Group Altruism Pays, Literally

I’m from Cleveland. At the beginning of a downturn in 2008, there were two car dealerships on Mayfield Road. One was Toyota, one was Honda.  Business started to deteriorate and one dealership decided to do furloughs.  So the salesmen and staff just took that afternoon off a week, unpaid.  But everybody held on to their jobs.  That’s group altruism.  

The dealership across the street started letting people go left and right, which was demoralizing, so as it turns out, the dealership that did the furloughs is still in business, and the one that let people go isn’t.  

And so there’s every reason to think that in almost all theaters of human endeavor, education, business and the like, this kind of activity is a positive, not a negative.  

60 Second Reads are recorded by experts in Big Think’s studio.