Altruism is a scarce capital best saved for contexts institutions cannot handle

Evidence

The claim that we need institutions to obviate the need for trust and reliance on the dubious trustworthiness of others in many contexts is not analogous to the argument of Kenneth Arrow (1972) against organizing the supply of blood for medical uses with a system that depends on altruism. He argues that this would be a misuse of altruism because we can secure a good blood supply readily enough in other ways. That argument turns on the supposition that we may have a limited supply of altruism and the bit of it that we have can be used better for other purposes, especially purposes that cannot be so readily handled by institutional structures. We save our limited altruism for such issues. On this view, altruism is a kind of expendable resource or capital. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 515

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clear articulation of Arrow’s ‘limited altruism as expendable capital’ model — a useful conceptual frame distinct from Hardin’s own institutional argument.
• XREF: connects to: American economic institutions are an anachronistic barrier to achievable liberation — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 256; Small-scale societies lack norms dictating generosity to anonymous strangers. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 628; Service agencies sustain an unfalsifiable myth of altruism that legitimizes care under bureaucratic limits — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 534 (+1 more)