Con Arguments
Con Arguments Big Questions 22-23
CON: Sympathy
Argument: Sympathy is an innate human characteristic that limits the pursuit of self-interest.
Warrant: Because humans are social creatures, sympathy is an innate human trait that
counterbalances selfishness.
Matthias P. Hühn and Claus Dierksmeier. “Will the Real A. Smith Please Stand Up!”
Journal of Business Ethics 136. 2016. Pages 119-132.
In their 2005 paper in Business Ethics: A European Review, David Gray and Peter Clarke
surprisingly take the ‘Kirkcaldy Smith’ as a given, acknowledge the conflicting
mainstream reading of Smith only in one sentence, and then apply Smith’s ‘impartial
spectator’ concept to one concrete (rather narrow) ethical conundrum: Goodpaster’s
paradox. While their interpretation of the ‘impartial spectator’ as Smith’s model of a
“socialised conscience” is at odds with some of the foremost authorities in the field
(Hope 1984; Griswold 1999; Valihora 2001; Raphael 2007), their overall view is probably
shared by the majority of Smith scholars, among them Fonna Forman-Barzilai (2010) and
Edward Andrew (2001). Gray and Clarke quote extensively from Smith and show that
his concept of self-love does not equal the Friedmanian notion of self-interest; instead,
they highlight the important role that sympathy plays in Smith’s philosophical system.
Hence, they sum up Smith’s human anthropology as follows: “Humans are social
creatures that require the approval of others and act accordingly: they sympathise
with the plight of others and have a sense of justice” (2005, p. 124). They also make
clear that “[t]he rational economic man of free market economics, individually
pursuing utility maximisation, is not a part of Smith’s system and is not drawn from his
work” (ibid., 123). In consequence, they plausibly propose Smith’s real view as an
alternative approach to CSR/stakeholder theory, although they neglect to connect
Smith’s wider philosophy to business ethics.
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Warrant: Experiments confirm psychological altruism, or that humans can be primarily

motivated by sympathy and empathy.
Angarika Deb and Daniel S. Smith. “Problem of Altruism.” Encyclopedia of Evolutionary

Psychological Science. January 1, 2021. SpringerLink.
However, despite these difficulties of determining whether an act is psychologically

altruistic or not, some experiments have indicated that certain aspects of human
behavior are indeed motivated by a concern for others’ welfare. This optimistic view
was endorsed by Adam Smith (1759) who wrote that, How selfish soever man may be
supposed, there are some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of
others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it
except the pleasure of seeing it. The empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson et al. 1987)
claims that empathy evokes motivation to reduce the other’s need, promoting
altruism, and that self-benefits from such acts are simply unintended consequences of
the ultimate goal (helping the other). In a series of experiments conducted by Piliavin et
al. (1981), there were various degrees of emotional responses in reaction to seeing
someone in need. Piliavin and colleagues quantitatively described a low magnitude
emotional response to other’s needs in non-emergency situations as empathy, such as
feeling sympathetic, compassionate, or tender, and a high magnitude emotional
response to other’s needs in emergency situations as personal distress, such as feeling
alarmed, upset, or disturbed. These emotional and psychological responses to other’s
needs are hypothesized to provide the motivation for other-regarding behavior in
humans (Batson et al. 1987). These and other experiments suggest that humans, at
least in part, are motivated by a concern for the welfare of others, indicating that
psychological altruism may indeed exist.
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Warrant: Sympathy does not depend upon self-interest to motivate humans.
Robert Agnew. “Social Concern and Crime: Moving Beyond the Assumption of Simple
Self-Interest.” Criminology 52:1, 2014.
Care about the welfare of others. Survey, observational, and experimental data
suggest that most people feel distress at the suffering of innocent others.
Furthermore, people are inclined to help innocent others in distress, particularly when
they personally encounter these others. This is the case even when there is no benefit
and some cost to providing the help (see Agnew, 2011, for an overview). Empathy and
sympathy seem to be at the heart of this inclination, including “emotional contagion”
or feeling what others feel; “cognitive empathy” or understanding the other’s situation,
including the reasons for their distress; and sympathy or feelings of sorrow or concern
for the distressed other (see Agnew, 2011; Batson, 2010; Batson and Powell, 2003; de
Waal, 2008; Dovidio et al., 2006; Eisenberg, 2010; Eisenberg, Eggum, and Di Giunta,
2010; Goetz, Keltner, and Simon-Thomas, 2010; Haidt, 2012; Jolliffe and Farrington,
2007; Lahey, Waldman, and McBurnett, 1999; Marshall, Marshall, and Serran, 2009;
McGinley and Carlo, 2007; Miller and Eisenberg, 1988; Pinker, 2011). Relatedly, it has
been argued that this inclination derives from feelings of oneness with or a strong
identification with others and a positive valuation of others—including trust of others
(Batson, 2010; Cialdini et al., 1997; Haidt and Kesebir, 2010; Penner et al., 2005).
Warrant: Sympathy, not self-interest, is the basis for market exchange.
Robert Boyden Lamb. “Adam Smith’s System: Sympathy not Self-Interest.” Journal of
the History of Ideas 35:4, October-December 1974.
In summary: it is the individual’s desire for the approval of other men which motivates
him to virtuous acts and to property accumulation. This “approbation” which men
Champion Briefs 183

desire springs from their ability to sympathize with the situation or acts of one another.
Although Smith gives numerous indications that self-interest is men’s rational motive for
their acquisition of wealth, this fundamental desire is to receive sympathy from other
men for their material as well as their moral situation. They seek wealth to acquire
approval. They seek dignity because this will ensure the continuous approval of other
men. Therefore “sympathy” rather than self-interest is the basis of property in Smith’s
system. Although great wealth provides the strongest security of approval, Smith asserts
that luxury tends to lead men towards corruption and injustice. On the other hand,
although the hard work of the laboring classes leads to a certain prosperity and virtue,
their poverty sometimes makes them lose hope or initiative. Smith concludes that only a
certain degree of general equality and a rising prosperity among all classes can ensure
the continuous health, morality, and justice of social relations. For Smith, property
relations provide the concrete setting for moral relations. As property changes through
history so it causes changes in society; thus also it changes men and their morals.
Analysis: Sympathy, or being able to feel for the conditions of others, is a strong psychological
trait in humans that can primarily motivate our actions above self-interest. As markets are
concerned, PRO misunderstands Adam Smith, for whom sympathy was essential to a well-
functioning market.
Champion Briefs 184

CON: Complex Motivations
Argument: Human psychology is too complex to suggest that humans are primarily motivated
by self-interest.
Warrant: Self-interest and altruism exist on a spectrum. All humans are motivated by a mix of
both.
Christina Holloway. “The Right Doses of Self-Interest and Altruism for Your Career.” Fast
Company. September 19, 2016. https://www.fastcompany.com/3063788/the-
right-doses-of-self-interest-and-altruism-for-your-career
There are, roughly speaking, two types of people out there: those who mainly look out
for themselves (sometimes at all costs) and those who are eager to help any and
everyone at the first opportunity. Of course, most of us fall somewhere on a spectrum
between those two tendencies, but that means keeping them in balance isn’t always
easy. That’s especially true at work, where office politics can cause us to tilt toward
self-preservation in certain contexts and altruism in others. Here are a few ways to
keep those impulses in balance.
Warrant: Humans are not simply self-interested---social cooperation is motivated by altruism.
Recent research in several areas challenges the assumption that people are simply
self-interested. Human nature is more complex, and people also are socially
concerned. That is, self-interest exists alongside biologically based inclinations that
serve to “suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible”
Champion Briefs 185

(Haidt, 2012: 270). Social concern, in particular, refers to a set of inclinations that
sometimes lead people to give more consideration to others than to their own interests.
Social concern has four elements: people 1) care about the welfare of others, 2) desire
close ties to others, 3) are inclined to follow certain moral intuitions, and 4) tend to
conform to the views and behavior of others. Each of these elements substantially
increases the likelihood that people will work together in ways that increase their
ability, that of their kin, and/or that of the groups to which they belong to survive and
reproduce (more in the subsequent discussion).
Warrant: The phenomenon of “niche-splitting” proves that human motivations have more
plasticity than the PRO admits.
The work on evolutionary psychology, however, also suggests that there is some
natural variation in social concern. This variation may reflect “niche-splitting,” such
that some individuals are in social niches or environments where social concern is
relatively more adaptive, whereas others are in environments where self-interest is
relatively more adaptive. Related to this, it has been argued that although social
concern tends to dominate social life, it is frequently possible for a small number of
“cheaters” to take advantage of the social concern shown by others. Also, as suggested,
there are circumstances where social concern has less adaptive value, such as
competitions over scarce resources. As such, there is a tendency for individuals to
exhibit some plasticity, acting on social concern in some circumstances and on self-
interest in others (Boehm, 2012; Bowles and Gintis, 2011; Buss, 2012; Ellis and Walsh,
1997: Figueredo et al., 2009; Michalski and Shackelford, 2010; Nowak and Highfield,
2011; Walsh and Beaver, 2009, 2012; Walsh and Bolen, 2012; Wilson, 2012).
Champion Briefs 186

Warrant: Psychological egoism fails as a uniform theory of human motivation.
Richard Kraut. “Altruism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2020.
Of the three forms of psychological egoism distinguished above, the one that is least
open to objection is the weak form that holds that altruism is never pure. It claims that
whenever we act, one of our motives is a desire for our own good. There is no good a
priori argument for this thesis—or, at any rate, the a priori argument we have been
considering for the strongest form of psychological egoism does not support it, because
the two premises used in that argument are so implausible. But it might nonetheless be
suggested that as a matter of fact we always do find some self-interested motivation
that accompanies altruistically motivated behavior. It is difficult to refute that proposal.
We should not pretend that we know all of the considerations and causes that
underlie our behavior. Some of our motives are hidden, and there is too much going
on in our minds for us to be aware of the whole of our psychology. So, for all we know,
we might never be pure altruists. But what of the other weak form of psychological
egoism?—the one that admits that sometimes one of our reasons for acting is the good
we do for others for their sake, but claims that we never act for the good of others
when we think that doing so would make us worse off. It says, in other words, that we
never voluntarily do what we foresee will sacrifice our well-being to some extent. The
first point to be made about this form of psychological egoism is that, once again, there
is no a priori argument to support it. The two premises we have been examining—that
all action is motivated by desire and all desire is like hunger—are implausible, and so
they do not support the thesis that we never sacrifice our well-being to any degree. If
this form of psychological egoism is to be sustained, its evidence would have to be
drawn from the observation of each human being’s reasons for acting. It would have
to say: when our motives are carefully scrutinized, it may indeed be found that although
we do good to others for the sake of those others, we never do so when we think it
would detract even slightly from our own well-being. In other words, we count the good
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of others as something that by itself gives us a reason, but it is always a weak reason, in
that it is never as strong as reasons that derive from our self-interest. We have no
reason to suppose that human behavior is so uniform in its motivation. A far more
plausible hypothesis about human motives is that they vary a great deal from one
person to another. Some people are never altruistic; others are just as this weak form
of psychological egoism says: they are altruistic, but only when they think this will not
detract from their own well-being; and then there is a third and large category filled
with people who, to some degree or other, are willing to sacrifice their well-being for
others. Within this category there is wide range—some are willing to make only small
sacrifices, others larger sacrifices, and some extraordinarily large sacrifices. This way of
thinking has the great advantage of allowing our experience of each individual to
provide us with the evidence by means of which we characterize him. We should not
label everyone as an egoist on the basis of some a priori theory; rather, we should
assess each person’s degree of egoism and altruism on the basis of what we can
discern of their motives.
Warrant: Altruism and egoism are complimentary motivations in social interactions, and those
interactions mean that self-interest isn’t put first.
Irina Kashirskaya. “Ideas about altruism and selfishness in students with different levels
of empathy.” E3S Web of Conferences 210, 2020. https://www.e3s-
conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/pdf/2020/70/e3sconf_itse2020_18101.pdf
Within the framework of different disciplinary approaches, preference is given either

to the evolutionary, genetic interpretation of the origin and development of altruism
[1,2,3], or to the emphasis on the social aspect when explaining the selfless mutual
assistance of strangers and understanding altruism as the opposite of egoism, but not
contradictory, but complementary phenomena [4]. The correlation of motives in
altruistic or egoistic behavior in situations of social interaction is complex and
Champion Briefs 188

interdependent. A person can help another person at the moment selflessly, not
counting on a return service, but at the same time subconsciously focus on
maintaining or establishing interpersonal relationships that will help meet any needs
in the hypothetical future. Therefore, the ability to communicate positively in the
community allows a person who commits altruistic acts to feel satisfied, without paying
attention to the immediate benefits. Thus, prosocial behavior is based not only on
altruistic, but also on egoistic motives. A person who helps another person counts on
reciprocity, i.e. support, if not now, then in the future, if necessary, to satisfy their
material or psychological needs [5]. This point of view is quite common, and theories
are being developed that prove the dual motivation of prosocial behavior. In addition,
active social interaction encourages altruistic behavior and limits egoistic behavior [6].
Analysis: Human motivations are a mix of egoistic and altruistic tendencies. Thus, the PRO’s
position that self-interest offers a uniform theory of human behavior is mistaken.
Champion Briefs 189

CON: Service and Civic Duty
Argument: Humans are just as motivated by service to communities, and civic duty, as they are
by self-interest.
Warrant: Humans are motivated by group identity to put societal welfare above self-interest.
Promise. In addition to this very real limitation, collectivist motivation has some virtues
that egoism and altruism do not. As noted, egoism and altruism are both directed
toward the welfare of individuals. Yet many community needs are far removed from
our self-interest, even enlightened self-interest, and from the interest of those for
whom we especially care. Egoism and altruism may be of limited use in encouraging
action to meet these needs. Think, for example, of the plight of the homeless, of
energy conservation, or of public services that do not directly benefit us or our loved
ones. Such community needs are particularly difficult to address because they often
come in the form of what have been called social dilemmas. A social dilemma arises
when: (a) individuals in a group or collective have a choice about how to allocate
personally held, scarce resources (e.g., money, time, energy), and (b) allocation to the
group provides more benefit for the group as a whole than does allocation to oneself,
but allocation to oneself provides more self-benefit than does allocation to the group
(Dawes, 1980). Examples include recycling, energy and water conservation, contributing
to public TV, and supporting charities. In such situations, the action that is best for
oneself is to allocate resources to meet one’s own needs, ignoring the needs of the
group as a whole. But if everyone tries thus to maximize their own welfare, the
attempt will backfire. Everyone, including oneself, is worse off. If our imagined mayor
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relies on straightforward egoistic— or altruistic—motivation to address the pressing

social dilemmas the community faces, the prognosis looks bleak. But the situation is
rarely this grim. There is considerable evidence that when faced with a social dilemma,
whether in a research laboratory or in real life, many people do not seek to maximize
only their own welfare. They seek also to enhance the group welfare (Alfano &
Marwell, 1980; Brewer & Kramer, 1986; Dawes, McTavish, & Shaklee, 1977; Kramer &
Brewer, 1984; Orbell, van de Kragt, & Dawes, 1988; Yamagishi & Sato, 1986). The most
common explanation for this attention to group welfare is in terms of collectivist
motivation. It is claimed that under conditions of group identity, individuals can and
do act with an ultimate goal of increasing the welfare of their group (e.g., Brewer &
Kramer, 1986; Dawes et al., 1990). Whether it is possible to induce such a motive in
someone who is not a member of the group is, however, less clear.
Warrant: Self-interest cannot explain the sense of civic duty that compels people to vote.
Carolyn L. Funk. “The Dual Influence of Self-Interest and Societal Interest in Public
Opinion.” Political Research Quarterly 53:1, March 2000.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/106591290005300102?casa_tok
en=rznPBWnL8tIAAAAA:_cfxR2oBjFgHBYGOSfUqaPmI8dypE5W7HzKpg9iP8GtgqK
sg55X0hVjNNFMfrFDIWowxw0ebDcUu
Several lines of research bolster the hypothesis that societal interest motivates policy
attitudes. The absence or weakness of self-interest to empirically predict political
positions across a range of cases where they might be expected to occur argues for the
need to consider other bases for political attitudes (Citrin and Green 1990; Sears and
Funk 1990, 1991). The long-standing observation that citizens seem to separate private
from public concerns suggests that a more public-level perspective might underlie
political judgments. Evidence that national economic conditions outperform personal
considerations as explanations for presidential evaluations suggests that societal-level
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concerns form the primary basis for political judgments. The tendency for those with a
stronger sense of civic duty to participate in elections despite personal costs and
unclear benefits is consistent with the notion that motives other than self-interest
also influence political behavior. Experimental studies of small groups suggest that
collective benefits can outweigh personal benefits when group identity is made salient.
Individual differences in value orientations similarly predict a willingness to sacrifice
direct self-interest in ongoing close relationships. And, the willingness of some people to
engage in voluntary and charitable behaviors even at substantial risk to their own well-
being or without clear personal benefit further underscores the need to consider
motivations for other or collective benefit. While it may be possible to increase reliance
on societal interest considerations by manipulating the question or political context, this
study suggests that consideration of societal interest occurs for at least some citizens
even without special efforts at manipulation. Cognitive processes that contribute to the
“morselization” of private and public experience may help explain the tendency to rely
on public-level considerations in public policy judgments. Civic norms that encourage
citizens to evaluate political issues in terms of the public interest may also play a role.
Clearly, not all individuals follow these norms on all issues or to the same degree. The
present study suggests, however, that some citizens can and do approximate a model of
the self-sacrificing citizen who restrains selfinterested concerns when making political
judgments. But, citizens appear more likely to restrain self-interest when it involves
endorsing benefits for others even at some personal cost than when it involves giving up
benefits for themselves. Both self-interest and societal interest, then, appear to
influence public opinion on public policy issues.
Warrant: Pure self-interest cannot explain political participation.
Aaron Edlin, Andrew Gelman, and Noah Kaplan. “Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and
How People Vote to Improve the Well-Being of Others.” Rationality and Society
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19:3, 2007.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rational_final7.pdf
5.1. Social Motivations and Rational Voting Voters think in terms of group and national
benefits. We know this from survey responses and, as we have shown in this paper,
with such motivations it makes sense for many people to vote, as contributions to
collective entities. In surveys, voters say they are motivated by national conditions, and
their turnout is consistent with this assumption, so perhaps we should believe them.
Conversely, rational and purely selfish people should not vote. Survey results on
socially motivated voting are actually consistent with rational political behavior,
although they are sometimes seen as an anomaly.11 For example, Kramer (1983)
characterizes poll findings of sociotropic voting as a statistical artifact that is ‘perfectly
compatible with the null hypothesis of self-interested, pocketbook voting’. As we have
shown in this paper (see also Meehl 1977; Margolis 1981; and Jankowski 2002),
however, voting and vote choice (including related actions such as the decision to
gather information in order to make an informed vote) are rational in large elections
only to the extent that voters are not selfish. Thus, there is no good rational reason to
consider ‘self-interested, pocketbook voting’ as a default or null hypothesis. After all,
sociotropic voting is also perfectly consistent with the null hypothesis of rational voting,
social preferences, and sincere survey respondents. Thus far, we have primarily
emphasized our theory as explaining the ‘mystery’ that people vote. However, it also
has implications for vote choices. Why you vote and how you vote are closely
connected. If you are voting because of the possibility that you will decide the election
and benefit others, then you will vote for the policy that you think will lead to the
largest average benefit. There is no reason to vote for a policy that has idiosyncratic
benefits to you because the individual-benefit term in your utility is essentially
irrelevant for large electorates. This observation explains why the rhetoric of politics
tends to be phrased as benefits to society generally or to large deserving groups,
rather than naked appeals to self-interest. No doubt many people are biased to think
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that what benefits them will benefit others, but we predict that most people will try
to vote to benefit society at large or some large affinity group that they are passionate
about. Our contention therefore runs counter to much of the political economy work of
the past few decades. Except in very small elections, a rational person who votes will
choose the candidate or party with the best perceived social benefits to the population.
Warrant: Selflessness and altruism motivates military service.
Marek Bodziany and Ryszard Kaluzny. “Pro-Social and Altruistic Behaviors of Military
Students in Random Events.” Journal of Academic Ethics 19. 2021.
Based on the phenomenon of the stability of the declared actions, it should be stated
that in the process of recruiting for military studies, a proportionately large number
(over 81%) of students with the characteristics of noble and courageous individuals was
obtained. People who are ready to selflessly help others in the way they are able,
regardless of their own risk. Another crucial issue is that more than 30% of students will
take competent and ethical action regardless of the threat. In their unselfish
commitment and action for the benefit of another person, these young people
deserve the highest respect and social recognition. The findings of the carried-out
research are so important that they concern candidates for military service, additionally
starting their military career and “charged” with values acquired in civil life. Thus, it
covers people preparing for a profession that enjoys high de facto prestige in every
society, but also a profession with a higher than average level of risk. Moreover, a
person’s declared anonymous actions, made voluntarily in situations of simulated
threats, are a premise for conclusions about“his or ”er intentions and attitudes, as well
as ways of behaving in other similar, real circumstances. However, it is difficult not to
agree with P. Bourdieu, that the source of most human actions are not intentions but
acquired dispositions (Bourdieu, 2009, p. 136). Summary Pro-social and altruistic
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activities in the modern world burdened with the stigma of consumerism, the rush for
career and social position, have become scarce but also unfashionable “commodity.”
The disappearance of the inclination to behaviors under consideration, particularly in
the face of the threat of losing one’s health and life, is visible among the representatives
of the young generation of people who build their own identity on instrumental rather
than autotelic values. That means that the tendency to help others, generosity, sacrifice,
and heroism ceases to be a value and reduces social capital through the disappearance
of trust among people, social anomy and pure callousness. Based on the observation of
antisocial phenomena among people (especially those representing modern societies), a
general question has emerged about the scale of the phenomenon and its structure
concerning various social classes and social strata as well as occupational groups. By
adopting the criterion of social availability (the constitutional obligation to fulfill tasks
for the security of the state and its citizens) of certain professional groups, such as the
military, a dilemma arose as to whether young people’s negative behaviors also affect
the occupational groups. The results of the research conducted indicate that altruistic
and pro-social behavior among candidates for soldiers, especially the youngest ones, is
related to primary and secondary education and socialization, which may prove that
environmental factors should be significant in the process of recruitment and
verification of candidates for service. That justifies the specificity of the service and the
subsequent stages of adaptation to it, where qualities such as ethics and bravery in
correlation with effectiveness are essential. More specifically, the research results
indicate that: taking competent and ethical action in situations of danger to other
people depends on the physical and mental predisposition of the person concerned; in
the process of recruitment for military studies, a positive selection of students takes
place with the efficiency and ethical dispositions taken into consideration; women,
proportionally more numerous than men, are distinguished by the components of
bravery in situations of threat to other people; over 30% of first year military students
reveal features of brave people and about 51% are characterized by ethical values
revealing disinterested sacrifice for the benefit of others.
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Warrant: Sacrificing oneself to help others cannot be reduced to self-interest.

A bigger problem for psychological egoism is that some behavior does not seem to be
explained by self-regarding desires. Say a soldier throws himself on a grenade to
prevent others from being killed. It does not seem that the soldier is pursuing his
perceived self-interest. It is plausible that, if asked, the soldier would have said that he
threw himself on the grenade because he wanted to save the lives of others or
because it was his duty. He would deny as ridiculous the claim that he acted in his self-
interest. The psychological egoist might reply that the soldier is lying or self-deceived.
Perhaps he threw himself on the grenade because he believed that he could not bear to
live with himself afterwards if he did not do so. He has a better life, in terms of welfare,
by avoiding years of guilt. The main problem here is that while this is a possible account
of some cases, there is no reason to think it covers all cases. Another problem is that
guilt may presuppose that the soldier has a non-self-regarding desire for doing what he
takes to be right. The psychological egoist might reply that some such account must be
right. After all, the soldier did what he most wanted to do, and so must have been
pursuing his perceived self-interest. In one sense, this is true. If self-interest is
identified with the satisfaction of all of one’s preferences, then all intentional action is
self-interested (at least if intentional actions are always explained by citing preferences,
as most believe). Psychological egoism turns out to be trivially true. This would not
content defenders of psychological egoism, however. They intend an empirical theory
that, like other such theories, it is at least possible to refute by observation.
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Analysis: PRO’s argument that all human actions reduce to self-interest neglects how human
beings can be primarily motivated to serve higher causes above themselves. Voting, military
service, and helping one’s community in general are all primarily motivated by selfless ideals
over self-interest.
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CON: Self-Defeating Actions
Argument: Humans regularly act against their self-interest, and thus it cannot be the primary
motivation for their behavior.
Warrant: Millions of Americans voted for Trump against their own self-interest.
Robert Beard. “Voting against our own self-interest.” The Daily Item. December 13,
2020. https://www.dailyitem.com/opinion/voting-against-our-own-self-
interest/article_c63e2890-8343-5e1c-9595-1fcc8f6dfb3c.html
More than 73 million people voted for Donald Trump. We have a president who is
trying to turn our democracy into an autocracy, yet almost half the electorate doesn’t
seem to care. Those out of work voted to remain out of work and not have $600/week
added to their unemployment compensation. The Democrat-controlled House of
Representatives approved the Heroes Act back in April. It provides funding for the
unemployment bonus. The Republican-controlled Senate refuses to even discuss it. The
president’s supporters voted to continue the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump’s plan for
“herd immunity” has already been tried by Sweden, but quickly abandoned when its
infection and death rates increased far more than those of Norway’s or Denmark’s.
Since experts say at least 70% of the population (271 million Americans) will have to
contract COVID-19 before the population becomes immune. Two percent of that
number would be approximately 460,000 more Americans dead. Trump voters making
the federal minimum wage of $7.50/hour or any salary below $15/hour voted against
increasing their salaries to that level. Those Trump supporters using SNAP coupons
(food stamps) voted for a further reduction to that program of $120 billion over the
next 10 years. Trump’s 2021 Budget cuts SNAP benefits for millions and would radically
restructure the program. Trump supporters voted to do away with health insurance for
20 million people, some of themselves included. They voted (1) to eliminate from all US
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insurance policies provisions allowing children to remain on parents’ healthcare to the

age of 26, (2) to restore lifetime and annual expenditure caps, and (3) restore
preconditions as a reason for rejecting health insurance applications. Those who voted
for Trump voted to leave ever-rising college costs in place, let their children continue
graduating with enormous debt loads — those who can afford college. They voted
against free pre-K education. The teachers among them voted against a 20% pay raise.
They voted against the possibility of free community colleges. Joe Biden hasn’t yet
committed to this, but Kamala Harris along with many Democrats have. Trump voters
with asthma, voted for dirtier air. Trump lowered the standards of the Clean Air Act
raised by the Obama administration, as he did for the restrictions in the Clean Water
and Clean Drinking Water acts. So, why did so many people vote against their own
self-interest? Of course, there were single issues that attracted some: keeping out
Mexicans who, they think, absorb jobs Americans want. Keeping minorities in their place
was another unspoken issue that appealed to many. Many liked Trump for his
opposition to abortion and gun fanatics who want to carry any kind of gun anywhere
they pleased. The Annenberg Public Policy Center has been running a survey of
Americans’ knowledge of their government since 2006. In 2019 it found that 22% of
Americans could not name any of the three branches of government and only 39% could
name all three — a vast improvement over past years. Another 39% could only name
one or two. So, many American voters seem to be politically unaware of just how
government works, even what it provides them. Realizing this, President Trump feeds
his followers clichés like “Lock her up”, “Build the wall”, and “Clean the swamp” without
specifying what they mean. At campaign rallies they recite these clichés aloud as though
they were the devotional responses of a religious servIce. For this reason, many
commentators have concluded that a large portion of Trump’s base form a cult.
Whether single-issue voters or members of the Trump cult, Trump is supported by
people who have a poor understanding of the connection between themselves and
government. So, when they vote, they seem to be unaware of what their self-interest in
voting is.
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Warrant: Freud’s “death drive” explains why we regularly act against our own interests.
Iskra Fileva. “Why We Choose to Act Against Our Own Interests.” Psychology Today.
June 15, 2021.
We do not always act in our own interest. We may be altruistic and sacrifice our own
good for the sake of the good of others. More often, perhaps, we are too apathetic or
weak-willed to do what will benefit us. At other times, however, self-destructive
behavior is due to a deeper, darker undercurrent. There are forces in the human
psyche, inner demons that may come to the fore and propel us to act contrary to
reason and our own well-being. It is these darker forces that interest me here. What
are they? Why do we have them? There is one type of case I wish to mention and set
aside: self-harming behaviors, whose goal is relief from psychic pain by directing one's
own attention toward a physical sensation and away from any mental torment. To inflict
pain on oneself in this way is not self-destructive in the sense that interests me. Mental
torment can seem more unbearable than moderate physical pain, and if these are your
only alternatives, it may not be irrational to choose the pain, though finding another
way to mitigate suffering would, of course, be better. (In one study, people left alone in
a room with a device that allows them to administer electric shocks opted, perhaps not
irrationally, to shock themselves in order to avoid the boredom of sitting alone in an
empty room.) There are, however, other cases, cases in which self-destructive behavior
seems unprovoked. What explains those? Self-destruction that defies reason Freud once
suggested that the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain are not our sole
motives but that, in addition, we have a death drive, a longing to return to the
inorganic state we came from and merge with the non-living. There is, perhaps, an
element of what Freud labels “death drive” in some actions that we perform against our
own interests. A smoker I know, for instance, said once that part of what he enjoys
about smoking is, as he put it, “the taste of death.” If he knew that cigarettes are
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completely harmless, he said, he would not smoke. But an attraction to a state of non-
being is not always a plausible motive. One case in which the motivation appears to
have a different character is that of attraction not to non-being but to the uncivilized
and the disorderly, the bacchanalian. French dramatist Émile Augier labeled this
“nostalgia for the mud" (“nostalgie de la boue,” “boue” being the French word for
“mud”). Freud actually talks about this type of case as well, in Civilization and its
Discontents, where he suggests that in joining civilization, we agree to suppress natural
instincts, but as those instincts cannot be eradicated, keeping them in check generates
misery and aggressive energy that may sometimes be turned inward.
Warrant: Human brains are hard-wired to prioritize short-term gains against our ultimate self-
interest.
Tony Schwartz. “Why Don’t We Act in Our Own Best Interest?” Harvard Business
Review. January 31, 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/01/why-dont-we-act-in-our-
own-bes.html
Their suggestions included overpopulation, unemployment, the environment, and

inequality. Each of the Nobel winners was eloquent and wise about these issues, but the
reality is that the challenges are familiar, and they’re getting worse, not better. The
common denominator among all of them is that they are problems created by humans.
So why can’t we humans solve them? The most basic answer is that we don’t make a
connection between our current behavior and its future consequences. As Muhammad
Yunus, the Bagladeshi economist, put it, “Leaders don’t have time for the future
because they’re too busy with the present.” The more primitive parts of our brain
conspire against our thinking about the future. Our amygdala is designed to be hyper
alert to signs of threat, but only immediate threat. At the same time, we’re powerfully
pulled to immediate gratification, even if it’s undermining our own long-term well-
being. As the wonderfully gentle and self-effacing astrophysicist and Nobel Prize winner
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Saul Perlmutter put it, “We’re limited by being human. We want results fast, and we
discount the future.” Consider, for example how this applies to companies and their
employees. The factual arguments for investing in employee well-being — so that
people can bring more of themselves to work every day — are now overwhelming. A
meta-analysis of existing research, conducted by three Harvard researchers, found that
the savings from wellness programs in organizations averages $3.27 for every dollar
spent. That’s true even though the quality and depth of many such programs is still very
limited. At one point during a Davos session last week, I asked more than a half dozen
CEOs at a discussion I was leading, “Do you believe that your employees perform better
if they’re happier and healthier? The unsurprising and unanimous answer was “Yes.”
Then I asked the CEOs, “If that’s the case, how much time, energy and money do you
invest in insuring that your employees are healthier and happier?” Nearly all of them
agreed the answer was very little. The value of investing money and time in taking care
of employees, rather than simply trying to get more out of them, can seem hard to
measure. Also, because it doesn’t produce instant results, it may seem at odds with the
urgent aim of getting more done, faster, right now. When we’re run by the more
primitive parts of our brain — and we are far more often than we recognize — we
become myopically short-term in our perspective.
Analysis: PRO takes for granted that humans are rational and truly follow through on their self-
interests. But humans are imperfect and regularly act against their self-interest, proving that it
cannot be the primary motivator.
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CON: “Self-Interest” Inaccurate
Argument: Self-love is not the same as selfishness; conversely, self-limitation is not the same as
self-destruction.
Warrant: The PRO’s interpretation of self-interest neglects the sliding scale between self-
sacrifice, or self-limitation, and self-annihilation. Within human relationships, there are
appropriate and inappropriate forms of self-regard.
John Lippitt. “True self-love and true self-sacrifice.” Int J Philos Relig 66, 2009.
In aiming to advance our understanding of true self-love,9 I argue, first, that the term
‘selfish’ is a too vague (and sometimes downright inaccurate) contrast term to use. To
illustrate why, I draw on Robert Merrihew Adams’ distinction between selfishness and
another ‘vice of self-preference’,10 self-centredness. Second, in trying to understand
self-sacrifice, I draw upon feminist worries about its valorisation, but rather than ditch
the concept (as some feminists have argued that we should), I consider Ruth
Groenhout’s suggestion that we would be better off trying to understand where
proper self-sacrifice fits on a sliding scale between self-limitation and self-
annihilation.11 Finally, these reflections lead in a perhaps surprising direction: the need
to rehabilitate a certain species of pride as a virtue that is integral to true self-love. I
close by sketching what form such pride, necessary to avoid the dangerous slide from
proper self-sacrifice to outright self-annihilation, should take. Selfishness and self-
centredness It is not hard to see why ‘selfishness’ might be chosen as the opposite term
to true selflove. Indeed, Christian love is often described as ‘selfless’, a term to which
‘selfish’ looks like a natural antonym.12 But what does ‘selfish’ mean? Consider two
dictionary definitions: ‘concerned chiefly with one’s own profit or pleasure at the
expense of consideration for others’.13 ‘caring too much about oneself and not enough
about others’ and/or ‘(of behaviour or attitude) motivated by self-interest’.14 These fit
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with the link between selfishness and exclusivity made in Kierkegaard’s critique of erotic
love and friendship.15 They also begin to bring out what we might call the grasping,
acquisitive element of selfishness. But even such basic definitions are enough to suggest
that merely avoiding selfishness in this sense would not be sufficient to be able to claim
truly to love oneself. The mere fact that I love and care about others as well as myself—
thus avoiding the exclusivity charge—does not make my self-love ‘true’. In order to see
why not, we should note two things. First, that the term selfishness does not seem to
capture many of the examples Kierkegaard himself uses of ‘improper’ self-love. None
of ‘the bustler’ who ‘wastes his time and powers in the service of futile,
inconsequential pursuits’; ‘the light-minded person’ who ‘throws himself almost like a
nonentity into the folly of the moment’; ‘the depressed person’ who ‘desires to be rid of
life, indeed, of himself’; or the person who ‘surrenders to despair’16 seem well
described by the term ‘selfish’. If we are tempted to describe the would-be suicide as
selfish—on the grounds that he is thinking solely of himself and not others affected by
his suicide—I suggest we should be given pause in reaching this conclusion by
considering the important distinction between selfishness and self-centredness. In A
Theory of Virtue, Robert Merrihew Adams has recently argued that self-centredness is a
‘vice of self-preference that is distinguishable from selfishness’.17 One can still be
inappropriately self-centred despite lacking the ‘grasping’ or acquisitive quality
attributed to selfishness above. This, I take it, is what Adams means when he says that
self-centredness ‘is not in general to be understood in terms of what one wants’.18 To
illustrate this, he gives an example of a father playing basketball with his young
daughter. As Adams sets this up, the father desires that all of the following apply: they
have fun; they take the activity seriously; and they do their best at it. The father
genuinely wants both his daughter and himself to enjoy themselves, so his concern is
not selfish (in the sense of exclusive), as he genuinely cares about his daughter and her
enjoyment. But Adams points out that this description applies equally to two possible
cases. In the first, the father thinks about what a good father he is being; how good he is
at basketball for a man not as young as he once was; and how he wishes his father had
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done this with him. In the second, the father thinks about how much his daughter
enjoys basketball; how good at it she’s getting; and what a ‘neat kid’ she is.19 Why,
ceteris paribus, do we think less of the father in the first case than in the second? The
answer lies not in his being selfish, but in his being too self-centred. In both cases,
Adams suggests, we may presume that the father desires all of the following: to be a
good father; his daughter’s physical and social development; and that the father-
daughter relationship is good and healthy. The difference between the two cases is
rather a difference in focus. In wanting a largely relational complex of ends essentially
involving oneself it is possible for one’s interest to be centred overwhelmingly on
one’s own role in the complex, or much more on other persons, or other features,
involved in it. Self-centredness, as its name suggests, is typically a perversion in this sort
of centering.20 In other words, Adams is drawing our attention to different ways in
which the self can loom too large in one’s life: in one’s desires or in one’sthoughts.
While it seems appropriate to describe the former as selfishness, we need another
term—self-centredness, or something like it—for the latter. We can extrapolate from
this distinction. Various ‘vices of self-preference’ (Adams’ term) or self-focus (mine)—
such as arrogance and vanity—can and should be distinguished from selfishness.21 And
yet—if we recall the centrality to Kierkegaard’s thought of ‘becoming a self’22—we
need to make room for a proper kind of selffocus too. As a preliminary, note Adams’
observation that self-regard of various kinds is ubiquitous in human motivation: The
class of self-regarding motives is very wide—so wide that they are probably involved in
almost all our actions. Desiring a relationship for its own sake— whether one desires
the continuance of one’s marriage, or to be a good parent or friend to so-and-so—is
always a self-regarding motive, inasmuch as the relation ship essentially involves
oneself. Likewise conscientiousness is a self-regarding motive, inasmuch as it is a
commitment to act rightly oneself. 23 It makes no sense, therefore, to condemn all
kinds of self-regard or self-focus. But is there no more to be said about either
appropriate or culpable forms of self-focus than that so many of our actions are in
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various ways self-regarding? It is here that the feminist critique of self-sacrifice

becomes important.
Warrant: Self-interest cannot be known in advance---it can only be known after the persuasive
process of exchange is complete.
Stefano Fiori. “Individual and self-interest in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.” Dans
Cahiers D’Economie Politique 2005/2. https://www.cairn.info/revue-cahiers-d-
economie-politique-1-2005-2-page-19.htm
To invoke “only” benevolence in a market context is not a persuasive argument. On the

contrary, according to Smith, the strategy consists in a) addressing the other agents’
“self-love in his favour” and b) showing “them that it is their own advantage to do for
him what he requires of them.” At first, both actions do not require the agent to be
selfish; rather, Smith points out, the first step of the persuasive strategy consists in
showing the other parties of the transaction what their self-love consists of, and,
particularly, what advantages they will obtain from the exchange. We start not from
our self-interest (or self-love) but from others’ self-interest (although we are
“interested” in accomplishing a certain transaction). Once again, “self-love” (as well as
self-interest) is not a transparent principle. Why should other agents be shown their
self-love? If self-interest were perfectly known, no reason would prompt an individual
to show others either self-love or the advantages derived from a given exchange.
Everything would be perfectly known before the transaction. On the contrary,
personal “interest” must emerge as a consequence of the exchange relationship. It is
not the premise but the conclusion of the process.
Warrant: There are two types of self-love---PRO only emphasizes the type that is survival based,
neglecting the other type of self-love connected to social relationships.
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James Delaney. “Rousseau, self-love, and an increasingly connected world.” OUPblog.

June 28, 2017. https://blog.oup.com/2017/06/rousseau-self-love/
Rousseau’s concern about the corruption of virtue in the Discourse on the Sciences and
Arts is a theme that would run through the rest of his principal works, and would come
to be articulated as a key part of his moral psychology. Rousseau claimed that human
beings are possessed of two types of “self-love.” The first, amour de soi, is simply the
interest we take in our own survival and comfort. The second, amour-propre, is
inherently relational. That is, it is a kind of value we place on ourselves on the basis of
receiving recognition from others. To understand amour-propre, one must know a bit
about Rousseau’s conception of human nature. Following philosophers in the century
before him such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, Rousseau conceived of human
beings in a state of nature. That is, he imagined human beings stripped of all those
characteristics that they could only have acquired by the conventions of human society.
Human beings in the state of nature are primitive, pre-social, isolated, do not exercise
complex reasoning, and act largely from instinct. Amour-propre is undeveloped in this
state. Only when human beings begin to form social relationships with one another
will they begin to take notice of what others think of them. In the earliest human
societies, those marked by small groups of families, amour-propre becomes part of the
human experience. However, it is relatively benign, and Rousseau called this era the
happiest in human history.
Analysis: “Self-interest” is an inaccurate descriptor of human self-love and self-regard. PRO’s

interpretation of self-interest fails to understand human relationships, or even market
exchange.
Champion Briefs 207

CON: Non-Capitalist Societies are Successful
Argument: Throughout history, capitalism has confronted non-capitalist alternatives. Although

capitalism is the predominant form of economic organization, the presence of successful
alternatives illustrates that self interest is not the only driving factor.
Warrant: Capitalism is not the only option
Richard Wolff. “Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism: Mondragon shows the way.”
January 2012. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/alternative-
capitalism-mondragon
“Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with
endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most
people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward
extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power
require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative? I understand why
such a system's leaders would like us to believe in Tina. But why would others? Of
course, alternatives exist; they always do. Every society chooses – consciously or not,
democratically or not – among alternative ways to organize the production and
distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible.
Modern societies have mostly chosen a capitalist organization of production. In
capitalism, private owners establish enterprises and select their directors who decide
what, how and where to produce and what to do with the net revenues from selling
the output. This small handful of people makes all those economic decisions for the
majority of people – who do most of the actual productive work. The majority must
accept and live with the results of all the directorial decisions made by the major
Champion Briefs 208

shareholders and the boards of directors they select. This latter also select their own
replacements.”
Warrant: Non-capitalist organizations flourish in Spain
Richard Wolff. “Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism: Mondragon shows the way.”
January 2012. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/alternative-
capitalism-mondragon
“Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of

production inside enterprises. Tina believers insist that no alternatives to such capitalist
organizations of production exist or could work nearly so well, in terms of outputs,
efficiency, and labor processes. The falsity of that claim is easily shown. Indeed, I was
shown it a few weeks ago and would like to sketch it for you here. In May 2012, I had
occasion to visit the city of Arrasate-Mondragon, in the Basque region of Spain. It is
the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation (MC), a stunningly successful
alternative to the capitalist organization of production. MC is composed of many co-
operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge.
In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per
enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general
assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power
to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and
what to do with the profits).”
Warrant: Self interested capitalism is incompatible with modern problems
Champion Briefs 209

Jules Peck. “The future of business: what are the alternatives to capitalism?.” The
Guardian. April 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/future-business-alternatives-capitalism
“Put simply, it seems that capitalism cannot be compatible with continued

exponential growth on a finite planet. As Tim Jackson has said, "Simplistic
assumptions about capitalism's propensity for efficiency are nothing short of
delusional. A different kind of economics is needed." In any case, its no longer heresy to
point out that capitalism has serious flaws. Indeed, mainstream commentators are
questioning growth-obsessed capitalist economics and calling up Karl Marx from his
grave.
Both Marx on the left and Schumpeter on the right long ago predicted the end of
capitalism. And recently fund manager Jeremy Grantham said: "Capitalism… is totally
ill-equipped to deal with a small handful of issues. Unfortunately, they are the issues
that are absolutely central to our long-term wellbeing and even survival.".”
Warrant: Private enterprise can operate more sustainably
Jules Peck. “The future of business: what are the alternatives to capitalism?.” The
Guardian. April 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/future-business-alternatives-capitalism
“Jonathon Porrit is right when he says "it seems most improbable that capitalism will
prove the last word in humanity's organisation of human affairs…" But he is wrong to
say that capitalism "…is all that is credibly on offer at present". There are many
alternatives to capitalism. You can be excused for not having heard of them, though, as
they don't shout as loudly as capitalism. One alternative, Professor David Schweickart's
Economic Democracy, socialises control of enterprises and the means of production,
placing resources, factories and other productive capital into the hands of the people
Champion Briefs 210

and away from the short-term interests of both the state and private sector. Crucially,
Schweickart argues this form of economics would not need to rely on growth..”
Analysis: Deploy this argument by pointing to historical alternatives to self interested societies.
Emphasize that self interest cannot be the fundamental human setting because it creates
untenable situations such as irresolvable climate crisis.
Champion Briefs 211

CON: Humans are driven by social approval
Argument: Human beings crave approval. This is often disconnected from the realities of self
interest because it does not confer any substantial material benefit.
Warrant: Social approval motivates people
Shoba Sreenivasan. “The Need for Social Approval.” January 2020. Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-
nourishment/202006/the-need-social-approval
“Generally, there are three types of individuals who function in a society or group. There
are: “People pleasers," Those who care little for what people think of them, People who
vacillate between pleasing others and pleasing themselves. Most fall into the third
category; however, which of the two ways they choose often depends on who they
want to please and what they have to do to accomplish that. The need for social
approval sustains cohesive societies. Individuals who “dance to their own drummer”
and care little about what others think of them can remain within the community if
they are needed and are willing to fulfill that need. Otherwise, they extract
themselves or can be removed by the group if they are unwilling to contribute or are a
hindrance. Often, there is no certainty in knowing which “nonconformists” will or will
not be tolerated in a society. Therefore, those who want to enhance their chances of
inclusion are frequently motivated to maintain social approval. Years ago, researchers
hypothesized that people who had a high need for approval and high self-esteem were
more likely to cheat in a temporary situation than to risk social disapproval or a self-
presentation contrary to that of a successful person (Jacobson, Berger, and Millham,
1970; Millham, 1974). “
Warrant: Social approval is valuable developmentally
Champion Briefs 212

Shoba Sreenivasan. “The Need for Social Approval.” January 2020. Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-
nourishment/202006/the-need-social-approval
“Rejection, scorn, embarrassment, and even apathy can affect the child’s sense of self-
worth and competence. The emotional distress from social disapproval can cause
worry, self-neglect, self-doubt, and anxiety. On the other hand, approval by others can
foster strength and confidence; such children are less likely to worry, have self-doubt,
or have feelings of hopelessness. Although both boys and girls are vulnerable to social
disapproval, girls tend to demonstrate more sensitivity and distress than boys. As most
children grow older, the need for social approval is not as critical for achieving self-
esteem because they usually become more self-assured with age and experience. But
that does not mean rejection or indifference from others is innocuous. No matter the
age, the important factor to consider is how a person develops a sense of self-worth. If
it derives primarily from the opinions and acceptance of others, then a need for
approval will continue regardless of age. For those who are particularly susceptible to
social disapproval, in an attempt to “protect oneself,” social interactions may be
avoided--sometimes to the point of isolation.”
Warrant: Group acceptance is necessary to foster self esteem
DeWall, C Nathan et al. “Satiated with belongingness? Effects of acceptance, rejection,

and task framing on self-regulatory performance.” Journal of personality and
social psychology vol. 95,6 (2008): 1367-82. doi:10.1037/a0012632
“Seven experiments showed that the effects of social acceptance and social exclusion
on self-regulatory performance depend on the prospect of future acceptance.
Excluded participants showed decrements in self-regulation, but these decrements
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were eliminated if the self-regulation task was ostensibly a diagnostic indicator of the
ability to get along with others. No such improvement was found when the task was
presented as diagnostic of good health. Accepted participants, in contrast, performed
relatively poorly when the task was framed as a diagnostic indicator of interpersonally
attractive traits. Furthermore, poor performance among accepted participants was not
due to self-handicapping or overconfidence. Offering accepted participants a cash
incentive for self-regulating eliminated the self-regulation deficits. These findings
provide evidence that the need to belong fits standard motivational patterns: thwarting
the drive intensifies it, whereas satiating it leads to temporary reduction in drive.
Accepted people are normally good at self-regulation but are unwilling to exert the
effort to self-regulate if self-regulation means gaining the social acceptance they have
already obtained.”
Warrant: Social approval is a central task of the human self
DeWall, C Nathan et al. “Satiated with belongingness? Effects of acceptance, rejection,

and task framing on self-regulatory performance.” Journal of personality and
social psychology vol. 95,6 (2008): 1367-82. doi:10.1037/a0012632
“People have a strong motivation to form and maintain social relationships

(Baumeister & Leary, 1995). One of the central tasks of the human self is to obtain
social acceptance, and so many of its functions and activities are geared toward
promoting that goal (Baumeister, 1998; Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995;
Schlenker, 1980). Self-regulation, in particular, is important for interpersonal success
because it adapts the self to the demands and opportunities of the social environment
(Finkel & Campbell, 2001; Higgins, 1996; Mischel, Cantor, & Feldman, 1996; Tangney,
Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). The present research investigated the link between social
acceptance vs. rejection and self-regulation. To characterize the human quest for social
acceptance as a fundamental motivation has several implications. Motivation theory
Champion Briefs 214

features standard patterns (e.g., Geen, 1995; Shah & Gardner, 2007). In particular, a
drive that is satisfied should temporarily diminish in strength, whereas one that is
thwarted may become more intense. By analogy, a hungry person may grow hungrier
when food is denied but feels less hungry after a big meal..”
Analysis: The need to maintain relationships and be accepted by a group is fundamental. Ask
your judge to imagine a professionally successful person who was an outcast among their
peers. The judge will likely conclude that the person would be unhappy.
Champion Briefs 215

CON: Humans are driven by family
Argument: Human beings are fundamentally community oriented creatures. A focus on family
is the opposite of self-interest because it requires prioritizing the needs of others.
Warrant: Caring about family motivates people
Kimberlee D’Ardenne. “Caring for family is what motivates people worldwide.” January
2021. Arizon State University. https://news.asu.edu/20191203-caring-family-
what-motivates-people-worldwide
“Across the globe, caring for loved ones is what matters most. But for decades this has
not been the focus of many social psychology studies. Now, an international team of
researchers led by evolutionary and social psychologists from Arizona State University
surveyed over 7,000 people from 27 different countries about what motivates them,
and the findings go against 40 years of research. The study was published on Dec. 3 in
Perspectives on Psychological Science. Across the globe, caring for loved ones is what
matters most. An international study including 27 countries shows people prioritize
loved ones over everything else. “People consistently rated kin care and mate
retention as the most important motivations in their lives, and we found this over and
over, in all 27 countries that participated,” said ASU’s Ahra Ko, who recently won an
Outstanding Research Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
“The findings replicated in regions with collectivistic cultures, such as Korea and China,
and in regions with individualistic cultures like Europe and the U.S.””
Warrant: People intrinsically value long term relationships
Champion Briefs 216

Kimberlee D’Ardenne. “Caring for family is what motivates people worldwide.” January
2021. Arizon State University. https://news.asu.edu/20191203-caring-family-
what-motivates-people-worldwide
“For the past 40 years, evolutionary psychological research has focused on how people
find romantic or sexual partners and how this desire affects other behaviors, like
consumer decisions. But study participants consistently rated this motivation — called
mate-seeking — as the least important factor in their lives. Evolutionary psychologists
define kin care as caring for and supporting family members, and mate retention as
maintaining long-term committed romantic or sexual relationships. These two
motivations were the most important even in groups of people thought to prioritize
finding new romantic and sexual partnerships, like young adults and people not in
committed relationships. “The focus on mate-seeking in evolutionary psychology is
understandable, given the importance of reproduction. Another reason for the
overemphasis on initial attraction is that college students have historically been the
majority of participants,” said Cari Pick, an ASU psychology graduate student and second
author on the paper. “College students do appear to be relatively more interested in
finding sexual and romantic partners than other groups of people.”.”
Warrant: Family motivation underlies behaviors traditionally associated with self-interest
Danielle Tussing. “When Job Performance is All Relative: How Family Motivation
Energizes Effort and Compensates for Intrinsic Motivation Energizes Effort and
Compensates for Intrinsic Motivation” University of Pennsylvania. 2017
https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1334&context=mgmt
_papers
“supporting one’s family is a major reason why many people work, yet surprisingly
little research has examined the implications of family motivation. Drawing on theories
Champion Briefs 217

of prosocial motivation and action identification, we propose that family motivation

increases job performance by enhancing energy and reducing stress, and it is
especially important when intrinsic motivation is lacking. Survey and diary data
collected across multiple time points in a Mexican maquiladora generally support our
model. Specifically, we find that family motivation enhances job performance when
intrinsic motivation is low—in part by providing energy, but not by reducing stress. We
conclude that supporting a family provides a powerful source of motivation that can
boost performance in the workplace, offering meaningful implications for research on
motivation and the dynamics of work and family engagement.”
Warrant: Family events underly a communitarian mindset that is broader than self-interest
Danielle Tussing. “When Job Performance is All Relative: How Family Motivation
Energizes Effort and Compensates for Intrinsic Motivation Energizes Effort and
Compensates for Intrinsic Motivation” University of Pennsylvania. 2017
https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1334&context=mgmt
_papers
“Our findings may also offer preliminary insights for other working populations across
income strata and job conditions. The motivation to serve the family through one’s
work is likely to hold performance benefits in a variety of jobs, thus also companies
offering more complex jobs could profit from appealing to employees’ family
motivation. For example, family events like company picnics and “bring your child to
work day” allow employees to bring their home lives into the workplace more clearly.
Managers may also be able to help by understanding the nature of their employees’
family motivation and offering employees opportunities to meet their families’ needs.
For example, those with high family motivation may especially benefit from flextime by
enabling them to better manage their work and family demands.”
Champion Briefs 218

Analysis: Use this argument to demonstrate that “self” interest is too narrow. People care
about their families and structure their lives around these important bonds. Ask your judge why
people are so willing to work hard and sacrifice for the people around them.
Champion Briefs 219

CON: Humans fail to make self-interested decisions
Argument: History is replete with examples of human beings who fail to make perfectly self
interested decisions. This suggests that there are alternative sources of behavior other than self
interest.
Warrant: Humans do not act out of self interest because of cognitive limitations
Iskra Fileva. “Why We Choose to Act Against Our Own Interests” January 2021.
Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-
philosophers-diaries/202106/why-we-choose-act-against-our-own-interests
“We do not always act in our own interest. We may be altruistic and sacrifice our own
good for the sake of the good of others. More often, perhaps, we are too apathetic or
weak-willed to do what will benefit us. At other times, however, self-destructive
behavior is due to a deeper, darker undercurrent. There are forces in the human
psyche, inner demons that may come to the fore and propel us to act contrary to
reason and our own well-being. It is these darker forces that interest me here. What
are they? Why do we have them? There is one type of case I wish to mention and set
aside: self-harming behaviors, whose goal is relief from psychic pain by directing one's
own attention toward a physical sensation and away from any mental torment. To inflict
pain on oneself in this way is not self-destructive in the sense that interests me. Mental
torment can seem more unbearable than moderate physical pain, and if these are your
only alternatives, it may not be irrational to choose the pain, though finding another
way to mitigate suffering would, of course, be better. (In one study, people left alone in
a room with a device that allows them to administer electric shocks opted, perhaps
not irrationally, to shock themselves in order to avoid the boredom of sitting alone in
an empty room.)”
Champion Briefs 220

Warrant: People engage in a variety of self-harmful activities
Iskra Fileva. “Why We Choose to Act Against Our Own Interests” January 2021.
Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-
philosophers-diaries/202106/why-we-choose-act-against-our-own-interests
“Freud once suggested that the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain are not
our sole motives but that, in addition, we have a death drive, a longing to return to the
inorganic state we came from and merge with the non-living. There is, perhaps, an
element of what Freud labels “death drive” in some actions that we perform against
our own interests. A smoker I know, for instance, said once that part of what he
enjoys about smoking is, as he put it, “the taste of death.” If he knew that cigarettes
are completely harmless, he said, he would not smoke. But an attraction to a state of
non-being is not always a plausible motive. One case in which the motivation appears
to have a different character is that of attraction not to non-being but to the
uncivilized and the disorderly, the bacchanalian. French dramatist Émile Augier
labeled this “nostalgia for the mud" (“nostalgie de la boue,” “boue” being the French
word for “mud”). Freud actually talks about this type of case as well, in Civilization and
its Discontents, where he suggests that in joining civilization, we agree to suppress
natural instincts, but as those instincts cannot be eradicated, keeping them in check
generates misery and aggressive energy that may sometimes be turned inward.”
Warrant: Prosocial behavior is often against the self interest
Brick and Fillon, et al.,“ Self-interest Is Overestimated: Two Successful Pre-registered

Replications and Extensions of Miller and Ratner (1998)” University of California
Press. 1998. https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/7/1/23443/117009/Self-
interest-Is-Overestimated-Two-Successful-Pre
Champion Briefs 221

“Self-interest is a central driver of attitudes and behaviors, but people also act against
their immediate self-interest through prosocial behaviors, voting incongruously with
their finances, or punishing others at personal cost. How much people believe that
self-interest causes attitudes and behaviors is important, because this belief may
shape regulation, shared narratives, and institutional structures. An influential paper
claimed that people overestimate the power of self-interest on others’ attitudes and
behavioral intentions (Miller & Ratner, 1998). We present two registered, close, and
successful replications (U.S. MTurk, N = 800; U.K. Prolific, N = 799) that compared
actual to estimated intentions, with open data and code. Consistent with the original
article, participants overestimated the impact of payment on blood donation in Study 1,
ds = 0.59 [0.51, 0.66], 0.57 [0.49, 0.64], and overestimated the importance of smoking
status for smoking policy preferences in Study 4, ds = 0.75 [0.59, 0.90], 0.84 [0.73, 0.96].
These replications included two extensions: 1) communal orientation as a moderator of
overestimation and 2) a more detailed measure of self-interest in Study 4 (ordinal
smoking status). Communal orientation did not predict overestimation, and the ordinal
smoking measure yielded similar results to the main study. Verifying the overestimation
error informs behavioral theories across several fields and has practical implications for
institutions that require trust and cooperation”
Warrant: People overestimate the self interest of those around them
Brick and Fillon, et al.,“ Self-interest Is Overestimated: Two Successful Pre-registered

Replications and Extensions of Miller and Ratner (1998)” University of California
Press. 1998. https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/7/1/23443/117009/Self-
interest-Is-Overestimated-Two-Successful-Pre
“Self-reported willingness to donate blood or endorse smoking policies is not equivalent

to objective behaviors like blood donation or voting. The main narrative in this paper is
that people over-estimate others' self-interest, but the results are also consistent with
Champion Briefs 222

the pattern that such estimates are accurate and that self-reported willingness is
inaccurate; that in actual behavior people would manifest more self-interest than they
expect or are willing to report. Further studies with observed behavior would be
valuable for testing this account. The experimental paradigms were copied from the
original manuscript and not validated before testing the hypotheses. The vignettes and
manipulations might have confounds or unknown effects orthogonal to the theory and
predictions used here. Additionally, the participants were only given very sparse
information about the targets, e.g., that they were smokers or nonsmokers.”
Analysis: Deploy this argument by changing the tenor of the debate from pure theory to
practical knowledge. In the real world, the judge will be familiar with many examples of people
who do not maximize their self-interest Use this intuition to your advantage.
Champion Briefs 223

CON: Humans are driven by moral responsibility
Argument: Humans act for ethical reasons as well as egotistical ones. Ethics and morality serve
as an important organizing principle for human society.
Warrant: The development of ethics problematizes a focus on self interest
“But if it is true that human beings always act from egoistic motives, then it's difficult to
talk about ethics. First, ethics as traditionally conceived is supposed to override self-
interest: if we have a moral obligation to do something, we ought to do it even when
it's not in our own interests to do so. It makes no sense, however, to tell people that
they ought to act contrary to self-interest if they can act only in terms of self-interest.
Moreover, an important traditional element in ethical decision-making is an impartial
consideration of the interests of others. The moral point of view goes beyond self-
interest to a standpoint that takes everyone's interests into account. Ethics, then,
assumes that self interest is not the basis for all human behavior, although some
philosophers, e.g., Hobbes, have tried to base ethics on self-interest. Their efforts,
however, have not been widely accepted. While egoism may be a strong motivator of
human behavior, ethics traditionally assumes that human beings are also capable of
acting from a concern for others that is not derived from a concern for their own
welfare.”
Warrant: Social science shows people respond to ethical obligations
Champion Briefs 224

“One challenge to the Hobbesian view of human beings comes from recent studies in
psychology by Dr. C. Daniel Bateson of the University of Kansas. Bateson and his
colleagues have performed a number of experiments to examine how people respond
to others in need. He hypothesized that if people were motivated to help others only
out of self-interest, e.g., to relieve their own distress, they would help only when
helping was the easiest way to accomplish this goal. If they could easily escape the
situation and thereby escape whatever was causing them distress, they would do that
instead. By contrast, if people were motivated to help out of a genuine concern for
another in need, their ultimate goal would be to reduce the other's distress, which could
only be accomplished by helping the person, whether or not other ways of reducing
their own discomfort were available. Through a series of experiments, Bateson found
that when subjects encountered someone in need, they typically reported
experiencing two distinct kinds of emotions: personal distress (alarm, worry, or grief)
or empathy (sympathy, compassion, or tenderness). While subjects experiencing
either of the emotions helped the person in need, the underlying motivations differed
according to which emotion was present. When escape was made easy, 67% of
subjects reporting feelings of distress escaped rather than helped. However, only 17%
of the subjects reporting feelings of empathy escaped; the overwhelming majority of
them stayed to help the person in need, even though they could have easily escaped.
Feelings of empathy, Bateson claims, appear to arouse a genuinely altruistic motivation
to help that is not derived from self interest, a finding contrary to the Hobbesian point
of view.”
Warrant: Empathy and Altruism are part of human nature
Champion Briefs 225

Dan Batson ,“ Empathic Concern and Altruism in Humans” National Humanities Center.
April 2013. https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-
human/2009/10/empathic-concern-and-altruism-in-humans/
“The empathy-altruism hypothesis offers a very different answer. It claims that

empathic concern (other-oriented emotion felt for someone in need—sympathy,
compassion, tenderness, and the like) produces altruistic motivation (a motivational
state with the ultimate goal of increasing the other’s welfare). Over the past 35 years,
other researchers and I have attempted to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis using
laboratory experiments and have, overall, found quite strong support (for a partial
review see Batson & Shaw, 1991; Batson, forthcoming provides a more complete
review). Altruistic motivation does seem to be within the human repertoire. Of course,
fundamental questions remain: What produces empathic concern? Can we give a
plausible account of the evolution of empathy-induced altruism? What are the
practical and theoretical implications if empathy-induced altruism exists? In everyday
life, empathic concern seems to be a product of (a) perception of another as in need
and (b) intrinsic valuing of that other’s welfare. Contrary to what is often thought,
empathic concern is not a product of perceived similarity of the other to the self. We do
not simply feel for ourselves in the other. We can feel empathic concern for a wide
range of others in need, even dissimilar others, as long as we value their welfare.”
Warrant: Moral intuitions come from nature and nurture
Dan Batson ,“ Empathic Concern and Altruism in Humans” National Humanities Center.
April 2013. https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-
human/2009/10/empathic-concern-and-altruism-in-humans/
“In terms of evolutionary history, I do not think that reciprocal altruism, inclusive fitness
(kin selection), or group selection in its various forms can account for empathy-induced
Champion Briefs 226

altruistic motivation in humans. Rather, generalized parental nurturance now seems

the most likely evolutionary basis of empathic concern—even for strangers. Human
parental nurturance is far more flexible and future-oriented than the parental
instincts found in most—perhaps all—other mammalian species. It is need-oriented,
emotion-based, and goal-directed. And it can be generalized well beyond our own
children—in the case of pets, even to members of other species. If parental
nurturance is the prototype for empathy-induced altruism, then the intensity of
tender, empathic feeling for strangers should vary with perceived similarity to
progeny, not perceived similarity to self. Is this true?.”
Analysis: Use this argument to show that moral intuitions provide a compelling alternative to
self interest. Appeal to your judge’s sense of justice and their latent conviction that the people
around them are genuinely kind.
Champion Briefs 227

CON: Self-interest facilitates inequality
Argument: Self interest has led to bad historical developments
Warrant: Self interest facilitates inequality
Sarah Bermeo. “Development, self-interest, and the countries left behind”. Brookings
Institution. February 2018. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-
development/2018/02/07/development-self-interest-and-the-countries-left-
behind/
“A serious attention to development occurred mainly after the end of the Cold War. The
focus sharpened in the early 2000s, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
drove home the realization that state failure thousands of miles away can have
serious repercussions at home. Promoting development became a matter of self-
interest for wealthy states. The self-interest of developed countries affected policy on
foreign aid, trade agreements, and even climate finance, as I argue in my new book,
Targeted Development. The focus on development as self-interest did not usher in, as
Prime Minister Tony Blair would have us believe, an era of enlightened self-interest
where “idealism becomes realpolitik.” Instead, development is promoted
disproportionately when and where it serves the interests of wealthy countries. This will
likely aid development in targeted states, but a widening gap will emerge as those not
targeted are left further behind.”
Warrant: Foreign aid contingency is driven by self-interest
Champion Briefs 228

behind/
“The pattern of aid allocation across countries has changed significantly over time.
During the Cold War, geopolitical concerns drove more foreign aid to countries that
were militarily important or held key positions, such as membership on the United
Nations Security Council. In the post-2001 period, donors focus more on countries
from which they expect the biggest spillovers from underdevelopment: those that are
poor, proximate, and populous. They also favor countries that send them higher
numbers of migrants and imports. The impact of geopolitical concerns has become less
significant during this time. This is consistent with an increased emphasis on
development and with focusing efforts in countries where transmission mechanisms—
whether due to proximity, movement of people, or movement of goods—are high.
Donors also care more about effectiveness in recent years, conditioning the type of
foreign aid on the quality of governance in recipient countries.”
Warrant: Socialist system produce innovation
David Kotz. “Socialism and Innovation.” The University of Massachusetts. March 2000.
https://people.umass.edu/dmkotz/Soc_and_Innovation_02.pdf
“The mature Soviet system had various institutional components to its innovation
system, including the incorporation of major planned new technologies into the
central plan by Gosplan each year. However, two institutions were most important in
Soviet innovation performance: 1) a system of R&D Institutes, which had innovation
as their sole mission; and 2) the individual enterprises, which typically had a design
department for new product development and, at larger enterprises, a research
laboratory. The Soviet system did have significant strengths in innovation
performance.11 Soviet R&D Institutes were staffed with well-trained and dedicated
Champion Briefs 229

researchers and were reasonably well funded, and they and the enterprises did produce
many important innovations. The success was best known in military and space
technology, but it extended to some civilian industrial technologies.12 Output per labor
hour in the Soviet economy grew rapidly until 1975, much faster than in the U.S. during
that period (Kotz and Weir, 1997, p. 46). However, Soviet innovation performance never
lived up to expectations. Understanding the problems encountered in the Soviet
innovation process -- and the institutional sources of those problems -- is relevant to
evaluating the potential innovation performance of a DPPS system, including potential
problems that it might encounter.”
Warrant: Non-capitalism models would support socially desirable innovation
“While contemporary capitalism does place some after-the-fact restraints on socially

harmful innovation, through state regulation and individual or class-action lawsuits,
DPPS would place social interests at the heart of the innovation process. While the
research and development stages of a potentially harmful project could not be readily
blocked by opponents, the project could not be implemented, and the costs actually
imposed, without social approval. Furthermore, those engaging in invention or
development on an IFB grant would know the criteria by which the implementation of
the innovation would eventually be judged by the IAB, which should have a positive
impact on the direction of invention and development. A remaining problem is the
possible need to allow an existing enterprise to enter a new line of production, or to
permit the founding of a new enterprise, in order to implement a major innovation. This
might encounter resistence from existing interests. To avoid this problem, once the IAB
has given its approval, the innovators should have the right to request permission to
start a new enterprise, or enlist an existing enterprise to move outside its previous line
Champion Briefs 230

of work, in order to implement the innovation. A decision to grant such a request might
require a joint meeting of the IFB and the IAB.”
Analysis: Self-interest and greed have caused a great deal of inequality, which leads to human
suffering. Humans are motivated by more than just the worst parts of their society.
Champion Briefs 231

CON: Unchecked Self-interest leads to disaster
Argument: Self interest does not lead to good outcomes
Warrant: Self interest facilitates destruction
David Warsh. “How Selfish Are People—Really?”. Harvard Business Review. October
1989. https://hbr.org/1989/05/how-selfish-are-people-really
“When Alan Greenspan told the House Oversight Committee 'I made a mistake in
presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were
such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their
equity in the firms', the effect was the same as Frodo and Sam casting the Ring of
Power into the fires of Mount Doom at the end of The Lord of the Rings: the edifice of
21st-century management shook to its foundations. Self-interest as the driver that, like
an invisible hand, permits individuals acting on their own behalf to benefit society as a
whole goes back to Adam Smith. But Smith at least realised the drastic inequities it
would cause and proposed measures, including progressive taxes, to mitigate the
worst effects. No such caution has been in evidence since the 1960s as the concept has
become the central belief around which all Anglo-American corporate governance,
and thence management as a whole, revolves.”
Warrant: Self interest threatens to destroy the economy
“Self-interest (and the need to guard against it) is the reason for dividing the chairman
and chief executive's role, just as it is for setting executive and non-exec directors
Champion Briefs 232

against each other; self-interest justifies and encourages individuals to demand vast pay
foundation on which, as Greenspan now regrets, Wall Street's rocket scientists
erected the teetering superstructure of debt instruments crashing down around us.
The real-world consequences of a commercial universe with self-interest at its heart
thus give the lie to previous assumptions about how individuals and organisations
work. In this sense, Greenspan's mea culpa might be likened to the Vatican's admission
in 1992 after a 13-year inquiry that Galileo had, after all, been right ('It's official - the
Earth moves round the sun,' as the Chicago Sun-Times caustically put it at the time).”
Warrant: Self interest created market failure in 2008
Shivansh Jauhri. “Financial crisis explained: How greedy US banks crippled world
economy” The Business Standard. March 2011. https://www.business-
standard.com/article/markets/financial-crisis-explained-how-greedy-us-banks-
crippled-world-economy-118090500388_1.html
“The insurance company too wanted a piece of this housing market boom. So there
comes a company that says it would sell insurance on CDO. Simply put, an investor
invests in CDO but thinks it might not give good returns. That investor can go to an
insurance company selling insurance on that CDO. So the investor will pay a monthly
premium to the insurance company and in case the CDO fails, the insurance company
would pay the investor his money. This was known as credit default swap. So insurance
companies, too, began making money. Now, in the second quarter of FY07, the
adjustable rates on sub-prime loans, or the risky loans, started to kick-in. The people
who had questionable income history were unable to repay the loans and hence the
defaults started. The houses on which the loans were not paid went to the bank. The
bank auctioned it to get its money back. This would have worked had it only
Champion Briefs 233

happened with only a handful of houses. Since the banks had given out sub-prime
loans to a lot of people, there was just far too many houses to auction and not many
willing buyers for them..”
Warrant: Corporate Greed led to the housing crash
“With an abundance of such houses and not many buyers, the real estate prices
started coming down. This led to another unfortunate situation. A good person with a
home loan became unwilling to pay his loan back because they value of his house had
gone down but he was still paying more as he had a loan. As the loans started
defaulting, the values of CDO, which is nothing but a bundle of home loans, also went
down. As the value of CDO came down, investors lost their money. The investment
banks had far too many worthless CDOs to sell but no buyers for it. The banks had too
many bad loans to sell to the investment banks, but no takers. And yes, seeing the value
of CDOs going down, the investors who had insurance against it, sought returns. The
insurance companies had to pay the money to those investors. The banks had no
money, the investment banks were clueless about what to do with CDOs, and the
insurance companies were paying the price of their greed in the form of returns.
Moreover, people lost jobs and their homes. The entire financial system came to a
standstill as the bank had no money to function or give to others. The stock of banks
went to zero on the exchange. They filed for bankruptcy and shut their door. A
behemoth like Lehman Brothers was reduced to nothing. Merill Lynch was sold to
Bank of America, AIG was bailed out by Federal Reserve. The shock waves crippled the
stock markets across the globe. And all this began with some banks getting greedy”
Champion Briefs 234

Analysis: This argument is a strong counterpoint example to the idea that greed produces good
outcomes. Force your judge to reckon with the role of greed in the 2008 financial crash and the
devastation it caused.
Champion Briefs 235

CON: Self-Interest is overstated
Argument: Self interest Does Not Pervade Human Society
Warrant: The importance of self interest is overstated
“But how realistic is this conception? How selfish are people, really? For the most part,
humanists have simply ignored the spread of the new economic ideas. Instead, they
have continued to talk about right and wrong in their accustomed frameworks—
everything from sermons to novels to TV scripts. With the exception of the brilliant 30-
year campaign against perfect rationality by Herbert Simon (and the guerrilla war of
John Kenneth Galbraith), the major universities have produced no sustained criticism by
economists of the central tenets of utility theory. Psychologists and sociologists,
confronted with ubiquitous theorizing about the economics of decisions they previously
considered their domain, have been quick to complain of “economic imperialism” but
rather slow to launch counterattacks. In the last few years, however, a small but
growing number of persons has begun to come to grips with assumptions underlying
economic interpretations of human nature. Robert B. Reich and Jane Mansbridge have
grappled with the significance of the self-interest paradigm for political philosophy,
for example. Howard Margolis and Amitai Etzioni have propounded theories of a dual
human nature, competitive and altruistic by turns. Sometimes these disagreements
come to the attention of outsiders in the press, like me, on the reasonable grounds that
arguments over what constitutes human nature are too important to be left entirely to
the experts.”
Warrant: Emotions can short circuit self interested behavior
Champion Briefs 236

“Frank’s starting point is to take emotions as a given. They exist, he says. They’re
probably not the “fuzzy thinking” that most economists believe them to be. We see a
homeless person, we are moved to pity; we see a child in danger, we are moved to help;
we see a sterling baseball play, we are stirred and excited; we imagine our mate with
another person, we burn with jealously and rage; we contemplate stealing from an
unattended change box, we blush with shame. Thinking as an evolutionist, Frank asks,
what useful purpose might these feelings serve? The answer he gives is that the highly
useful function of the emotions is precisely to short-circuit narrowly self-interested
behavior, because honest and helpful people are those whom everyone wants for
partners, and because nobody messes with people who get angry when they are
crossed. It is well known that the ball hog doesn’t make the team, that, in the end, the
utter egoist doesn’t win at romance; the existence of mitigating emotions is
evolution’s way of making us more “fit” partners.”
Warrant: Self interest does not act alone
Keith Yoder. “Selfish or selfless? Human nature means you’re both.” The Conversation.
March 2011. https://theconversation.com/selfish-or-selfless-human-nature-
means-youre-both-155528
“Looking out for number one has been important for survival for as long as there have
been human beings. But self-interest isn’t the only trait that helped people win at
evolution. Groups of individuals who were predisposed to cooperate, care for each
other and uphold social norms of fairness tended to survive and expand relative to
other groups, thereby allowing these prosocial motivations to proliferate. So today,
Champion Briefs 237

concern for oneself and concern for others both contribute to our sense of fairness.
Together they facilitate cooperation among unrelated individuals, something ubiquitous
among people but uncommon in nature. A critical question is how people balance these
two motivations when making decisions.”
Warrant: Equity and honor are important conclusions
“In daily life, people are rarely just responders, like in the game in our lab. We are
interested in what happens when a person must make decisions that involve other
people, such as delegating responsibilities among team members, or when an
individual has limited power to personally affect the way resources are divided, as in
government spending. One implication from our work is that when people want to
reach a compromise, it may be important to ensure that no one feels taken advantage
of. Human nature seems to be to make sure you’ve taken care of yourself before you
consider the needs of others.”
Analysis: This argument is powerful because it makes the case that even if self interest is
important, it cannot be the primary force affecting conduct because it must coexist with other
drivers.
Champion Briefs 238

CON: Humans are cooperative by nature
Argument: Cooperation is human nature.
Warrant: Cooperation is evolutionary
Will Wilkinson. “Socialism” vs. “capitalism” is a false dichotomy”. Vox. October 2019.
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/8/16/17698602/socialism-capitalism-
false-dichotomy-kevin-williamson-column-republican-ocasio-cortez
“Given the importance of “fairness” and the dangers of free riders to a group’s
survival, it is not surprising that a specific region of the brain has evolved that is
dedicated to detecting cheaters. Innate personality traits have also evolved to detect
and punish cheaters in social networks. The evolutionary justification for reciprocal
behaviors is that they distribute risk. It is in one’s own self interest to attend to the
interests of others – even those who are not kinsmen. In the case of some hunting and
gathering cultures, the likelihood of a hunter bringing back a large bounty of protein is
no more than 4 percent. This gives hunters a keen interest in reciprocating acts of
sharing. It diversifies their risks – and increases their ability to survive. This conclusion of
a growing number of evolutionary scientists is anathema to the Chicago School of
classical economics, however. It is also rejected by a band of traditional evolutionary
biologists who contend that individual self-interest is the primary motivator of human
activity. For them, it is a “Central Dogma” that everything revolves around self-interest
– the “selfish gene” and the individual, and it is individual selection – not group
selection – that is the principal agent of Natural Selection..”
Warrant: Self Interest actually subverts evolution
Champion Briefs 239

“The main – indeed only – selling point for the neo-classical theory of collective action
is its assertion of behavioral realism. Individuals, it tells us, are inherently self-seeking.
Accordingly, we can’t count on them voluntarily to subordinate material interests to
the good of society; rather we must alternatively bribe and threaten them through a
costly regulatory process. It turns out, however, the conventional theory isn’t right.
Individuals in collective action setting might not act like saints, but they don’t behave
like fiends either. They can be counted on to contribute to collective good, the
emerging literature on strong reciprocity shows, so long as they perceive that others are
inclined to do the same. Bribes and threats are not nearly so necessary as the
conventional theory would have us believe; the law can instead enlist our cooperation
by furnishing us with ground to trust one another to contribute our fair share to
society’s needs. By assuming that the only tenable means of promoting cooperation is
through coercion and the lure of self interest, many of today’s political and economic
“realists” are subverting the very conditions for social stabilization that they say they
are trying to encourage...”
Warrant: Non-self interested policies succeed
Richard V. Reeves. “Capitalism is failing. People want a job with a decent wage – why is
that so hard?” Brookings Institute. March 2019.
https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/capitalism-is-failing-people-want-a-job-
with-a-decent-wage-why-is-that-so-hard/
“Models of self-interested rationality increasingly came to be seen as universally

correct and applicable across an ever-expanding range of human practices. Economics
Champion Briefs 240

became the primary medium of expression. For example, Nobel laureate Gary Becker
argued in 1968 that the calculus of criminals is best understood as a set of rational
trade-offs between the benefits of crime and the costs of punishment, discounted by
the probability of detection. Imposing harsher punishments and increasing police
enforcement, people concluded, are the obvious ways to tackle crime. The same year,
Garrett Hardin described the tragedy of the commons—the parable about farmers who
shared a piece of land with no restrictions on the number of cattle each could graze on
it. They kept letting more cattle graze on the commons until the grass was gone, leaving
nothing for anyone. No one stopped grazing animals, Hardin argued, for fear of losing
out to the other farmers, who would continue overexploiting the commons. The
conclusion was that as self-interested actors, human beings will inevitably destroy
shared resources unless the latter are subject either to regulation or to property rights.
Like biology, however, the discipline of economics has changed over the years. In
2009, Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for showing how
commons can—and do—sustain themselves for centuries as well-functioning systems.
The most striking example is in Spain, where thousands of farmers have been
managing their access to water through self-regulated irrigation districts for more
than five centuries. To take another example, 75% of U.S. cities with populations of
more than 50,000 have successfully adopted some version of community policing,
which reduces crime not by imposing harsher penalties but by humanizing the
interactions of the police with local communities.”
Warrant: Non self-interested behavior succeeds in economic models
Yochai Benkler. “The Unselfish Gene” Brookings Institute. March 2011.

https://hbr.org/2011/07/the-unselfish-gene
“Overcoming our assumptions about self-interest is critical to diagnose the risks that
new business rivals pose. In 1999, two experts showed how Microsoft’s entry into the
Champion Briefs 241

encyclopedia market with Encarta symbolized the transformation made possible by

networked information economics. Here was a major player leveraging a powerful
position, gained by early-mover advantages and network effects, to bundle a product
and distribute it widely at a low cost. Britannica’s lumbering 32-volume, multi-
thousand-dollar offering didn’t stand a chance. Ten years later, Britannica had been
pushed to a different model—but not by Encarta. Microsoft stopped producing
Encarta in 2009 because of competition from a business model that is inconceivable
according to the belief in self-interested rationality: Wikipedia. If you feel that
Wikipedia—the seventh or eighth most trafficked website, with more than 300 million
visitors a month—is unique, ask Zagat’s how the user-generated Yelp has affected its
market or Fodor what it thinks about TripAdvisor. The rise of open source software is an
example of the same dynamic. For more than 15 years, companies have used open
source Apache software for mission-critical web applications, with Microsoft’s server
software trailing a distant second. Companies such as Google, Facebook, and Craigslist
have also found ways to become profitable by engaging people. Our old models of
human behavior did not—could not—predict that.”
Analysis: This argument should be used to bolster the credibility of the previous response. If
self-interest were really evolutionary and biological, how could companies and innovators
succeed by circumventing it?
Champion Briefs 242

CON: Self-Interest corrupts economic systems
Argument: Economic systems are corrupted by self-interest; alternatives exist.
Warrant: A more socially oriented economy is possible
“Williamson is right that the new democratic socialists running for office aren’t calling
for nationalization of industry or the abolition of private property (though some of
their cheerleaders are). They’re calling for an extravagantly beefed-up welfare state,
and a shift toward stronger governmental regulation of various industries. These are
questionable ideas, but they won’t turn America into Venezuela. Still, there’s a big
difference between real, existing social democracy — of the sort on display in
Denmark or Sweden —and the Christmas list exorbitance of the DSA platform. (If
you’re confused by the difference between “social democracy” and “democratic
socialism,” Sheri Berman is indispensable.) As Williamson observes, progressives in the
mold of Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez seem not to know or care that today’s model
social democracies also boast model capitalist economies that are in many ways more
economically laissez-faire than the wickedly capitalist American system.”
Warrant: Market economics are compatible with social values
Champion Briefs 243

“We need markets to make us richer. But we also need them to make all of us richer,
and that’s not just about making sure that we’re indemnified against the risks of
wrecking-ball competition. It’s also about making sure the basic rules of the game
aren’t rigged to favor people who already won, locking the rest of us into a lower tier
of possibility. Warren is a free-market social democrat in the Nordic mold. Her vision is
a far cry from the anti-capitalist agenda of the Ocasia-Cortez and the DSA. Now, the
problem isn’t exactly “markets without rules.” The problem is that markets are defined
by an incomprehensible jumble of regulatory kludges — an accumulation of individually
reasonable but cumulatively stifling technocratic fixes — that strangle economic
freedom for ordinary people, allowing the powerful to capture the economy by writing
and selectively enforcing the rules to their advantage.”
Warrant: People are discontent with capitalism
“Over the last decade, the logic of markets and the workings of capitalism have been
intensely questioned and challenged, both from the populist right and the socialist
left. Young Americans and supporters of the Democratic party are now more
enthusiastic about socialism than capitalism (by 6% and 10% margins, respectively).
Leading candidates now proudly describe themselves as socialists – unthinkable just a
few years ago. (Whether they are in fact socialists by any sensible definition of the
term is of course another matter.) Future history books may begin the chapter on the
current era with the events of 15 September 2008, when Lehman Brothers filed for the
biggest bankruptcy in history, with $639bn in assets and $619bn in debt. Or perhaps the
starting date will be three years later, when on 17 September 2011, two years after the
Champion Briefs 244

official end of the recession, hundreds of protesters gathered in Manhattan’s Zuccoti

Park to “Occupy Wall Street”. Or 8 November 2016, when Donald Trump ascended to
the highest office in the land. It all depends whether, in hindsight, our crisis comes to be
seen as economic or political in nature.”
Warrant: Capitalism leads to bad outcomes
“Certainly, the Great Recession was a massive economic shock. Nine million jobs were
lost and 4m homes foreclosed on. Average household income dropped by 7%. Black
families saw their already limited wealth stock cut almost in half. And the recovery
has been painfully slow, in what some economists have labeled a “zombie economy”.
But the Great Recession also shone a light on trends long predating the downturn, not
least in terms of stagnant wage growth for so many workers. By comparison with the
postwar years, economic growth has been slow for the last few decades. At the same
time, the transmission mechanism linking economic growth to the wages of workers
appears to have broken. The share of income going to workers has dropped sharply,
from 64% in 1974 to 57% in 2017.”
Analysis: This argument shows the judge that capitalism cannot be the driving impulse of
human nature because it is so destructive to human beings themselves. Why would people be
driven by an impulse that would destroy them?
Champion Briefs 245

Champion Briefs
2022-2023
Big Questions Brief
Con Responses to
Pro Arguments
Con Responses to Pro Arguments Big Questions 22-23
A/2: Self-interest led to historical developments
Answer: Self interest has led to bad historical developments
Warrant: Self interest facilitates inequality
behind/
“A serious attention to development occurred mainly after the end of the Cold War. The
focus sharpened in the early 2000s, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
drove home the realization that state failure thousands of miles away can have
serious repercussions at home. Promoting development became a matter of self-
interest for wealthy states. The self-interest of developed countries affected policy on
foreign aid, trade agreements, and even climate finance, as I argue in my new book,
Targeted Development. The focus on development as self-interest did not usher in, as
Prime Minister Tony Blair would have us believe, an era of enlightened self-interest
where “idealism becomes realpolitik.” Instead, development is promoted
disproportionately when and where it serves the interests of wealthy countries. This will
likely aid development in targeted states, but a widening gap will emerge as those not
targeted are left further behind.”
Warrant: Foreign aid contingency is driven by self-interest
Champion Briefs 247

behind/
“The pattern of aid allocation across countries has changed significantly over time.
During the Cold War, geopolitical concerns drove more foreign aid to countries that
were militarily important or held key positions, such as membership on the United
Nations Security Council. In the post-2001 period, donors focus more on countries
from which they expect the biggest spillovers from underdevelopment: those that are
poor, proximate, and populous. They also favor countries that send them higher
numbers of migrants and imports. The impact of geopolitical concerns has become less
significant during this time. This is consistent with an increased emphasis on
development and with focusing efforts in countries where transmission mechanisms—
whether due to proximity, movement of people, or movement of goods—are high.
Donors also care more about effectiveness in recent years, conditioning the type of
foreign aid on the quality of governance in recipient countries.”
Warrant: Socialist system produce innovation
“The mature Soviet system had various institutional components to its innovation
system, including the incorporation of major planned new technologies into the
central plan by Gosplan each year. However, two institutions were most important in
Soviet innovation performance: 1) a system of R&D Institutes, which had innovation
as their sole mission; and 2) the individual enterprises, which typically had a design
department for new product development and, at larger enterprises, a research
laboratory. The Soviet system did have significant strengths in innovation
performance.11 Soviet R&D Institutes were staffed with well-trained and dedicated
Champion Briefs 248

researchers and were reasonably well funded, and they and the enterprises did produce
many important innovations. The success was best known in military and space
technology, but it extended to some civilian industrial technologies.12 Output per labor
hour in the Soviet economy grew rapidly until 1975, much faster than in the U.S. during
that period (Kotz and Weir, 1997, p. 46). However, Soviet innovation performance never
lived up to expectations. Understanding the problems encountered in the Soviet
innovation process -- and the institutional sources of those problems -- is relevant to
evaluating the potential innovation performance of a DPPS system, including potential
problems that it might encounter.”
Warrant: Non-capitalism models would support socially desirable innovation
“While contemporary capitalism does place some after-the-fact restraints on socially

harmful innovation, through state regulation and individual or class-action lawsuits,
DPPS would place social interests at the heart of the innovation process. While the
research and development stages of a potentially harmful project could not be readily
blocked by opponents, the project could not be implemented, and the costs actually
imposed, without social approval. Furthermore, those engaging in invention or
development on an IFB grant would know the criteria by which the implementation of
the innovation would eventually be judged by the IAB, which should have a positive
impact on the direction of invention and development. A remaining problem is the
possible need to allow an existing enterprise to enter a new line of production, or to
permit the founding of a new enterprise, in order to implement a major innovation. This
might encounter resistence from existing interests. To avoid this problem, once the IAB
has given its approval, the innovators should have the right to request permission to
start a new enterprise, or enlist an existing enterprise to move outside its previous line
Champion Briefs 249

of work, in order to implement the innovation. A decision to grant such a request might
require a joint meeting of the IFB and the IAB.”
Analysis: Use this response to show the judge that the status quo is not the only option for
economic and technological development. Just because self-interest has led to technological
change in the past does not make it the inherent and only driver of progress, and better
alternatives are possible.
Champion Briefs 250

A/2: Self-Interest creates desirable outcomes
Answer: Self interest does not lead to good outcomes
Warrant: Self interest facilitates destruction
“When Alan Greenspan told the House Oversight Committee 'I made a mistake in
presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were
such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their
equity in the firms', the effect was the same as Frodo and Sam casting the Ring of
Power into the fires of Mount Doom at the end of The Lord of the Rings: the edifice of
21st-century management shook to its foundations. Self-interest as the driver that, like
an invisible hand, permits individuals acting on their own behalf to benefit society as a
whole goes back to Adam Smith. But Smith at least realised the drastic inequities it
would cause and proposed measures, including progressive taxes, to mitigate the
worst effects. No such caution has been in evidence since the 1960s as the concept has
become the central belief around which all Anglo-American corporate governance,
and thence management as a whole, revolves.”
Warrant: Self interest threatens to destroy the economy
“Self-interest (and the need to guard against it) is the reason for dividing the chairman
and chief executive's role, just as it is for setting executive and non-exec directors
Champion Briefs 251

against each other; self-interest justifies and encourages individuals to demand vast pay
foundation on which, as Greenspan now regrets, Wall Street's rocket scientists
erected the teetering superstructure of debt instruments crashing down around us.
The real-world consequences of a commercial universe with self-interest at its heart
thus give the lie to previous assumptions about how individuals and organisations
work. In this sense, Greenspan's mea culpa might be likened to the Vatican's admission
in 1992 after a 13-year inquiry that Galileo had, after all, been right ('It's official - the
Earth moves round the sun,' as the Chicago Sun-Times caustically put it at the time).”
Warrant: Self interest created market failure in 2008
“The insurance company too wanted a piece of this housing market boom. So there
comes a company that says it would sell insurance on CDO. Simply put, an investor
invests in CDO but thinks it might not give good returns. That investor can go to an
insurance company selling insurance on that CDO. So the investor will pay a monthly
premium to the insurance company and in case the CDO fails, the insurance company
would pay the investor his money. This was known as credit default swap. So insurance
companies, too, began making money. Now, in the second quarter of FY07, the
adjustable rates on sub-prime loans, or the risky loans, started to kick-in. The people
who had questionable income history were unable to repay the loans and hence the
defaults started. The houses on which the loans were not paid went to the bank. The
bank auctioned it to get its money back. This would have worked had it only
Champion Briefs 252

happened with only a handful of houses. Since the banks had given out sub-prime
loans to a lot of people, there was just far too many houses to auction and not many
willing buyers for them..”
Warrant: Corporate Greed led to the housing crash
“With an abundance of such houses and not many buyers, the real estate prices
started coming down. This led to another unfortunate situation. A good person with a
home loan became unwilling to pay his loan back because they value of his house had
gone down but he was still paying more as he had a loan. As the loans started
defaulting, the values of CDO, which is nothing but a bundle of home loans, also went
down. As the value of CDO came down, investors lost their money. The investment
banks had far too many worthless CDOs to sell but no buyers for it. The banks had too
many bad loans to sell to the investment banks, but no takers. And yes, seeing the value
of CDOs going down, the investors who had insurance against it, sought returns. The
insurance companies had to pay the money to those investors. The banks had no
money, the investment banks were clueless about what to do with CDOs, and the
insurance companies were paying the price of their greed in the form of returns.
Moreover, people lost jobs and their homes. The entire financial system came to a
standstill as the bank had no money to function or give to others. The stock of banks
went to zero on the exchange. They filed for bankruptcy and shut their door. A
behemoth like Lehman Brothers was reduced to nothing. Merill Lynch was sold to
Bank of America, AIG was bailed out by Federal Reserve. The shock waves crippled the
stock markets across the globe. And all this began with some banks getting greedy”
Champion Briefs 253

Analysis: This response is a strong counterpoint example to the idea that greed produces good
outcomes. Force your judge to reckon with the role of greed in the 2008 financial crash and the
devastation it caused.
Champion Briefs 254

A/2: Self Interest Pervades Human Society
Answer: Self interest Does Not Pervade Human Society
Warrant: The importance of self interest is overstated
“But how realistic is this conception? How selfish are people, really? For the most part,
humanists have simply ignored the spread of the new economic ideas. Instead, they
have continued to talk about right and wrong in their accustomed frameworks—
everything from sermons to novels to TV scripts. With the exception of the brilliant 30-
year campaign against perfect rationality by Herbert Simon (and the guerrilla war of
John Kenneth Galbraith), the major universities have produced no sustained criticism by
economists of the central tenets of utility theory. Psychologists and sociologists,
confronted with ubiquitous theorizing about the economics of decisions they previously
considered their domain, have been quick to complain of “economic imperialism” but
rather slow to launch counterattacks. In the last few years, however, a small but
growing number of persons has begun to come to grips with assumptions underlying
economic interpretations of human nature. Robert B. Reich and Jane Mansbridge have
grappled with the significance of the self-interest paradigm for political philosophy,
for example. Howard Margolis and Amitai Etzioni have propounded theories of a dual
human nature, competitive and altruistic by turns. Sometimes these disagreements
come to the attention of outsiders in the press, like me, on the reasonable grounds that
arguments over what constitutes human nature are too important to be left entirely to
the experts.”
Warrant: Emotions can short circuit self interested behavior
Champion Briefs 255

“Frank’s starting point is to take emotions as a given. They exist, he says. They’re
probably not the “fuzzy thinking” that most economists believe them to be. We see a
homeless person, we are moved to pity; we see a child in danger, we are moved to help;
we see a sterling baseball play, we are stirred and excited; we imagine our mate with
another person, we burn with jealously and rage; we contemplate stealing from an
unattended change box, we blush with shame. Thinking as an evolutionist, Frank asks,
what useful purpose might these feelings serve? The answer he gives is that the highly
useful function of the emotions is precisely to short-circuit narrowly self-interested
behavior, because honest and helpful people are those whom everyone wants for
partners, and because nobody messes with people who get angry when they are
crossed. It is well known that the ball hog doesn’t make the team, that, in the end, the
utter egoist doesn’t win at romance; the existence of mitigating emotions is
evolution’s way of making us more “fit” partners.”
Warrant: Self interest does not act alone
“Looking out for number one has been important for survival for as long as there have
been human beings. But self-interest isn’t the only trait that helped people win at
evolution. Groups of individuals who were predisposed to cooperate, care for each
other and uphold social norms of fairness tended to survive and expand relative to
other groups, thereby allowing these prosocial motivations to proliferate. So today,
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concern for oneself and concern for others both contribute to our sense of fairness.
Together they facilitate cooperation among unrelated individuals, something ubiquitous
among people but uncommon in nature. A critical question is how people balance these
two motivations when making decisions.”
Warrant: Equity and honor are important conclusions
“In daily life, people are rarely just responders, like in the game in our lab. We are
interested in what happens when a person must make decisions that involve other
people, such as delegating responsibilities among team members, or when an
individual has limited power to personally affect the way resources are divided, as in
government spending. One implication from our work is that when people want to
reach a compromise, it may be important to ensure that no one feels taken advantage
of. Human nature seems to be to make sure you’ve taken care of yourself before you
consider the needs of others.”
Analysis: This response is powerful because it makes the case that even if self interest is
important, it cannot be the primary force affecting conduct because it must coexist with other
drivers.
Champion Briefs 257

A/2: Self Interest is Evolutionary
Answer: Self interest is not evolutionary
Warrant: Cooperation is evolutionary
“Given the importance of “fairness” and the dangers of free riders to a group’s
survival, it is not surprising that a specific region of the brain has evolved that is
dedicated to detecting cheaters. Innate personality traits have also evolved to detect
and punish cheaters in social networks. The evolutionary justification for reciprocal
behaviors is that they distribute risk. It is in one’s own self interest to attend to the
interests of others – even those who are not kinsmen. In the case of some hunting and
gathering cultures, the likelihood of a hunter bringing back a large bounty of protein is
no more than 4 percent. This gives hunters a keen interest in reciprocating acts of
sharing. It diversifies their risks – and increases their ability to survive. This conclusion of
a growing number of evolutionary scientists is anathema to the Chicago School of
classical economics, however. It is also rejected by a band of traditional evolutionary
biologists who contend that individual self-interest is the primary motivator of human
activity. For them, it is a “Central Dogma” that everything revolves around self-interest
– the “selfish gene” and the individual, and it is individual selection – not group
selection – that is the principal agent of Natural Selection..”
Warrant: Self Interest actually subverts evolution
Champion Briefs 258

“The main – indeed only – selling point for the neo-classical theory of collective action
is its assertion of behavioral realism. Individuals, it tells us, are inherently self-seeking.
Accordingly, we can’t count on them voluntarily to subordinate material interests to
the good of society; rather we must alternatively bribe and threaten them through a
costly regulatory process. It turns out, however, the conventional theory isn’t right.
Individuals in collective action setting might not act like saints, but they don’t behave
like fiends either. They can be counted on to contribute to collective good, the
emerging literature on strong reciprocity shows, so long as they perceive that others are
inclined to do the same. Bribes and threats are not nearly so necessary as the
conventional theory would have us believe; the law can instead enlist our cooperation
by furnishing us with ground to trust one another to contribute our fair share to
society’s needs. By assuming that the only tenable means of promoting cooperation is
through coercion and the lure of self interest, many of today’s political and economic
“realists” are subverting the very conditions for social stabilization that they say they
are trying to encourage...”
Warrant: Non-self interested policies succeed
“Models of self-interested rationality increasingly came to be seen as universally

correct and applicable across an ever-expanding range of human practices. Economics
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became the primary medium of expression. For example, Nobel laureate Gary Becker
argued in 1968 that the calculus of criminals is best understood as a set of rational
trade-offs between the benefits of crime and the costs of punishment, discounted by
the probability of detection. Imposing harsher punishments and increasing police
enforcement, people concluded, are the obvious ways to tackle crime. The same year,
Garrett Hardin described the tragedy of the commons—the parable about farmers who
shared a piece of land with no restrictions on the number of cattle each could graze on
it. They kept letting more cattle graze on the commons until the grass was gone, leaving
nothing for anyone. No one stopped grazing animals, Hardin argued, for fear of losing
out to the other farmers, who would continue overexploiting the commons. The
conclusion was that as self-interested actors, human beings will inevitably destroy
shared resources unless the latter are subject either to regulation or to property rights.
Like biology, however, the discipline of economics has changed over the years. In
2009, Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for showing how
commons can—and do—sustain themselves for centuries as well-functioning systems.
The most striking example is in Spain, where thousands of farmers have been
managing their access to water through self-regulated irrigation districts for more
than five centuries. To take another example, 75% of U.S. cities with populations of
more than 50,000 have successfully adopted some version of community policing,
which reduces crime not by imposing harsher penalties but by humanizing the
interactions of the police with local communities.”
Warrant: Non self-interested behavior succeeds in economic models
Yochai Benkler. “The Unselfish Gene” Brookings Institute. March 2011.

https://hbr.org/2011/07/the-unselfish-gene
“Overcoming our assumptions about self-interest is critical to diagnose the risks that
new business rivals pose. In 1999, two experts showed how Microsoft’s entry into the
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encyclopedia market with Encarta symbolized the transformation made possible by

networked information economics. Here was a major player leveraging a powerful
position, gained by early-mover advantages and network effects, to bundle a product
and distribute it widely at a low cost. Britannica’s lumbering 32-volume, multi-
thousand-dollar offering didn’t stand a chance. Ten years later, Britannica had been
pushed to a different model—but not by Encarta. Microsoft stopped producing
Encarta in 2009 because of competition from a business model that is inconceivable
according to the belief in self-interested rationality: Wikipedia. If you feel that
Wikipedia—the seventh or eighth most trafficked website, with more than 300 million
visitors a month—is unique, ask Zagat’s how the user-generated Yelp has affected its
market or Fodor what it thinks about TripAdvisor. The rise of open source software is an
example of the same dynamic. For more than 15 years, companies have used open
source Apache software for mission-critical web applications, with Microsoft’s server
software trailing a distant second. Companies such as Google, Facebook, and Craigslist
have also found ways to become profitable by engaging people. Our old models of
human behavior did not—could not—predict that.”
Analysis: This response should be used to bolster the credibility of the previous response. If
self-interest were really evolutionary and biological, how could companies and innovators
succeed by circumventing it?
Champion Briefs 261

A/2: Capitalism is Based on Self Interest
Answer: Alternatives to Capitalism Exist
Warrant: A more socially oriented economy is possible
“Williamson is right that the new democratic socialists running for office aren’t calling
for nationalization of industry or the abolition of private property (though some of
their cheerleaders are). They’re calling for an extravagantly beefed-up welfare state,
and a shift toward stronger governmental regulation of various industries. These are
questionable ideas, but they won’t turn America into Venezuela. Still, there’s a big
difference between real, existing social democracy — of the sort on display in
Denmark or Sweden —and the Christmas list exorbitance of the DSA platform. (If
you’re confused by the difference between “social democracy” and “democratic
socialism,” Sheri Berman is indispensable.) As Williamson observes, progressives in the
mold of Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez seem not to know or care that today’s model
social democracies also boast model capitalist economies that are in many ways more
economically laissez-faire than the wickedly capitalist American system.”
Warrant: Market economics are compatible with social values
Champion Briefs 262

“We need markets to make us richer. But we also need them to make all of us richer,
and that’s not just about making sure that we’re indemnified against the risks of
wrecking-ball competition. It’s also about making sure the basic rules of the game
aren’t rigged to favor people who already won, locking the rest of us into a lower tier
of possibility. Warren is a free-market social democrat in the Nordic mold. Her vision is
a far cry from the anti-capitalist agenda of the Ocasia-Cortez and the DSA. Now, the
problem isn’t exactly “markets without rules.” The problem is that markets are defined
by an incomprehensible jumble of regulatory kludges — an accumulation of individually
reasonable but cumulatively stifling technocratic fixes — that strangle economic
freedom for ordinary people, allowing the powerful to capture the economy by writing
and selectively enforcing the rules to their advantage.”
Warrant: People are discontent with capitalism
“Over the last decade, the logic of markets and the workings of capitalism have been
intensely questioned and challenged, both from the populist right and the socialist
left. Young Americans and supporters of the Democratic party are now more
enthusiastic about socialism than capitalism (by 6% and 10% margins, respectively).
Leading candidates now proudly describe themselves as socialists – unthinkable just a
few years ago. (Whether they are in fact socialists by any sensible definition of the
term is of course another matter.) Future history books may begin the chapter on the
current era with the events of 15 September 2008, when Lehman Brothers filed for the
biggest bankruptcy in history, with $639bn in assets and $619bn in debt. Or perhaps the
starting date will be three years later, when on 17 September 2011, two years after the
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official end of the recession, hundreds of protesters gathered in Manhattan’s Zuccoti

Park to “Occupy Wall Street”. Or 8 November 2016, when Donald Trump ascended to
the highest office in the land. It all depends whether, in hindsight, our crisis comes to be
seen as economic or political in nature.”
Warrant: Capitalism leads to bad outcomes
“Certainly, the Great Recession was a massive economic shock. Nine million jobs were
lost and 4m homes foreclosed on. Average household income dropped by 7%. Black
families saw their already limited wealth stock cut almost in half. And the recovery
has been painfully slow, in what some economists have labeled a “zombie economy”.
But the Great Recession also shone a light on trends long predating the downturn, not
least in terms of stagnant wage growth for so many workers. By comparison with the
postwar years, economic growth has been slow for the last few decades. At the same
time, the transmission mechanism linking economic growth to the wages of workers
appears to have broken. The share of income going to workers has dropped sharply,
from 64% in 1974 to 57% in 2017.”
Analysis: This response shows the judge that capitalism cannot be the driving impulse of human
nature because it is so destructive to human beings themselves. Why would people be driven
by an impulse that would destroy them?
Champion Briefs 264

A/2: Self-Interest Encompasses Friendship
Answer: Friendships are not predicated on self interest
Warrant: People have many bases for friendship
Gabriel Lear. “Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship.” University of Chicago.

December 2003. https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/aristotle-and-the-philosophy-of-
friendship/
“It is also in friendship that people feel most fulfilled, and so it is tempting to think that
by studying friendship we can see how the life of moral virtue and happiness come
together. In her study of the discussion of friendship in Books VIII and IX of the
Nicomachean Ethics, Lorraine Smith Pangle argues that Aristotle begins with these
high-minded hopes in order to show something quite different to those who are
willing to think carefully (i.e. not necessarily to everyone who will read or hear the
argument, e.g. p.131, p.235 n.10). Pangle thinks that the idea that virtue is most
perfectly and easily realized in friendship, though true in its way, most likely rests on a
confused understanding both of moral virtue and of the goodness of friends.
According to Pangle, the decent people Aristotle addresses are likely to think that
friendship is good because it is fulfilling to devote ourselves utterly to another person
and because they think moral virtue involves precisely this readiness for self-sacrifice
in the expectation of honor. She argues that Aristotle’s purpose in NE VIII and IX is to
correct these misconceptions in a way that shows that true virtue and the best
friendship arise among people who do not seek their happiness in either. Instead, it is
the friendships of philosophers that best exemplify virtue in friendship.”
Warrant: Self-interest is not the only cause of friendship
Champion Briefs 265

Gabriel Lear. “Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship.” University of Chicago.

December 2003. https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/aristotle-and-the-philosophy-of-
friendship/
“Pangle argues that although all Aristotelian friendship involves an element of self-
interest, a friend on account of virtue is able to love the other for two reasons: as
beneficial and as good simpliciter. This, she says, is likely what Aristotle has in mind
when he points out that virtuous people are both good for each other and good in
themselves (38). Unfortunately, he is vague about the connection between these two
sources of love. But he does explain the respect in which virtuous friends are pleasant to
each other: since each is virtuous, each delights in observing virtue. Virtue is, after all,
fine and beautiful (kalon), and, according to Aristotle, the experience of the fine is a
particular sort of pleasure. But in being pleased by the friend’s virtue, one is delighting
in the other for what he is in himself. “Perhaps, then, Aristotle is hinting at the intriguing
possibility that it is through our openness to pleasure and not in our need for what is
good that we come closest to cherishing another simply for what he is in himself” (44)..”
Warrant: People act altruistically towards friends
Xue, Ming. (2013). Altruism and reciprocity among friends and kin in a Tibetan village.
Evolution and Human Behavior. 34. 323–329.
10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.05.002.
“To explain the high level of altruism among unrelated friends, some people propose
that friends may apply the feeling and emotions that underlie kin-selected nepotism
to each other. Alternatively, altruism among friends may be sustained by an evolved
psychology that is sensitive to the dynamic of contingent reciprocity. A recent study
(Stewart-Williams, S., 2007. Altruism among kin vs. nonkin: effects of cost of help and
reciprocal exchange. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 193–198) with North American
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students showed that the amount of help given and received was less likely to be
balanced among friends (as among relatives) than among acquaintances, suggesting
that exchange among friends and relatives may rely on similar psychological
mechanisms.”
Warrant: Studies show that friendships require reciprocity
Xue, Ming. (2013). Altruism and reciprocity among friends and kin in a Tibetan village.
Evolution and Human Behavior. 34. 323–329.
10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.05.002.
“To assess whether the similar pattern in exchange reflects the similar psychology in
exchange, I tested how different types of relationship regulated the amount of help
given and received, and people’s emotional reaction to non-reciprocation. I asked 45
participants from a Tibetan village in China to imagine how unhappy they would feel if
the target person (sibling, cousin, friend or acquaintance) failed to reciprocate their help
in various contexts. I found that overall, friends and relatives were more tolerant to
non-reciprocation than acquaintances were. For emotional help, friends were more
likely to feel unhappy about non-reciprocation than relatives were, but were similar to
relatives in responses to other types of help (aid during crisis, labor, and financial
help). The study suggests that people may evaluate the importance of reciprocity
differently in various situations, and exhibit different levels of sensitivity to the
dynamic of reciprocity. Thus it calls for careful distinctions between friends and kin in
the everyday lives of individuals.”
Analysis: Use this study to confirm your judge’s intuition that friendships are more meaningful
than self-interest. They require sacrifice and commitment, which are altruistic emotions.
Champion Briefs 267

A/2: Self-Interest Encompasses Family Relationships
Answer: Family relationships are not predicated on self interest
Warrant: People act altruistically to their families
Rachlin, Howard, and Bryan A Jones. “Altruism among relatives and non-relatives.”
Behavioural processes vol. 79,2 (2008): 120-3. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2008.06.002
“Hamilton’s (1964) kin-selection theory predicts that altruism will be greater with
greater genetic overlap (degree of kinship) between giver and receiver. Kin may be
identified in terms of social distance – the closer you feel to someone else, a) the
greater your genetic overlap with them should be, and b) the more altruistic you should
be toward them. The present experiment determined the amount of their own
(hypothetical) monetary reward undergraduates were willing to forgo in order to give
$75 to other people at various social distances. We found that a) genetic relationship
and b) altruism varied inversely with social distance; the closer you feel toward
someone else, the closer their relation to you is likely to be, and the more altruistic
you are likely to be toward them. However, even at the same social distance,
participants were willing to forgo significantly more money for the benefit of relatives
than for the benefit of non-relatives. These results are consistent with kin-selection
theory and imply that altruism is determined by factors in addition to social
distance..”
Warrant: The closer a person is to another person, the more altruistic they become
Rachlin, Howard, and Bryan A Jones. “Altruism among relatives and non-relatives.”
Behavioural processes vol. 79,2 (2008): 120-3. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2008.06.002
Champion Briefs 268

“For these participants (mostly around 18 years old), altruism was strongly contingent
on both closeness of genetic relationship and social distance. At almost every social
distance, relatives were given more. These results imply that for humans at least there
are factors other than those comprising our measure of social distance that determine
altruistic behavior. To speculate on what those factors may be we turn to the more
general economic definition of altruism: “Costly acts that confer economic benefits on
other individuals.” (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003, p. 785). You might feel close to a friend
because he or she is an entertaining person and fun to be with, but still not be willing to
give him money. On the other side of the coin, you might feel indebted to a relative. Or,
a relative, even one you might not like much, may be more likely to reciprocate your
altruism than a friend would be, even at the same social distance. However, both the
economic, and biological, definitions of altruism imply that, for behavior to be truly
altruistic, costs be incurred by the giver and benefits go to the receiver. When “costly
acts” are actually investments from which a return is expected, they may seem less
costly than their nominal amounts and, to that degree, less altruistic.”
Warrant: People sacrifice for their families
Josh Elmore. “Why People Make Sacrifices for Others” UC Berkley. March 2019.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_people_make_sacrifices_for
_others
“A recent study led by Oriel FeldmanHall, a post-doctoral researcher at New York

University, tested two dominant theories about what motivates “costly altruism,”
which is when we help others at great risk or cost to ourselves. FeldmanHall and her
colleagues examined whether costly altruism is driven by a self-interested urge to
reduce our own distress when we see someone else suffering or whether it’s motivated
by the compassionate desire to relieve that other person’s pain. In the study, the
researchers first had people take a survey measuring how strongly they react to
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others’ suffering with feelings of compassionate concern or with feelings of personal

distress and discomfort. Then, they gave everyone some money—20 pounds (the study
was conducted in the UK)—with the chance to keep or lose one pound in each of 20
rounds. How much money they got to keep each round depended on how willing they
were to administer painful shocks to a person in another room with whom they had
interacted briefly. If they chose to administer the highest intensity shock, they got to
keep the whole pound; if they administered a less intense shock, they kept less of the
money; and if they decided to forgo administering a shock at all, they relinquished the
entire pound. FeldmanHall’s team found that participants who generally respond to
suffering with compassionate concern (rather than distress or discomfort) gave up
more money. While watching the results of their decisions, all participants showed
increased activity in brain circuits associated with empathy.”
Warrant: Altruism can growth with time and strengthening relationships
Josh Elmore. “Why People Make Sacrifices for Others” UC Berkley. March 2019.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_people_make_sacrifices_for
_others
“However, compared with the other participants, when the more compassionate people
watched videos showing the outcome of their own generosity—people being shocked at
low levels, or not at all—their brains showed greater activity in regions associated with
feelings of pleasure and socially rewarding states, like maternal love. More selfish
choices, on the other hand, were associated with activation of the dorsal anterior
cingulate cortex (dACC), a brain region often implicated in distress related to internal
conflict and the inhibition of intuitive behaviors, and of the amygdala, the brain’s
putative vigilance-to-threat detector. From these results, the researchers surmise that
acts of costly altruism are more strongly associated with feelings of compassionate
concern than with a selfish need to relieve one’s own distress. This is consistent with
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prior research suggesting that when people experience distress in response to

someone else’s suffering, they’re more likely simply to avoid that person than try to
help. Fortunately, prior research also suggests that compassion isn’t simply a fixed
trait; instead, it seems possible to increase your capacity for it over time—for
instance, by broadening your social networks, actively trying to take someone else’s
perspective, or even by meditating. Through these steps, you might not only strengthen
your ability to connect with others, but as FeldmanHall’s study suggests, you might also
strengthen your capacity for selflessness.”
Analysis: This response shows the judge that altruism can be an equally powerful force to self
interest in defining family relationships. Make the case that if there are multiple competing
priorities, it is impossible to single out self-interest as the primary driver.
Champion Briefs 271

A/2: Enlightened Self-Interest
Answer: Enlightened self-interest is a worse theory of motivation than altruism.
Warrant: Enlightened self-interest neglects the role of duty and conscience in motivating
traditional altruism.
David L. Martinson. “Enlightened Self-Interest Fails as an Ethical Baseline in Public

Relations.” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 9:2. 1994. Pages 100-108.
One must ask, however, whether a philosophy built around enlightened self-interest
provides the practitioner with a genuine ethical baseline or, instead, a convenient
means to avoid making hard ethical choices. Do those who advocate adding
"enlightened to "self-interest" sincerely believe that the practitioner can operate in an
ethical manner if he or she unfailingly supports policies that are in an
organization's/clientls self-interest-at least as long as that self-interest is of the
enlightened variety? It is possible that one misconstrues how those advancing such a
philosophy precisely define what it is they mean by enlightened self-interest. Perhaps
they are speaking of something that begins to approach what others would consider
traditional altruism. If that is the case, however, one must question why there is a
need to refer to self-interest. No one who has seriously studied ethical decision making
would hold that all actions providing some benefit to an individual or organization must,
by definition, be deemed unethical. It is important to very carefully clarify what is, as
well as what is not, being suggested. An illustration involving personal behavior will
serve to make the point. It is possible that the honest person may derive a certain
sense of personal satisfaction (pleasure) from telling the truth, even during those times
when doing so may have negative consequences for him or her. One must, however,
question most vigorously anyone who would contend such a person had adopted a
self-interest standard because that individual satisfies the demands of his or her
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conscience by being honest. Duty, generosity, self-sacrifice, and heroism have their
attendant satisfaction; otherwise they could not be motives for acting. But to call such
satisfaction by the name of pleasure is a misuse of words. On what is the mind fixed,
the duty itself, or the pleasure attending it. . . the sacrifice made or the joy in making it?
It seems here that the accompanying pleasure can be absent and, even when it is
present, it is too paltry to be the main motive. Even if it were uppermost, what
constitutes the act a moral act-the fact that it is an act of duty, generosity, self-sacrifice,
or heroism, or the fact that I enjoy it? If only the latter, wisdom dictates that I should
pick less painful enjoyments. (Fagothey, 1976, p. 65) One must also be careful not to
give "too loose an interpretation of self-interest" (Harman, 1977, p. 138). Rachels
(1976) notes, for example, that "brushing my teeth, working hard at my job, and
obeying the law, are all in my self-interest but none of these are examples of selfish
conduct" (p. 171). Instead, Rachels argues, "selfish behavior is behavior that ignores the
interests of others, in circumstances in which their interests ought not to be ignored" (p.
171).
Warrant: Enlightened self-interest is more about principle and sacrifice than the PRO admits.
Barbara Allen. “Alexis de Tocqueville on Civic Virtue and Self-Interest Rightly Understood
in American Democracy.” Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, 1998.
https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/599/Allen,_Barbara--
Alexis-de-Tocqueville-on-civic-virtue-and-self-interest--american-democracy.pdf
Tocqueville associated interest in part with material gain; Americans, he said, sought the
value of everything and evaluated every project by a single measure, "how much money
will it bring in."2 Tocqueville linked acquisitiveness with the social instability, mutable
laws, and personal anxiety that threatened public life. These qualities represented the
negative proclivities of a society motivated by interest, inclinations that must be
Champion Briefs 273

tempered by other desires of the human heart and habits of thought. At first
Tocqueville contrasted enlightened interest unfavorably with classical notions of virtue,
yet he learned in his American encounters that enlightened self-interest encompassed
more than a drive for material gain. In America a proper understanding of interest
embraced an awareness of the public dimension of private right that reflected an
enduring tradition of covenantal bonds that surpassed the ties produced by
coordinating common material desires. Federal designs, Tocqueville concluded,
permitted private interest to be a sentinel of the public right. Interest provided citizens
with a stake in society and federal institutions structured political participation such that
individual interests were served through civic engagement. But Tocqueville would soon
find that the doctrine of enlightened self-interest was a more complex matter than
even these ideas of coordination and accommodation captured. "Men [People] have
sentiments and principles as well as interests," he found, and a polity could not subsist
by accommodating interests alone.3 Humanity naturally put its greatest faculties to
work searching "into the divine conception" and, seeing "that order is the purpose of
God" a person "freely gives his own efforts to aid in prosecuting this great design."4
Material interests can be reoriented, even made the servant of another natural drive.
Public institutions, Tocqueville thought, can assist the individual's inclination to
"sacrifice his personal interests to this consummate order of all created things," a
sacrifice taken with no expectation of recompense other than the pleasure of
contemplating God's order.5
Warrant: In a capitalist economy, enlightened self-interest breaks down at the systemic level.
Dan Craciun. “Could ‘Enlightened Self-Interest’ Make a Case for Ethical Business?”
Cogito 6:4, December 2014. ProQuest.
Is ethical behavior in business the only logical conclusion of game theory? David
McAdams recently published a whole book dedicated to the Prisoner's Dilemma:
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"Game-Changer," that tries to show how one could modify the strategic context for his
own advantage when playing once or repeatedly the famous strategic game. The author
is not at all concerned with the ethical issues in business, but his conclusions and
recommendations are quite relevant for our topic. McAdams defines and elaborates six
methods to improve one's chances to win a Prisoner's Dilemma Game. The most
interesting is the third method: "merge or collude". To put it bluntly, the basic idea is
that competitors should try to avoid the costly fight between them, finding a way to
cooperate for their mutual benefit. Surprisingly enough, those who appeal to the game
theory to prove the rationality of ethical behaviour in business fail to see that all these
logical calculations of enlightened self-interest lead to one main conclusion: the best
strategy for shrewd competitors on the market is to cooperate for mutual benefits
instead of trying to destroy each other. In other words, as Hobbes taught us a long time
ago, the war of everybody against all the rest is a self-destructive strategy. Instead of
competing against the other players, trying to attract the consumers through better
offers, the companies would make larger and safer profits over the long run by secretly
sharing the market and making an agreement to control costs, prices, and production,
so that to keep a favourable ratio between offer and demand. Taking this viewpoint, the
common enemy of all companies are the consumers, the employees, the suppliers, local
communities, the state - in a word, different categories of stakeholders. Cynically, but
logically one business leader said, "We believe the competitor is our friend and the
customer is our enemy. [...] We should be trusting," he added, "and have competitive
friendliness among the companies." (Velasquez, 2006, p. 202) No doubt, this approach is
morally wrong and even the "friendly competitors" realize that - not after getting a
deeper understanding of the game theory, but considering certain ethical values and
principles that essentially contradict the rational strategies suggested by enlightened
self-interest. Why, then, do those who preach that enlightened self-interest suggests
that, according to game theory, one should find the right balance between competition
and cooperation? That "good ethics is good business"? I think their logic is correct only
insofar they limit the scope of their analysis, applying a "rational" strategy at the micro
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level of one company, plus its network of directly involved stakeholder groups. From
this narrow perspective, an intelligent business leader can easily understand that, over
the long run, it is more profitable for the company to treat ethically right the consumers,
the employees, the suppliers, etc. - in short to emphasize cooperation between
managers and stakeholder groups. Conclusions radically change at the macro level of a
whole market, industry, or social system. Enlarging the perspective and considering a
huge number of variables, game theory would lead to completely different
conclusions and suggestions, proving that any temptation of the competitors to falsify
their competition will be beneficial for the players only on very short term; over the
long run, nevertheless, the replacement of real competition with mutually beneficial
cooperation between the main actors will turn out self-destructive, leading to the
bankruptcy of the whole market and terrible losses for everyone.
Warrant: Enlightened self-interest is insufficient to motivate responsible corporate behavior.
Wesley Cragg. “Ethics, Enlightened Self-Interest, and the Corporate Responsibility to

Respect Human Rights: A Critical Look at the Justificatory Foundations of the UN
Framework.” Business Ethics Quarterly 22:1, 2012.
A Key Weakness It follows that the justificatory foundation of the report is enlightened
self-interest. Is this an adequate justificatory foundation on which to build a
responsibility to respect human rights? It is clear that reputational and more direct
financial risks associated with unethical conduct and human rights abuses compel some
multinational corporations and industry associations to commit publicly to respecting
human rights even where not required by law or the enforcement of the law.10
However, it is equally clear that self-interest is not a compelling reason to respect
human rights in many of the markets in which multinational and domestic
corporations are active. In many parts of the world, respect for human rights, as set
out in international standard setting documents like the International Bill of Human
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Rights, is not consistent with local custom and is therefore not something that the
public expects from corporations.11 Where this is the case, enlightened self-interest
will not necessarily lead to the voluntary respect for human rights where the interests
of the corporations are understood to be tied to profit maximization. Further, where
respect for human rights is not a cultural expectation, any risk posed by the failure of
corporations to respect fundamental moral principles implicitly embedded in a “social
licence to operate” will be a hidden risk that can only emerge down the road if or when
human rights values surface to shape public expectations about the standards that
should have been respected in past transactions but were not.12
Warrant: Enlightened self-interest cannot explain foreign policy decisions.
The notion that there is long-term utility to be derived from caring for the distant
vulnerable is very old, as I shall demonstrate shortly. But it has repeatedly proven to be
inadequate motivation for states to take the costly and risky actions that are
necessary to succor those in need beyond their borders. NATO member states had
clear interests in acting to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians in 1999,
ranging from preventing a flood of refugees and preserving the stability of Europe to
maintaining the credibility of the alliance. But five years earlier during the Rwandan
genocide these types of interests seemed absent for European states. Similarly, some
European states have started to recognize their interest in ending the devastating crisis
in Syria, particularly since refugees have been flooding into Europe. But it is once again
much more difficult to articulate what enlightened interests they may have in
undertaking a high-cost and high-risk venture further afield, such as ending the crisis in
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the Central African Republic. 8 As valuable as the notion of enlightened self-interest is

in giving states reason to act on behalf of vulnerable foreigners in certain instances, it is
insufficient to prompt action in other cases, where the suffering of others is more
distant and less strategically important such that even the long-term security interests
of states are not adequately engaged.
Analysis: Enlightened self-interest may sound like an appealing compromise between both
sides of the debate. But this theory of human motivation fails to explain human actions that are
either purely self-interested or purely altruistic.
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A/2: Reciprocal Altruism
Answer: Reciprocal altruism is an incomplete explanation of human behavior.
Warrant: Many forms of human giving are non-reciprocal. Human decision-making is driven by
hybrid logics.
Kévin André, Sylvain Bureau, Arthur Gautier, and Olivier Rubel. “Beyond the Opposition
Between Altruism and Self-interest: Reciprocal Giving in Reward-Based
Crowdfunding.” Journal of Business Ethics 146. 2017. Pages 313-332.
Discussion and Conclusion Our findings show that even if the majority of pledges made
on crowdfunding platforms can be considered as transactions, i.e., pledge equal to
reward, there is a significant number of backers who are engaged either in reciprocal
giving (i.e. pledge superior to reward) or non-reciprocal giving (i.e. pledge without
reward). Giving seems essential to the success of crowdfunding platforms since projects
relying only on a transactional logic perform less than projects relying also on non-
reciprocal giving. Thus, crowdfunding can be considered as more than a pure economic
phenomenon (Belleflamme et al. 2014; Colombo et al. 2014) and involves hybridity of
transactions and gifts with a plurality of logics. As expected, reciprocal giving fosters
project success, whereas non-reciprocal giving is negatively associated with the
achievement of the goal. Crowdfunding involves complex and holistic relationships that
can be understood neither with self-interest perspectives nor with altruistic approaches.
Our research shows that reward-based crowdfunding platforms rely on reciprocal giving
and trigger a modern and digitalized form of what Mauss wrote about traditional
societies in the early twentieth century. There are at least four main dimensions of the
Maussian theory which remain valid. First, many users develop hybrid logics (neither
purely free nor purely interested); second, founders mobilize their “social capital,” third
uncertainty remains a key characteristics of the exchange; and fourth the cycle of giving
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is not bilateral as it can take many paths within the community. Obviously, there are
also differences with the Maussian context: The practices do not require physical
interactions, the number of people involved can be very high, and last but not least, it is
possible to reach territories which are thousands of miles away.
Warrant: Reciprocal altruism cannot be truly defined as “altruism.”

Some authors define altruism in terms of short-term costs, rather than in terms of
lifetime direct fitness (e.g., Fehr and Fischbacher 2003). For instance, in reciprocal
altruism, individuals pay a short-term cost to cooperating, but it is not necessarily
altruistic in the Hamiltonian sense defined above, as they increase their direct fitness in
repeated cooperative interactions. That is, the behavior is mutually beneficial (+/+),
rather than altruistic (−/+; although note that reciprocity is weakly altruistic from an
MLS perspective, as groups of reciprocators outcompete selfish groups, even though in
mixed groups selfish types have greater fitness than reciprocators; Sober and Wilson
1998). Several models of “altruistic punishment” or “strong reciprocity” also appear to
share this feature, where altruism is defined in terms of short-term payoffs, rather than
in terms of lifetime direct fitness (e.g., Gintis 2000). These features, combined with a
focus on between-group competition to spread such “altruistic” behavior, can make it
difficult to determine whether the behavior in these models is altruistic from a kin
selection perspective or not (Lehmann and Keller, 2006).
Warrant: Studies prove that humans are altruistic without expecting reciprocity.
Hector O. Rocha and Sumantra Ghoshal. “Beyond Self-Interest Revisited.” Journal of

Management Studies 43:3, May 2006.
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On the other hand, those who propose going beyond self-interest as the only valid
behavioural assumption (Etzioni, 1988; Mansbridge, 1990a, 1998) argue that what
matters even more than prescription is explanation based on realistic assumptions. They
argue for assuming motives other than self-interest based on the increasing number of
counter-examples such as people walking away from profitable transactions whose
terms they believe to be unfair or people helping others without expecting reciprocity
(Elster, 1990; Frank, 1987; Kahneman et al., 1986; Rabin, 1993). This view, which we will
call the self-interest critique, comes from sociology (Etzioni, 1988) and political science
(Mansbridge, 1990a), although it started from within economics itself (Sen, 1987,
1990a). In particular, this view is being analysed within specific frameworks such as
ultimatum games (Guth et al., 1982) and social relations (Fiske, 1992; Granovetter,
1985, 2002), and has been empirically supported by economists (Rabin, 1993),
cognitive psychologists (cf. Kahneman, 2003), and social psychologists (McClintock and
Liebrand, 1988). The self-interest critique recognizes that self-interest plays a role in
individual decisions, but their lines of enquiry conflict with the generalization of self-
interest as the only human motivation. As Etzioni points out, ‘[the] line of conflict . . . is
between moral values and other sources of valuation, especially pleasure. (These two . .
. are not necessarily in opposition, but in effect often do pull in divergent directions)’
(Etzioni, 1988, p. 12; cf. also p. 253).[3]
Warrant: Reciprocal altruism only supports short-term altruism at best.
Samir Okasha. “Biological Altruism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer

2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-
biological/#:~:text=For%20reciprocal%20altruism%20to%20work,have%20intera
cted%20in%20the%20past.
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As West et al. (2007) and Bowles and Gintis (2011) note, if altruism is defined by
reference to lifetime fitness, then Trivers' theory is not really about the evolution of
altruism at all; for behaviours that evolve via reciprocation of benefits, as described by
Trivers, are ultimately of direct benefit to the individuals performing them, so do not
reduce lifetime fitness. Despite this consideration, the label ‘reciprocal altruism’ is well-
entrenched in the literature, and the evolutionary mechanism that it describes is of
some importance, whatever it is called. Where reciprocal altruism is referred to below,
it should be remembered that the behaviours in question are only altruistic in the
short-term.
Warrant: Evolutionary theories are insufficient to explain humans’ motivations to be altruistic.
Samir Okasha. “Biological Altruism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer

2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-
biological/#:~:text=For%20reciprocal%20altruism%20to%20work,have%20intera
cted%20in%20the%20past.
Do theories of the evolution of biological altruism apply to humans? This is part of the
broader question of whether ideas about the evolution of animal behaviour can be
extrapolated to humans, a question that fuelled the sociobiology controversy of the
1980s and is still actively debated today (cf. Boyd and Richerson 2006, Bowles and Gintis
2011, Sterelny 2012). All biologists accept that Homo sapiens is an evolved species, and
thus that general evolutionary principles apply to it. However, human behaviour is
obviously influenced by culture to a far greater extent than that of other animals, and
is often the product of conscious beliefs and desires (though this does not necessarily
mean that genetics has no influence.) Nonetheless, at least some human behaviour does
seem to fit the predictions of the evolutionary theories reviewed above. In general,
humans behave more altruistically (in the biological sense) towards their close kin
than towards non-relatives, e.g. by helping relatives raise their children, just as kin
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selection theory would predict. It is also true that we tend to help those who have
helped us out in the past, just as reciprocal altruism theory would predict. On the
other hand, humans are unique in that we co-operate extensively with our non-kin;
and more generally, numerous human behaviours seem anomalous from the point of
view of biological fitness. Think for example of adoption. Parents who adopt children
instead of having their own reduce their biological fitness, obviously, so adoption is an
altruistic behaviour. But it does not benefit kin—for parents are generally unrelated to
the infants they adopt—and nor do the parents stand to gain much in the form of
reciprocal benefits. So although evolutionary considerations can help us understand
some human behaviours, they must be applied judiciously.
Analysis: Reciprocal altruism might explain one biological motivation that humans have to help
others. But the theory cannot be treated as comprehensive because humans are motivated to
be altruistic towards others (particularly non-kin) despite not receiving any mutual benefit.
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A/2: Self-Interest Inevitable
Answer: Genuine altruism is possible. Altruistic actions are not innately driven by self-interest.
Warrant: Humans become more motivated by pure altruism as they get older.
Jason Hubbard, William T. Harbaugh, Sanjay Srivastava, David Degras, and Ulrich Mayr.
“A General Benevolence Dimension that Links Neural, Psychological, Economic,
and Life-Span Data on Altruistic Tendencies.” Journal of Experimental Psychology
145:10, 2016. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/xge-xge0000209.pdf
General Discussion We found that a substantial portion of the individual differences in

self-reported prosocial disposition, actual altruistic choices, and neural measures of
altruistic tendencies were accounted for by a common General Benevolence factor.
Moreover, this is the first report of robust life span/cohort differences across multiple
aspects of altruistic tendencies, including positive age differences in anonymous giving
choices (see the online Supplemental Material), and in a neural, “pure-altruism” signal.
The neural index of altruistic tendencies is particularly important as it constrains the
interpretation of the General Benevolence dimension. Likely, this index reflects an
individual’s utility when the public good (represented through the charities) receives a
windfall and therefore can be interpreted as an expression of a pure altruistic motive
(Harbaugh et al., 2007; Zaki et al., 2014). The second-order factor in the structural
equation model represents the common variance across all three domains and inherits
the purealtruism interpretation from the neural measure. Conversely, the suggested
interpretation of the neural index is validated through its relationship with traditional
measures of prosocial dispositions (e.g., agreeableness, empathy), with altruistic
choices, and with real-world giving as measured through standard survey techniques
(see Table 1). More generally, the converging evidence across three complementary
domains of measurement supports the interpretation of General Benevolence as a
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broad, and behaviorally relevant dimension. Life-Span Changes in General

Benevolence? Previous research had suggested that older adults often behave more
charitable than younger adults (Bekkers et al., 2011b; Freund & Blanchard-Fields, 2014;
Midlarsky & Hannah, 1989), but did not provide an explanation for this age-differential
pattern. Our finding of a sizable age difference in General Benevolence indicates that
older adults’ more generous behavior be attributed at least to a large part to a
strengthening of pure-altruistic tendencies. Consistent with this conclusion, the age-
giving relationship was fully present when giving decisions were anonymous and it did
not further increase when decisions were observed by an audience (a condition that
arguably evokes prestige/signaling motives; see Figure S3). These results are also
consistent with a number of theories, which posit an age-related motivational shift
toward ego-transcending goals (Brandstaetter, Rothermund, Krantz, & Kühn, 2010;
Freund & Blanchard-Fields, 2014; Jonas, Schimel, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2002; Lang
& Carstensen, 2002).
Warrant: Human beings are motivated by moral duty regardless of self-interest.
Herbert Gintis, Joseph Henrich, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, Ernst Fehr. “Strong
Reciprocity and the Roots of Human Morality.” Soc Just Res, 2008.
https://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/SocJusticeRes.pdf
Our most important finding, evident from the diversity of behaviors in Foundations of
Human Sociality, is that most individuals treat moral values as ends in themselves, not
merely means toward maintaining a valuable social reputation or otherwise advancing
their self-interested goals. This conclusion follows from observing that even in one-
shot, anonymous interactions of the sort studied in our experimental work, individuals
behave in ways that reflect the moral standards of their particular social group. This
insight has helped us understand the social welfare systems of the advanced welfare
states. We argue that altruistic punishment is critically important to both the health of
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egalitarian systems, as well as to their demise. On the one hand, a small fraction of
altruistic punishers can induce self-interested individuals to cooperate, on threat of
being punished for defecting. On the other hand, when the frequency of free riding is
too high, altruistic punishers will withdraw their participation, thereby exacerbating the
problem of low participation rates, leading to the complete unraveling of social
cooperation.
Warrant: Proposing that “every action is egoistic” is non-falsifiable and misunderstands

altruistic desires.
Judith Lichtenberg. “Is Pure Altruism Possible?” The New York Times. October 19, 2010.
https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/is-
pure-altruism-possible/
The logical lure of egoism is different: the view seems impossible to disprove. No matter
how altruistic a person appears to be, it’s possible to conceive of her motive in egoistic
terms. On this way of looking at it, the guilt Mr. Autrey would have suffered had he
ignored the man on the tracks made risking his life worth the gamble. The doctor who
gives up a comfortable life to care for AIDS patients in a remote place does what she
wants to do, and therefore gets satisfaction from what only appears to be self-sacrifice.
So, it seems, altruism is simply self-interest of a subtle kind. The impossibility of
disproving egoism may sound like a virtue of the theory, but, as philosophers of
science know, it’s really a fatal drawback. A theory that purports to tell us something
about the world, as egoism does, should be falsifiable. Not false, of course, but capable
of being tested and thus proved false. If every state of affairs is compatible with
egoism, then egoism doesn’t tell us anything distinctive about how things are. A
related reason for the lure of egoism, noted by Bishop Joseph Butler in the 18th century,
concerns ambiguity in the concepts of desire and the satisfaction of desire. If people
possess altruistic motives, then they sometimes act to benefit others without the
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prospect of gain to themselves. In other words, they desire the good of others for its
own sake, not simply as a means to their own satisfaction. It’s obvious that Professor
Librescu desired that his students not die, and acted accordingly to save their lives. He
succeeded, so his desire was satisfied. But he was not satisfied — since he died in the
attempt to save the students. From the fact that a person’s desire is satisfied we can
draw no conclusions about effects on his mental state or well-being. Still, when our
desires are satisfied we normally experience satisfaction; we feel good when we do
good. But that doesn’t mean we do good only in order to get that “warm glow” — that
our true incentives are self-interested (as economists tend to claim). Indeed, as de
Waal argues, if we didn’t desire the good of others for its own sake, then attaining it
wouldn’t produce the warm glow. Common sense tells us that some people are more
altruistic than others. Egoism’s claim that these differences are illusory — that deep
down, everybody acts only to further their own interests — contradicts our
observations and deep-seated human practices of moral evaluation.
Warrant: Evolutionary history and experiments prove that human beings are generous towards
non-kin regardless of self-interest.
Herbert Gintis, Joseph Henrich, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, Ernst Fehr. “Strong
Reciprocity and the Roots of Human Morality.” Soc Just Res, 2008.
https://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/SocJusticeRes.pdf
We have no disagreement concerning the importance of reputation-building in moral

behavior (Gintis, Smith, & Bowles, 2001). But, we think it unlikely that either alone or
together with inclusive fitness maximization is sufficient to explain the evolutionary
origins of human cooperation. The problem with the maladaptation view, in brief, is
that it fails to explain many common forms of human cooperation for which there exist
more plausible models based on gene-culture coevolution and multilevel selection. First,
explanations based on reputation-building are contradicted by the evidence from
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controlled laboratory settings and in real life that people routinely engage in acts of
generosity toward unknown and unrelated others, and punish those who transgress
social norms, even when no material benefit can be gained thereby. Second, the
maladaptation view suggests that our evolutionary history has not left us mentally
equipped to distinguish clearly between one-shot and repeated interactions, or
between situations of anonymity versus non-anonymity. This ‘‘maladaptation’’ would,
of course, explain the experimental and other observed instances of human altruism.
But, in fact, in the modern world people distinguish rather acutely between long-term
and one-shot interactions, and they behave quite differently when they think they are
being observed as compared to being shrouded in anonymity. In experiments, behavior
responds to whether the interaction is with an on-going partner or one with whom
future interactions have been precluded by experimental design. Moreover,
experimental subjects not only punish those who have treated them ungenerously in a
one-shot interaction, but also those who have treated others ungenerously. The first
might be explained, by a stretch of imagination, by Price’s notion that it is, on average,
fitness enhancing to punish those who have treated one poorly, and subjects may
believe that even in an anonymous experiment that this rule of thumb should be
followed. But, anonymously punishing those who have treated others poorly is an order
of magnitude harder to reconcile with the self-interested cooperation paradigm. The
third problem is that there is good reason to believe that early humans did indeed
engage in fitness-relevant interactions with non-kin of sufficiently short duration that
only extraordinarily beneficial cooperation could have been supported by tit-for-tat and
related strategies in these interactions. Neither the likely size of groups, nor the degree
of genetic relatedness within groups, nor the typical demography of foraging bands is
favorable to the view that kin altruism and mutualism provide an adequate account of
late Pleistocene human cooperation. The median of the 235 hunter-gather groups
recorded in Binford (2001) is 19, and even if we count this as, say, seven adult decision
makers, reciprocal altruism will evolve for groups this large only for implausibly low
rates of error and extraordinarily high benefit cost ratios of the altruistic behavior.
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Moreover, though parent–child and sibling altruism will be supported for plausible
benefit cost ratios, relatedness within typical foraging bands will not support
cooperation among band members generally unless the benefit cost ratio is
extraordinarily high. In contrast, there is considerable support for explanations based on
cultural and/or genetic group selection (Soltis, Boyd, & Richerson, 1995; Bowles, 2007).
Warrant: The human inclination towards justice limits the pursuit of self-interest.
Hector O. Rocha and Sumantra Ghoshal. “Beyond Self-Interest Revisited.” Journal of

Management Studies 43:3, May 2006.
Distinguishing Self-Interest from Selfishness The origin of reducing human motivation

to self-interest and the consequent identity self-interest–selfishness is credited to
Adam Smith (cf. James and Rassekh (2000) for a review). For example, Blaug argues that
‘the central theme that inspires the Wealth of Nations is the notion that selfishness,
however morally reprehensible, may nevertheless provide a powerful fuel to a
commercial society’ (Blaug, 1997, p. 60). However, Smith refuses the reduction of
human motivations to self-interest: ‘the whole account of human nature... which
deduces all sentiments and affections from self-love... seems to me to have arisen
from some confused misapprehension of the system of sympathy’ (Smith, 1976, p.
317). For Smith, the pursuit of self-interest is bound by sources of control such as rules
of justice ( James and Rassekh, 2000; Sen, 1987). Thus, the identity self-interest–
selfishness is based on a misinterpretation of Smith’s work (Sen, 1987; Solomon, 1992).
The deepest root of the concept of self-interest is found in the idea of self-love, which
has to be traced back to Aristotle and Aquinas to understand its proper meaning – i.e.
the inclination of human beings to strive for their own good and perfection.
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Analysis: The PRO argues that all human actions can be reduced to self-interest, but human
psychology is far more complex. Human ideals of morality and justice can be the main
motivator, and thus self-interest is not always the primary motivation for humans.
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A/2: Self-Preservation
Argument: Self-preservation is not the primary motivation for human action; other motivations
check against it.
Warrant: Communal fairness and individual benefits are complimentary motivations for social
cooperation, not just self-preservation.
Jack Wang. “How do we balance self-interest with fairness for others?” UChicago News.
August 25, 2020. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/how-do-we-balance-self-
interest-fairness-others
Human beings, like all living things, are driven by an innate sense of self-preservation.
But humans have also built cities and governments, complex industries and lasting
cultural institutions—none of which would be possible without long-term
cooperation. That sort of cooperation hinges not only on a desire for individual
benefits, but a sense of communal fairness and what economists call social
preferences. A new study from University of Chicago cognitive neuroscientists offers a
glimpse at how people weigh self-interest against fairness for others—and provides
evidence that the former takes precedent over the latter. “In everyday life, the decisions
that you make affect not only yourself but other people,” said Keith Yoder, AM’11,
PhD’17, a UChicago postdoctoral scholar and first author of the study. “How do we
balance those concerns?” Using machine learning to analyze brain scans and
electrophysiological signals, Yoder and Prof. Jean Decety, a leading scholar of moral
psychology, found that multiple cortical networks are dedicated to processing decisions
that benefit the self—and that self-interest dominates early stages of decision-making.
Moreover, fairness for self and fairness for others had non-overlapping patterns of
neural activation. The results suggest that people make self-interested choices more
readily than they make choices that uphold fairness for others, but also reveal that
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fairness is an important consideration once individual needs are met. The scans were
done while individuals participated in a three-party ultimatum game. Participants who
received fair monetary offers, the study found, were more likely to also accept offers
that were fair to a third party. “If people already have enough for themselves, they’re
going to be more fair to others,” said Decety, the Irving B. Harris Distinguished Service
Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry. “To survive, you have to care about yourself
first. It doesn’t mean that you don’t care for others, but you have to survive first.”
Published in the journal Neuropsychologia, the study set up an experiment with an
anonymous “proposer,” who would divide $12 between themselves, the participant and
a neutral observer. Over dozens of exchanges, the proposer made four possible offers:
one that kept nearly all the money for themselves; one that divided the money equally
in three parts; and two that shared the money with either the participant or the
observer—leaving the other with just one dollar. Because the offers were hypothetical,
the participants’ decisions to accept or reject were not driven by actual financial
incentives. “The task really taps into low-level, genuine preferences for fairness,” said
Yoder. The researchers implemented the game with two groups: 32 people were
scanned with functional MRI, while 40 underwent high-density electroencephalography
(EEG), which tracks electrical activity in the brain. The differences in EEG data were
especially striking: Machine learning analysis could predict self-interested decisions
within 200 milliseconds, but required nearly 600 milliseconds to predict decisions that
ensured fairness for others. The results, Yoder said, help provide insight into the basic
neural mechanisms that undergird more complex decisions. “We have to figure out how
to allocate resources fairly,” Yoder said. “Understanding how people make those
decisions is very important. These calculations can get incredibly complex, and people
tend to rely on heuristics, where they’ll use shortcuts. And it seems like rejecting unfair
offers functions as a heuristic—people can make this decision very, very quickly.”
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Warrant: Humans are less motivated by self-preservation than self-actualization, the latter
which implies the pursuit of higher ideals than self-interest.
Patrick Whitehead. “The Primary Motivating Force is Self-Actualization, Not Self-

Preservation.” Medium. October 14, 2019.
https://medium.com/@patrickwhitehead/the-primary-motivating-force-is-self-
actualization-not-self-preservation-2ff2afaef7bd
It can seem like the self-preservation theory can be used to understand that motivation
of any living thing from Spanish moss to human beings. But it breaks down when we try
to understand the breadth of human behavior. It may well also break down when
trying to understand Spanish moss, but since we cannot ask it directly, that will have to
remain a vague suspicion. Humans can act in ways that are outside of their own best
interests. They can be selfless; they can dedicate themselves to a cause that is greater
than themselves, and from which they cannot expect to gain; and they can be
benevolent. They can interact with others not as generic humans, but as teachers,
mentors, or guides. In short, they can fulfill potential outside of mere living. With
humans, there is more to life than survival. Of course humans can also be motivated
by self-preservation. You and I need to eat and sleep, and we have to take care of
ourselves when sick or injured. But there is also room to transcend these things. For
example, food supplies us with the calories and nutrients we need to survive, but it is
also something in which routinely take pleasure. Savoring a donut or sipping a delicious
beverage are not purely about caloric intake. They are ways of being fulfilled. We do not
just survive life; we enjoy it.
Warrant: Egoism undermines self-preservation---self-preservation supports a greater

motivation to pursue something bigger than ourselves.
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Feiyu Sun. “Self-preservation and sociology’s modern moral personality: Dual structure
in Durkheim’s Suicide.” Chinese Journal of Sociology. July 30, 2020.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2057150X20932718
Simply put, the individual does not know what to do, and the modern society, which is
inherently deficient, neither has taught nor can teach him this. Egoism cannot solve the
problem of the meaning of life, because egoism causes the actor to detach too much
from reality, making the actor irrelevant to the society in which he lives. The more this
is so, the less the actor is able to understand himself, and the more mysterious he is to
himself. On the other hand, from the perspective of the duality of human beings, if
society, which is higher than the individual, and that the individual expresses and
serves, is separated from the individual and the bond between them is too weak, then
the individual obviously cannot draw strength from it and survive through it. The
essence of self-preservation for Durkheim People cannot be completely detached from
social reality and being self-reflective. Durkheim’s understanding of the human being is
that the individual must attach to something ‘beyond’ himself/herself in order to
survive. That is to say, the meaning of life must be something that transcends life, and
life cannot provide a foundation for itself: The individual alone is not a sufficient end
for his activity. He is too little. He is not only hemmed in spatially; he is also strictly
limited temporally. When, therefore, we have no other object than ourselves we
cannot avoid the thought that our efforts will finally end in nothingness, since we
ourselves disappear. But annihilation terrifies us. Under these conditions one would
lose courage to live, that is, to act and struggle, since nothing will remain of our
exertions. The state of egoism, in other words, is supposed to be contradictory to
human nature and, consequently, too uncertain to have chances of permanence.
(Durkheim, 2005: 169) Durkheim believes that in order to survive, individuals must
preserve life within social reality. For Durkheim, the essence of civilization lies in the
‘social.’ At this point, society and survival are inseparable. If a person is not civilized, he
cannot survive: Yet this social man is the essence of the civilized man; he is the
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masterpiece of existence. Thus we are bereft of reasons for existence; for the only life to
which we could cling no longer corresponds to anything actual; the only existence still
based upon reality no longer meets our needs. Because we have been initiated into a
higher existence, the one which satisfies an animal or a child can satisfy us no more and
the other itself fades and leaves us helpless. So there is nothing more for our efforts to
lay hold of, and we feel that they lose themselves in emptiness. (Durkheim, 2005: 171)
Thus, in this regard, as the radical form of individualism, egoism must be one of the
fundamental factors for understanding suicide. As Durkheim says: ‘Egoism is not merely
a contributing factor in it; it is its generating cause’ (Durkheim, 2005: 173). According to
Durkheim’s basic principles raised through the analysis of egoistic suicide, in order to
preserve life, it is necessary to make society have ‘sufficient continuity to acquire a
personal aspect, a history of its own, to which its members may feel attachment’
(Durkheim, 2005: 345).
Analysis: Even though self-preservation is a fundamental human drive, it is not the primary
motivation for our actions. Higher ideals are the basis for our social ties, which give us meaning
to life.
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A/2: Modern problems prove self-interest is the primary

motivation
Answer: Self-interest is not the primary driver of actions and/or political positions which harm
society.
Warrant: Motivations based on societal interest are more likely to drive political positions than
self-interest.
Political theorists have long held that virtuous citizens would willingly set aside self-
interest in favor of political judgments based on societal interest (Burtt 1993;
Mansbridge 1980, 1990; Scalia 1991; Sinopoli 1992). For many, this model of civic virtue
appears impossible due to a belief in the primacy of selfinterest to the exclusion of
other motives. These findings argue that normative ideals of civic virtue are not outside
the realm of possibility. In contrast to the notion that any self-sacrifice is impossible,
some citizens set aside personal considerations and adopt political positions that more
closely fit their views of what is good for society. Self-sacrifice appears more likely under
certain conditions, however; self-sacrifice of personal costs appears more likely to occur
than selfsacrifice of personal benefits. One's perspective as to what constitutes the
public interest remains subjective, but that perspective has a powerful influence on
evaluations of public policy The present study demonstrates that a value commitment
to societal interest explains a variety of policy positions; this relationship cannot be
explained away as a simple reflection of self-interest motives. Several lines of research
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bolster the hypothesis that societal interest motivates policy attitudes. The absence or
weakness of self-interest to empirically predict political positions across a range of cases
where they might be expected to occur argues for the need to consider other bases for
political attitudes (Citrin and Green 1990; Sears and Funk 1990, 1991). The long-
standing observation that citizens seem to separate private from public concerns
suggests that a more public-level perspective might underlie political judgments.
Evidence that national economic conditions outperform personal considerations as
explanations for presidential evaluations suggests that societal-level concerns form
the primary basis for political judgments. The tendency for those with a stronger sense
of civic duty to participate in elections despite personal costs and unclear benefits is
consistent with the notion that motives other than self-interest also influence political
behavior. Experimental studies of small groups suggest that collective benefits can
outweigh personal benefits when group identity is made salient. Individual differences
in value orientations similarly predict a willingness to sacrifice direct self-interest in
ongoing close relationships. And, the willingness of some people to engage in voluntary
and charitable behaviors even at substantial risk to their own well-being or without
clear personal benefit further underscores the need to consider motivations for other or
collective benefit. While it may be possible to increase reliance on societal interest
considerations by manipulating the question or political context, this study suggests that
consideration of societal interest occurs for at least some citizens even without special
efforts at manipulation. Cognitive processes that contribute to the "morselization" of
private and public experience may help explain the tendency to rely on public-level
considerations in public policy judgments. Civic norms that encourage citizens to
evaluate political issues in terms of the public interest may also play a role. Clearly, not
all individuals follow these norms on all issues or to the same degree. The present study
suggests, however, that some citizens can and do approximate a model of the self-
sacrificing citizen who restrains selfinterested concerns when making political
endorsing benefits for others even at some personal cost than when it involves giving
Champion Briefs 297

up benefits for themselves. Both self-interest and societal interest, then, appear to
Warrant: Studies prove that people overestimate the impact of self-interest on human
decision-making.
Cameron Brick, Adrien Fillon, Siu Kit Yeung, et al. “Self-interest Is Overestimated: Two
Successful Pre-registered Replications and Extensions of Miller and Ratner
(1998).” Collabra: Psychology 7:1, 2021.
https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/7/1/23443/117009/Self-interest-Is-
Overestimated-Two-Successful-Pre
General Discussion The results in both samples and both studies strongly supported the
original findings. Individuals overestimated the impact of self-interest on intentions to
donate blood, and also how much smoking status determined support of smoking
regulations (ds > 0.58). The overestimation effects may have been smaller than the
original paper, but original effect sizes could not be precisely calculated because the
variances were not reported. Any discrepancies in effect size from the original could be
attributed to noise from their small sample size, an estimation error due to the lack of
their reported statistics, or differences in the context or manipulation strength. For
example, because of currency inflation, $15 was less incentive in 2019 than in 1998,
which could lead to smaller perceived incentive in the replication. In Study 4, the
original study did not find significant effects of self-interest for four out of eight policies
in self-ratings, perhaps due to lack of statistical power. We found support for self-
interest effects for 13 out of 16 tests (smokers endorsed the policies less; eight policies
in two samples), with particularly large effects in the MTurk sample (Table S4).
Replications often focus on replicating the significant original effects, but finding
support for non-significant effects in the original article is also informative
(Chandrashekar et al., 2020; LeBel et al., 2019). Here, these additional findings suggest
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strong generalizability of the overestimation effect across different types of smoking

policies (e.g., restriction and taxation). To evaluate a more granular measure of self-
interest, a random half of participants in a Study 4 extension gave responses for five
categories of smoking frequency rather than just two. The ordinal smoking status scale
did not yield enough smokers within each category for inferential tests. However, it
appears from visual analysis that overestimation may be most pronounced when
individuals consider others with stronger vested interests. In the extension, that
pattern could be partially due to an expectancy effect. Participants may have assumed
that being asked about multiple categories of smoker implied that each category would
be different in policy support. The other extension investigated individual differences
that predict overestimation. The social norm in Western individualistic cultures that
self-interest powerfully determines behavior may be relevant to overestimation
(Ratner & Miller, 2001). Beliefs about self-interest may become self-fulfilling by
influencing social institutions and individual decision-making processes, which in turn
could reinforce the original idea of self-interested human nature. Therefore,
communalism was tested in predicting donation, policy support, estimates of each,
and overestimation of self-interest. As expected, communality was positively
associated with more prosocial behavior and endorsement of smoking restrictions, and
was also positively associated with higher estimates of others' prosociality in both
studies. However, we found no support for a relationship between overestimation and
communality in either study. Exploratory correlations with other demographics
revealed mostly null effects, but being younger was associated with more
overestimation in Study 1, perhaps because younger individuals have less money. It
remains valuable to identify other individual differences associated with overestimation.
Warrant: Political ideology is a stronger influence on environmentally harmful behavior than

self-interest. A mix of self-interest and altruism shapes the persuasiveness of pro-environment
positions.
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Thomas Dietz. “Altruism, self-interest, and energy consumption.” PNAS 112:6, January
13, 2015. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1423686112
Differentiating Motivations. Asensio and Delmas compare the effects of an appeal to

self-interest in the form of monetary savings with an appeal to the broader social good
of reducing air pollution. Their subjects find the altruistic appeal more compelling.
However, we also know appeals to public goods can have different impacts on
different groups (17). Political polarization around environmental issues can influence
not only political but also consumer decisions. For example, invoking energy security
seems to motivate energy-efficient consumer choices among political conservatives,
whereas invoking risks of climate change reduces support for energy efficiency (18).
Clearly, what is considered a desirable public good and what is not depends at least in
part on the influence of political ideology and general beliefs. Nor is the interplay
among values, beliefs, political ideology, and norms likely to be static; rather, it will
evolve over time and change with the way a decision is framed. All this means that both
theories of environmental decision making and programs intended to encourage
efficiency have to be nuanced, grounded in empirical evidence, and designed to learn
from experience (19). Although challenges remain, current understanding of
environmental decision making is already sufficient for informing programs to
encourage efficiency in resource consumption. We know that at both the national scale
and the household scale, substantial improvement in well-being can be achieved
without increasing consumption, and that increases in consumption often do little to
enhance well-being. We know that decisions can be influenced by providing
information on what behaviors matter, on the behavior of comparison groups, and on
how efficiency serves not only self-interest but also altruistic concerns. Of course, the
implications of these general findings will vary across social contexts and types of
consumption, and so effective programs will require ongoing experimentation. Asensio
and Delmas provide an excellent model for the kind of research we need to both
support program design and advance basic understanding.
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Warrant: Dishonesty is driven by a combination of self-interested and altruistic motives.
Anastasia Shuster and Dino J. Levy. “Contribution of self- and other-regarding motives to
(dis)honesty.” Scientific Reports 10, 2020,
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72255-5
Discussion Using a modified Message task, we found that both self-interest and regard
for others contribute independently to (dis)honesty. Crucially, our results suggest that
these motives rely on distinct neural processes, with self-interest involving the lateral
prefrontal and parietal cortices, and regard for others the right temporoparietal
junction, among others. Furthermore, we find a combination of motives in the vmPFC,
consistent with its known role as an integrator of value. That is, in self-interested
participants, the vmPFC was more sensitive to one’s own payoffs than losses to another;
conversely, in other-regarding participants, the vmPFC showed higher activity for their
partner’s potential losses than to their own potential gains. Previous research has
indicated that increasing the consequences of the lie decreases its occurrence1. We
have extended this notion to elucidate individual differences in this sensitivity, and
thanks to our within-participant design and orthogonality of the regressors, we captured
independent self- and other-regarding motives. The significant effect of both motives
means they explain distinct portions of the variance in behaviour, suggesting they are
separate processes. This notion is further supported by the distinct neural networks
associated with each motive. Furthermore, the insignificant effect of the interaction
term for most participants suggests that for the most part, they are also independent
from each other, that is, that the influence of value to self is similar across different
levels of value to other, and vice versa. This distinction coincides with the observation
that some people would not lie, even if lying would help another person (as in a case
of a white lie39), suggesting that for some people, the self-regarding motive is the only
motive driving behaviour and that honesty can be wholly unrelated to the consequence
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of lying. Furthermore, Biziou-van-Pol and colleagues (2015)40 demonstrated that a

prosocial tendency—measured using the Dictator game and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
Game—is differentially linked to self-benefitting lying and other-benefitting lying. While
the willingness to lie for the benefit of others is positively linked to prosociality, lying
for one’s own benefit is negatively linked to it. Taken together, these findings
strengthen the conclusion that lying consists of at least two distinct components
guiding decision-making—own and other’s outcomes.
Warrant: Assuming that self-interest is the primary motivation of crime neglects how humans’
tendency for social concern, or altruism, helps mitigate crime rates.
CONCLUSION The assumption that people are naturally self-interested is at the core of
most crime theories and crime-control initiatives. But a wealth of recent research has
indicated that human nature is more complex: People are both self-interested and
socially concerned. Furthermore, there is individual, demographic, and circumstantial
variation in social concern. As argued in this article, this new view of human nature has
fundamental implications for criminology. It means that we cannot take the motivation
for crime for granted; rather, we must consider those factors that weaken or cause
individuals to act against their social concern. Such factors are the focus of strain and
certain other theories. Also, variation in the inclinations for social concern should be a
central focus of criminology, with these inclinations having direct, indirect, mediating,
and conditioning effects on crime. The outlines of a theory of social concern and crime
were presented, with the key arguments of this theory illustrated in figure 1. Social
concern refers to a set of inclinations that sometimes leads people to give more
consideration to others than to their own interests. These inclinations include caring
about others, forming close ties to them, following certain moral intuitions, and
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conforming. Social concern is a function of biological factors, including genetic

inheritance and possibly biological harms such as head injury. Concern also is influenced
by environmental factors, including variables associated with the leading crime theories.
Social concern, in turn, has an effect on the variables associated with these theories.
Social concern has a direct negative effect on crime. It has an indirect effect, through
variables associated with the leading crime theories. Social concern, in turn, mediates
the effect of the other major causes on crime, both biological and social causes.
Furthermore, social concern and the other causes interact in their effect on crime.
Finally, the effect of social concern on crime is conditioned by several circumstantial
factors. The theory of social concern and crime suggests numerous directions for further
research, some of which require the collection of new data and some of which can be
pursued with existing data.
Analysis: The PRO argues that self-interest is the root of all evil, but this is an oversimplification
that ignores competing motivations. Other factors like political ideology are just as influential,
and humans are altruistic enough to curtail certain harmful actions.
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A/2: Compassionate self-interest
Answer: Sympathy is an innate human characteristic that limits the pursuit of self-interest.
Warrant: Because humans are social creatures, sympathy is an innate human trait that
counterbalances selfishness.
Matthias P. Hühn and Claus Dierksmeier. “Will the Real A. Smith Please Stand Up!”
Journal of Business Ethics 136. 2016. Pages 119-132.
In their 2005 paper in Business Ethics: A European Review, David Gray and Peter Clarke
surprisingly take the ‘Kirkcaldy Smith’ as a given, acknowledge the conflicting
mainstream reading of Smith only in one sentence, and then apply Smith’s ‘impartial
spectator’ concept to one concrete (rather narrow) ethical conundrum: Goodpaster’s
paradox. While their interpretation of the ‘impartial spectator’ as Smith’s model of a
“socialised conscience” is at odds with some of the foremost authorities in the field
(Hope 1984; Griswold 1999; Valihora 2001; Raphael 2007), their overall view is probably
shared by the majority of Smith scholars, among them Fonna Forman-Barzilai (2010) and
Edward Andrew (2001). Gray and Clarke quote extensively from Smith and show that
his concept of self-love does not equal the Friedmanian notion of self-interest; instead,
they highlight the important role that sympathy plays in Smith’s philosophical system.
Hence, they sum up Smith’s human anthropology as follows: “Humans are social
creatures that require the approval of others and act accordingly: they sympathise
with the plight of others and have a sense of justice” (2005, p. 124). They also make
clear that “[t]he rational economic man of free market economics, individually
pursuing utility maximisation, is not a part of Smith’s system and is not drawn from his
work” (ibid., 123). In consequence, they plausibly propose Smith’s real view as an
alternative approach to CSR/stakeholder theory, although they neglect to connect
Smith’s wider philosophy to business ethics.
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Warrant: Experiments confirm psychological altruism, or that humans can be primarily

motivated by sympathy and empathy.

However, despite these difficulties of determining whether an act is psychologically

altruistic or not, some experiments have indicated that certain aspects of human
behavior are indeed motivated by a concern for others’ welfare. This optimistic view
was endorsed by Adam Smith (1759) who wrote that, How selfish soever man may be
supposed, there are some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of
others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it
except the pleasure of seeing it. The empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson et al. 1987)
claims that empathy evokes motivation to reduce the other’s need, promoting
altruism, and that self-benefits from such acts are simply unintended consequences of
the ultimate goal (helping the other). In a series of experiments conducted by Piliavin et
al. (1981), there were various degrees of emotional responses in reaction to seeing
someone in need. Piliavin and colleagues quantitatively described a low magnitude
emotional response to other’s needs in non-emergency situations as empathy, such as
feeling sympathetic, compassionate, or tender, and a high magnitude emotional
response to other’s needs in emergency situations as personal distress, such as feeling
alarmed, upset, or disturbed. These emotional and psychological responses to other’s
needs are hypothesized to provide the motivation for other-regarding behavior in
humans (Batson et al. 1987). These and other experiments suggest that humans, at
least in part, are motivated by a concern for the welfare of others, indicating that
psychological altruism may indeed exist.
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Warrant: Sympathy does not depend upon self-interest to motivate humans.
Care about the welfare of others. Survey, observational, and experimental data
suggest that most people feel distress at the suffering of innocent others.
Furthermore, people are inclined to help innocent others in distress, particularly when
they personally encounter these others. This is the case even when there is no benefit
and some cost to providing the help (see Agnew, 2011, for an overview). Empathy and
sympathy seem to be at the heart of this inclination, including “emotional contagion”
or feeling what others feel; “cognitive empathy” or understanding the other’s situation,
including the reasons for their distress; and sympathy or feelings of sorrow or concern
for the distressed other (see Agnew, 2011; Batson, 2010; Batson and Powell, 2003; de
Waal, 2008; Dovidio et al., 2006; Eisenberg, 2010; Eisenberg, Eggum, and Di Giunta,
2010; Goetz, Keltner, and Simon-Thomas, 2010; Haidt, 2012; Jolliffe and Farrington,
2007; Lahey, Waldman, and McBurnett, 1999; Marshall, Marshall, and Serran, 2009;
McGinley and Carlo, 2007; Miller and Eisenberg, 1988; Pinker, 2011). Relatedly, it has
been argued that this inclination derives from feelings of oneness with or a strong
identification with others and a positive valuation of others—including trust of others
(Batson, 2010; Cialdini et al., 1997; Haidt and Kesebir, 2010; Penner et al., 2005).
Warrant: Sympathy, not self-interest, is the basis for market exchange.
Robert Boyden Lamb. “Adam Smith’s System: Sympathy not Self-Interest.” Journal of
the History of Ideas 35:4, October-December 1974.
In summary: it is the individual’s desire for the approval of other men which motivates
him to virtuous acts and to property accumulation. This “approbation” which men
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desire springs from their ability to sympathize with the situation or acts of one another.
Although Smith gives numerous indications that self-interest is men’s rational motive for
their acquisition of wealth, this fundamental desire is to receive sympathy from other
men for their material as well as their moral situation. They seek wealth to acquire
approval. They seek dignity because this will ensure the continuous approval of other
men. Therefore “sympathy” rather than self-interest is the basis of property in Smith’s
system. Although great wealth provides the strongest security of approval, Smith asserts
that luxury tends to lead men towards corruption and injustice. On the other hand,
although the hard work of the laboring classes leads to a certain prosperity and virtue,
their poverty sometimes makes them lose hope or initiative. Smith concludes that only a
certain degree of general equality and a rising prosperity among all classes can ensure
the continuous health, morality, and justice of social relations. For Smith, property
relations provide the concrete setting for moral relations. As property changes through
history so it causes changes in society; thus also it changes men and their morals.
Analysis: Sympathy, or being able to feel for the conditions of others, is a strong psychological
trait in humans that can primarily motivate our actions above self-interest. As markets are
concerned, PRO misunderstands Adam Smith, for whom sympathy was essential to a well-
functioning market.
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A/2: Self-Interest motivates activism
Answer: Humans are just as motivated by service to communities, and civic duty, as they are by
self-interest.
Warrant: Humans are motivated by group identity to put societal welfare above self-interest.
Promise. In addition to this very real limitation, collectivist motivation has some virtues
that egoism and altruism do not. As noted, egoism and altruism are both directed
toward the welfare of individuals. Yet many community needs are far removed from
our self-interest, even enlightened self-interest, and from the interest of those for
whom we especially care. Egoism and altruism may be of limited use in encouraging
action to meet these needs. Think, for example, of the plight of the homeless, of
energy conservation, or of public services that do not directly benefit us or our loved
ones. Such community needs are particularly difficult to address because they often
come in the form of what have been called social dilemmas. A social dilemma arises
when: (a) individuals in a group or collective have a choice about how to allocate
personally held, scarce resources (e.g., money, time, energy), and (b) allocation to the
group provides more benefit for the group as a whole than does allocation to oneself,
but allocation to oneself provides more self-benefit than does allocation to the group
(Dawes, 1980). Examples include recycling, energy and water conservation, contributing
to public TV, and supporting charities. In such situations, the action that is best for
oneself is to allocate resources to meet one’s own needs, ignoring the needs of the
group as a whole. But if everyone tries thus to maximize their own welfare, the
attempt will backfire. Everyone, including oneself, is worse off. If our imagined mayor
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relies on straightforward egoistic— or altruistic—motivation to address the pressing

social dilemmas the community faces, the prognosis looks bleak. But the situation is
rarely this grim. There is considerable evidence that when faced with a social dilemma,
whether in a research laboratory or in real life, many people do not seek to maximize
only their own welfare. They seek also to enhance the group welfare (Alfano &
Marwell, 1980; Brewer & Kramer, 1986; Dawes, McTavish, & Shaklee, 1977; Kramer &
Brewer, 1984; Orbell, van de Kragt, & Dawes, 1988; Yamagishi & Sato, 1986). The most
common explanation for this attention to group welfare is in terms of collectivist
motivation. It is claimed that under conditions of group identity, individuals can and
do act with an ultimate goal of increasing the welfare of their group (e.g., Brewer &
Kramer, 1986; Dawes et al., 1990). Whether it is possible to induce such a motive in
someone who is not a member of the group is, however, less clear.
Warrant: Self-interest cannot explain the sense of civic duty that compels people to vote.
Several lines of research bolster the hypothesis that societal interest motivates policy
attitudes. The absence or weakness of self-interest to empirically predict political
positions across a range of cases where they might be expected to occur argues for the
need to consider other bases for political attitudes (Citrin and Green 1990; Sears and
Funk 1990, 1991). The long-standing observation that citizens seem to separate private
from public concerns suggests that a more public-level perspective might underlie
political judgments. Evidence that national economic conditions outperform personal
considerations as explanations for presidential evaluations suggests that societal-level
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concerns form the primary basis for political judgments. The tendency for those with a
stronger sense of civic duty to participate in elections despite personal costs and
unclear benefits is consistent with the notion that motives other than self-interest
also influence political behavior. Experimental studies of small groups suggest that
collective benefits can outweigh personal benefits when group identity is made salient.
Individual differences in value orientations similarly predict a willingness to sacrifice
direct self-interest in ongoing close relationships. And, the willingness of some people to
engage in voluntary and charitable behaviors even at substantial risk to their own well-
being or without clear personal benefit further underscores the need to consider
motivations for other or collective benefit. While it may be possible to increase reliance
on societal interest considerations by manipulating the question or political context, this
study suggests that consideration of societal interest occurs for at least some citizens
even without special efforts at manipulation. Cognitive processes that contribute to the
"morselization" of private and public experience may help explain the tendency to rely
on public-level considerations in public policy judgments. Civic norms that encourage
citizens to evaluate political issues in terms of the public interest may also play a role.
Clearly, not all individuals follow these norms on all issues or to the same degree. The
present study suggests, however, that some citizens can and do approximate a model of
the self-sacrificing citizen who restrains selfinterested concerns when making political
endorsing benefits for others even at some personal cost than when it involves giving up
benefits for themselves. Both self-interest and societal interest, then, appear to
Warrant: Pure self-interest cannot explain political participation.
Aaron Edlin, Andrew Gelman, and Noah Kaplan. “Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and
How People Vote to Improve the Well-Being of Others.” Rationality and Society
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19:3, 2007.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rational_final7.pdf
5.1. Social Motivations and Rational Voting Voters think in terms of group and national
benefits. We know this from survey responses and, as we have shown in this paper,
with such motivations it makes sense for many people to vote, as contributions to
collective entities. In surveys, voters say they are motivated by national conditions, and
their turnout is consistent with this assumption, so perhaps we should believe them.
Conversely, rational and purely selfish people should not vote. Survey results on
socially motivated voting are actually consistent with rational political behavior,
although they are sometimes seen as an anomaly.11 For example, Kramer (1983)
characterizes poll findings of sociotropic voting as a statistical artifact that is ‘perfectly
compatible with the null hypothesis of self-interested, pocketbook voting’. As we have
shown in this paper (see also Meehl 1977; Margolis 1981; and Jankowski 2002),
however, voting and vote choice (including related actions such as the decision to
gather information in order to make an informed vote) are rational in large elections
only to the extent that voters are not selfish. Thus, there is no good rational reason to
consider ‘self-interested, pocketbook voting’ as a default or null hypothesis. After all,
sociotropic voting is also perfectly consistent with the null hypothesis of rational voting,
social preferences, and sincere survey respondents. Thus far, we have primarily
emphasized our theory as explaining the ‘mystery’ that people vote. However, it also
has implications for vote choices. Why you vote and how you vote are closely
connected. If you are voting because of the possibility that you will decide the election
and benefit others, then you will vote for the policy that you think will lead to the
largest average benefit. There is no reason to vote for a policy that has idiosyncratic
benefits to you because the individual-benefit term in your utility is essentially
irrelevant for large electorates. This observation explains why the rhetoric of politics
tends to be phrased as benefits to society generally or to large deserving groups,
rather than naked appeals to self-interest. No doubt many people are biased to think
Champion Briefs 311

that what benefits them will benefit others, but we predict that most people will try
to vote to benefit society at large or some large affinity group that they are passionate
about. Our contention therefore runs counter to much of the political economy work of
the past few decades. Except in very small elections, a rational person who votes will
choose the candidate or party with the best perceived social benefits to the population.
Warrant: Selflessness and altruism motivates military service.
Marek Bodziany and Ryszard Kaluzny. “Pro-Social and Altruistic Behaviors of Military
Students in Random Events.” Journal of Academic Ethics 19. 2021.
Based on the phenomenon of the stability of the declared actions, it should be stated
that in the process of recruiting for military studies, a proportionately large number
(over 81%) of students with the characteristics of noble and courageous individuals was
obtained. People who are ready to selflessly help others in the way they are able,
regardless of their own risk. Another crucial issue is that more than 30% of students will
take competent and ethical action regardless of the threat. In their unselfish
commitment and action for the benefit of another person, these young people
deserve the highest respect and social recognition. The findings of the carried-out
research are so important that they concern candidates for military service, additionally
starting their military career and “charged” with values acquired in civil life. Thus, it
covers people preparing for a profession that enjoys high de facto prestige in every
society, but also a profession with a higher than average level of risk. Moreover, a
person’s declared anonymous actions, made voluntarily in situations of simulated
threats, are a premise for conclusions about“his or ”er intentions and attitudes, as well
as ways of behaving in other similar, real circumstances. However, it is difficult not to
agree with P. Bourdieu, that the source of most human actions are not intentions but
acquired dispositions (Bourdieu, 2009, p. 136). Summary Pro-social and altruistic
Champion Briefs 312

activities in the modern world burdened with the stigma of consumerism, the rush for
career and social position, have become scarce but also unfashionable “commodity.”
The disappearance of the inclination to behaviors under consideration, particularly in
the face of the threat of losing one’s health and life, is visible among the representatives
of the young generation of people who build their own identity on instrumental rather
than autotelic values. That means that the tendency to help others, generosity, sacrifice,
and heroism ceases to be a value and reduces social capital through the disappearance
of trust among people, social anomy and pure callousness. Based on the observation of
antisocial phenomena among people (especially those representing modern societies), a
general question has emerged about the scale of the phenomenon and its structure
concerning various social classes and social strata as well as occupational groups. By
adopting the criterion of social availability (the constitutional obligation to fulfill tasks
for the security of the state and its citizens) of certain professional groups, such as the
military, a dilemma arose as to whether young people’s negative behaviors also affect
the occupational groups. The results of the research conducted indicate that altruistic
and pro-social behavior among candidates for soldiers, especially the youngest ones, is
related to primary and secondary education and socialization, which may prove that
environmental factors should be significant in the process of recruitment and
verification of candidates for service. That justifies the specificity of the service and the
subsequent stages of adaptation to it, where qualities such as ethics and bravery in
correlation with effectiveness are essential. More specifically, the research results
indicate that: taking competent and ethical action in situations of danger to other
people depends on the physical and mental predisposition of the person concerned; in
the process of recruitment for military studies, a positive selection of students takes
place with the efficiency and ethical dispositions taken into consideration; women,
proportionally more numerous than men, are distinguished by the components of
bravery in situations of threat to other people; over 30% of first year military students
reveal features of brave people and about 51% are characterized by ethical values
revealing disinterested sacrifice for the benefit of others.
Champion Briefs 313

Warrant: Sacrificing oneself to help others cannot be reduced to self-interest.

A bigger problem for psychological egoism is that some behavior does not seem to be
explained by self-regarding desires. Say a soldier throws himself on a grenade to
prevent others from being killed. It does not seem that the soldier is pursuing his
perceived self-interest. It is plausible that, if asked, the soldier would have said that he
threw himself on the grenade because he wanted to save the lives of others or
because it was his duty. He would deny as ridiculous the claim that he acted in his self-
interest. The psychological egoist might reply that the soldier is lying or self-deceived.
Perhaps he threw himself on the grenade because he believed that he could not bear to
live with himself afterwards if he did not do so. He has a better life, in terms of welfare,
by avoiding years of guilt. The main problem here is that while this is a possible account
of some cases, there is no reason to think it covers all cases. Another problem is that
guilt may presuppose that the soldier has a non-self-regarding desire for doing what he
takes to be right. The psychological egoist might reply that some such account must be
right. After all, the soldier did what he most wanted to do, and so must have been
pursuing his perceived self-interest. In one sense, this is true. If self-interest is
identified with the satisfaction of all of one’s preferences, then all intentional action is
self-interested (at least if intentional actions are always explained by citing preferences,
as most believe). Psychological egoism turns out to be trivially true. This would not
content defenders of psychological egoism, however. They intend an empirical theory
that, like other such theories, it is at least possible to refute by observation.
Champion Briefs 314

Analysis: PRO’s argument that all human actions reduce to self-interest neglects how human
beings can be primarily motivated to serve higher causes above themselves. Voting, military
service, and helping one’s community in general are all primarily motivated by selfless ideals
over self-interest.
Champion Briefs 315

A/2: Self-Interest is self-love
Answer: Self-love is not the same as selfishness; conversely, self-limitation is not the same as
self-destruction.
Warrant: Self-love is not selfish.
Marsha Familaro Enright. “The Problem with Selfishness.” The Journal of Ayn Rand
Studies 14:1, July 2014. JSTOR.
“Ethics is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions. . . . In order to choose,
[man] requires a standard of value. . . . What is to be the goal or purpose of a man’s
actions? Who is to be the intended beneficiary of his actions?” (57). That is, every
ethical choice requires a “to whom” and “for what.” How, then, should we categorize
action ethically? “The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which
one judges what is good or evil— is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s
survival qua man. Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to
the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the
evil” (24–25). Does this imply that, according to Objectivism, one has only two choices
of beneficiary: acting for the sake of another, or acting for the sake of oneself as a
rational being? Some people don’t act either way. They don’t act to benefit others, and
they don’t reason objectively about what is good for them. The worst of them tend to
want to do whatever they want to do, to follow their desires not their reason. They live
for the moment, in the short range.
Warrant: The PRO’s interpretation of self-interest neglects the sliding scale between self-
sacrifice, or self-limitation, and self-annihilation. Within human relationships, there are
appropriate and inappropriate forms of self-regard.
Champion Briefs 316

John Lippitt. “True self-love and true self-sacrifice.” Int J Philos Relig 66, 2009.
In aiming to advance our understanding of true self-love,9 I argue, first, that the term
‘selfish’ is a too vague (and sometimes downright inaccurate) contrast term to use. To
illustrate why, I draw on Robert Merrihew Adams’ distinction between selfishness and
another ‘vice of self-preference’,10 self-centredness. Second, in trying to understand
self-sacrifice, I draw upon feminist worries about its valorisation, but rather than ditch
the concept (as some feminists have argued that we should), I consider Ruth
Groenhout’s suggestion that we would be better off trying to understand where
proper self-sacrifice fits on a sliding scale between self-limitation and self-
annihilation.11 Finally, these reflections lead in a perhaps surprising direction: the need
to rehabilitate a certain species of pride as a virtue that is integral to true self-love. I
close by sketching what form such pride, necessary to avoid the dangerous slide from
proper self-sacrifice to outright self-annihilation, should take. Selfishness and self-
centredness It is not hard to see why ‘selfishness’ might be chosen as the opposite term
to true selflove. Indeed, Christian love is often described as ‘selfless’, a term to which
‘selfish’ looks like a natural antonym.12 But what does ‘selfish’ mean? Consider two
dictionary definitions: ‘concerned chiefly with one’s own profit or pleasure at the
expense of consideration for others’.13 ‘caring too much about oneself and not enough
about others’ and/or ‘(of behaviour or attitude) motivated by self-interest’.14 These fit
with the link between selfishness and exclusivity made in Kierkegaard’s critique of erotic
love and friendship.15 They also begin to bring out what we might call the grasping,
acquisitive element of selfishness. But even such basic definitions are enough to suggest
that merely avoiding selfishness in this sense would not be sufficient to be able to claim
truly to love oneself. The mere fact that I love and care about others as well as myself—
thus avoiding the exclusivity charge—does not make my self-love ‘true’. In order to see
why not, we should note two things. First, that the term selfishness does not seem to
capture many of the examples Kierkegaard himself uses of ‘improper’ self-love. None
of ‘the bustler’ who ‘wastes his time and powers in the service of futile,
Champion Briefs 317

inconsequential pursuits’; ‘the light-minded person’ who ‘throws himself almost like a
nonentity into the folly of the moment’; ‘the depressed person’ who ‘desires to be rid of
life, indeed, of himself’; or the person who ‘surrenders to despair’16 seem well
described by the term ‘selfish’. If we are tempted to describe the would-be suicide as
selfish—on the grounds that he is thinking solely of himself and not others affected by
his suicide—I suggest we should be given pause in reaching this conclusion by
considering the important distinction between selfishness and self-centredness. In A
Theory of Virtue, Robert Merrihew Adams has recently argued that self-centredness is a
‘vice of self-preference that is distinguishable from selfishness’.17 One can still be
inappropriately self-centred despite lacking the ‘grasping’ or acquisitive quality
attributed to selfishness above. This, I take it, is what Adams means when he says that
self-centredness ‘is not in general to be understood in terms of what one wants’.18 To
illustrate this, he gives an example of a father playing basketball with his young
daughter. As Adams sets this up, the father desires that all of the following apply: they
have fun; they take the activity seriously; and they do their best at it. The father
genuinely wants both his daughter and himself to enjoy themselves, so his concern is
not selfish (in the sense of exclusive), as he genuinely cares about his daughter and her
enjoyment. But Adams points out that this description applies equally to two possible
cases. In the first, the father thinks about what a good father he is being; how good he is
at basketball for a man not as young as he once was; and how he wishes his father had
done this with him. In the second, the father thinks about how much his daughter
enjoys basketball; how good at it she’s getting; and what a ‘neat kid’ she is.19 Why,
ceteris paribus, do we think less of the father in the first case than in the second? The
answer lies not in his being selfish, but in his being too self-centred. In both cases,
Adams suggests, we may presume that the father desires all of the following: to be a
good father; his daughter’s physical and social development; and that the father-
daughter relationship is good and healthy. The difference between the two cases is
rather a difference in focus. In wanting a largely relational complex of ends essentially
involving oneself it is possible for one’s interest to be centred overwhelmingly on
Champion Briefs 318

one’s own role in the complex, or much more on other persons, or other features,
involved in it. Self-centredness, as its name suggests, is typically a perversion in this sort
of centering.20 In other words, Adams is drawing our attention to different ways in
which the self can loom too large in one’s life: in one’s desires or in one’sthoughts.
While it seems appropriate to describe the former as selfishness, we need another
term—self-centredness, or something like it—for the latter. We can extrapolate from
this distinction. Various ‘vices of self-preference’ (Adams’ term) or self-focus (mine)—
such as arrogance and vanity—can and should be distinguished from selfishness.21 And
yet—if we recall the centrality to Kierkegaard’s thought of ‘becoming a self’22—we
need to make room for a proper kind of selffocus too. As a preliminary, note Adams’
observation that self-regard of various kinds is ubiquitous in human motivation: The
class of self-regarding motives is very wide—so wide that they are probably involved in
almost all our actions. Desiring a relationship for its own sake— whether one desires
the continuance of one’s marriage, or to be a good parent or friend to so-and-so—is
always a self-regarding motive, inasmuch as the relation ship essentially involves
oneself. Likewise conscientiousness is a self-regarding motive, inasmuch as it is a
commitment to act rightly oneself. 23 It makes no sense, therefore, to condemn all
kinds of self-regard or self-focus. But is there no more to be said about either
appropriate or culpable forms of self-focus than that so many of our actions are in
various ways self-regarding? It is here that the feminist critique of self-sacrifice
becomes important.
Warrant: Self-interest cannot be known in advance---it can only be known after the persuasive
process of exchange is complete.
Stefano Fiori. “Individual and self-interest in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.” Dans
Cahiers D’Economie Politique 2005/2. https://www.cairn.info/revue-cahiers-d-
economie-politique-1-2005-2-page-19.htm
Champion Briefs 319

To invoke “only” benevolence in a market context is not a persuasive argument. On the

contrary, according to Smith, the strategy consists in a) addressing the other agents’
“self-love in his favour” and b) showing “them that it is their own advantage to do for
him what he requires of them.” At first, both actions do not require the agent to be
selfish; rather, Smith points out, the first step of the persuasive strategy consists in
showing the other parties of the transaction what their self-love consists of, and,
particularly, what advantages they will obtain from the exchange. We start not from
our self-interest (or self-love) but from others’ self-interest (although we are
“interested” in accomplishing a certain transaction). Once again, “self-love” (as well as
self-interest) is not a transparent principle. Why should other agents be shown their
self-love? If self-interest were perfectly known, no reason would prompt an individual
to show others either self-love or the advantages derived from a given exchange.
Everything would be perfectly known before the transaction. On the contrary,
personal “interest” must emerge as a consequence of the exchange relationship. It is
not the premise but the conclusion of the process.
Warrant: There are two types of self-love---PRO only emphasizes the type that is survival based,
neglecting the other type of self-love connected to social relationships.
James Delaney. “Rousseau, self-love, and an increasingly connected world.” OUPblog.

June 28, 2017. https://blog.oup.com/2017/06/rousseau-self-love/
Rousseau’s concern about the corruption of virtue in the Discourse on the Sciences and
Arts is a theme that would run through the rest of his principal works, and would come
to be articulated as a key part of his moral psychology. Rousseau claimed that human
beings are possessed of two types of “self-love.” The first, amour de soi, is simply the
interest we take in our own survival and comfort. The second, amour-propre, is
inherently relational. That is, it is a kind of value we place on ourselves on the basis of
receiving recognition from others. To understand amour-propre, one must know a bit
Champion Briefs 320

about Rousseau’s conception of human nature. Following philosophers in the century

before him such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, Rousseau conceived of human
beings in a state of nature. That is, he imagined human beings stripped of all those
characteristics that they could only have acquired by the conventions of human society.
Human beings in the state of nature are primitive, pre-social, isolated, do not exercise
complex reasoning, and act largely from instinct. Amour-propre is undeveloped in this
state. Only when human beings begin to form social relationships with one another
will they begin to take notice of what others think of them. In the earliest human
societies, those marked by small groups of families, amour-propre becomes part of the
human experience. However, it is relatively benign, and Rousseau called this era the
happiest in human history.
Analysis: “Self-interest” is an inaccurate descriptor of human self-love and self-regard. PRO’s

interpretation of self-interest fails to understand human relationships, or even market
exchange.
Champion Briefs 321

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Champion Briefs

Resolved: Humans are

The Evidence Standard

1. We will never falsify facts, opinions, dissents, or any other information.

even if the source of the information is legitimate.

community with clarity if we learn that a third-party has attempted to commit

4. We will never knowingly support or distribute studies, news articles, or other

materials that use inaccurate methodologies to reach a conclusion or prove a point.

5. We will provide meaningful clarification to any who question the legitimacy of

information that we distribute.

6. We will actively contribute to students’ understanding of the world by using evidence

from a multitude of perspectives and schools of thought.

the goals and vision of this activity.

Letter from the Editor

The Evidence Standard ....................................................................................... 5

Letter from the Editor ........................................................................................ 6

Table of Contents ............................................................................................... 7

Big Questions Debate Event Primer .................................................................. 10

Topic Analyses ................................................................................................. 14

General Information ......................................................................................... 33

Pro Arguments ................................................................................................. 46

Pro Responses to Con Arguments ................................................................... 120

Con Arguments .............................................................................................. 180

Con Responses to Pro Arguments ................................................................... 246

Big Questions Debate Event Primer

Affirmative Constructive – 5 minutes

Affirmative Rebuttal – 4 minutes

Affirmative Consolidation – 3 minutes

Affirmative Rationale – 3 minutes

Prep Time – 3 minutes, divided and used as necessary

3. Argumentation and Style

Topic Analysis by Jakob Urda

Resolved: Humans are primarily driven by self-interest.

topic relatable to judges.

community-oriented value system. Advocates of self-interest point to the rise of capitalism as

feeling confident in their decision.

substantive arguments in the round.

value the individual derives from prosocial activities.

emphasize that a restrictive definition of self-interest is necessary because otherwise, any

clearly "interested" in behaving that way.

interest is the main thrust driving human behavior.

radically shifts the burden of proof analysis required by the judge.

very strong position.

seeking, and reward self-interested behavior.

Capitalism is an economic system characterized by the private ownership of firms, a

on their self-interest. Capitalism relies on the competition between multiple profit-seeking

economies are mixed, they are still predominantly capitalist.

like family, community, and morality.

Social institutions provide the clearest counterpoint to economic institutions because

view of human behavior.

forces, or participate in civic organizations.

relationships precede other forms of engagement.

About Jakob Urda

Topic Analysis by Michael Norton

Resolved: Humans are primarily driven by self-interest.

don’t normally address in competitive debate: what is our motivation?

altruism is motivated by self-interest. Negative teams therefore should be prepared to argue

themselves. Capitalism definitionally implies the existence of self-interest because it pits

individuals against one another – without competition, there cannot be innovation in a

Furthermore, capitalism also enables another aspect of self-interest: hoarding

negative teams to counter.

societies so that we are as safe and comfortable as possible.

completely independent of self-interest. Entire moral systems, notably utilitarianism,