[hobsonlane]

Morality is just the "tit-for-tat with forgiveness" (supercooperator) strategy in the prisoners dilemma game. And this strategy being present in the mix of popular strategies (including sociopathic defection) results in the social dynamics and 100 year economic cycles we see in the history books. Organism/tribe/state population frequencies for the defect and supercooperator strategies periodically dominate the planet and the economy on about a 50-100 yr cycles, and the period between pendulum swings is shortening with technological advancements. Just chart global social inequality for the past 1000 years or so and you'll see the pattern. We're in the depths of the minimum of the supercooperator sine wave right now with socioeconomic inequality at its peak. Eventually the sociopaths start fighting each other and leave a niche open for supercooperators to come back.