Conclusion

Abstract

Being structured around the concepts of economically evil actions and evil social institutions, the purpose of this book was to fulfill goals on three different levels. On the first level, the goal was to complement the already existing body of literature on human behavior deviating from the simple and parsimonious model of economic man. However, whereas many bargaining gains in experimental economics center on altruism, fairness, and reciprocity, the focus of this book is on antisocial or evil actions, defined as intentionally harming another person materially. Evidence from the online computer game EVE Online shows that evil actions do in fact exist. Piracy (an egoistic action featuring a positive material payoff for the perpetrator), ransoming (a wanton action featuring neither loss nor gain), and suicide ganking (a malicious action featuring a negative payoff for the perpetrator) play an important role in this virtual environment. The extent of economic evil found in EVE furthermore suggests that such evil actions matter with respect to a society’s economic performance. For example, more than 30 percent of the active population killed or fell prey to a kill in January. More than every fifth active member of the EVE society was directly involved in wars with casualties in January. A total of 3.3 percent of the population acted as pirates.