Our Better Angels

Sam Bowles, a behavioral economist and author of The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens, says it's a mistake to focus on the bad, and to ignore the good in people.

"Self-interest in markets and in relations with government isn't going to be a good way to organize the future," says Bowles. "[COVID-19] tells us that we have to rely on other things — communities, neighborhoods, obligations we have to each other — which are not self-interested. That's what we're seeing is fundamentally getting people through this."

This week on Hidden Brain, we explore how laws written to govern the lawless end up changing the behavior of the lawful — for the worse. And we ask, what would happen if public policy was designed to care less about the man who sold his masks for a profit? What would happen if we put people like Erika at the center of our thinking instead?