a contest of beneficence 105
The first ones to be pushed out of the philanthropy game are the poorest
of the real altruists. Because their original goal is met — a collective good
is being provided to the needy — there is no reason for them to stay in
the game. Contests of beneficence are irrational for a “real” altruist. This
process of crowding out enhances the exclusivity of prosociality and with
it its attractiveness to status seekers. Over time the charity act itself
becomes more of a status symbol than an instrumental tool for the provi-
sion of public goods. Glazer and Konrad’s description of the evolution
of prosociality recalls the fortunes of Zam Zammah, that “fire- breathing
dragon,” and other international status symbols.
This overview emphasizes the role of prestige as a positive retribution
that compensates the do- gooder. In this sense, the conspicuous consump-
tion model maintains the structure of barter — we trade assistance for pres-
tige. However, this is a very different barter than other market exchanges
because it combines material and social payments. Thus, the conspicuous
consumption model of prosociality pushes us toward Bataille’s ([ 1976 ] 1991 )
General Economy — an economic analysis that focuses on the exchanges of
honor and power in addition to the traditional economic focus on transac-
tions of goods and services.^13 Conspicuous consumption solves the collec-
tive action problem that afflicts other reciprocal models of prosociality by
relying on positive retribution that operates automatically through deeply
rooted social institutions. The robustness of this model is preserved as long
as the social institutions that bestow prestige on conspicuous consumers are
retained. This barter between material goods and the establishment of so-
cial hierarchy, which is endemic to the conspicuous consumption argument,
is especially pronounced in the case of prosociality.
Prosociality, Subordination, and Dominance
The full political and social meaning of international prosociality remains
concealed if our analysis dawdles within the confines of the market anal-
ogy. Prosocial exchange is inherently different from other market activities.
Polanyi famously argued that the market is not the only possible structure
of economic exchange and that the primacy of market analysis in contem-
porary economic theorizing obscures the role of alternative forms of ex-
change that have dominated the bulk of human history. Polanyi suggested
reciprocity, or gift giving, as one of these alternative structures (Polanyi
1944 , 1957 , 1971 ; North 1977 ). Unlike simple market barter, the gift econ-
omy includes substantive “process benefits”— such exchange generates
