Let's say you had two local governments, side by side. One was well-organized, generally efficient, with characteristics that led to lower taxes, better services, and equitable processes for the redress of grievances.

The other government had public officials ignoring term limits to remain in office, offering up self-serving tax subsidies to big box corporations in the form of unneeded tax increment financing (TIFs) that ended up taking money out of the school system by artificially reducing the true tax base of the government to the state. Government officials here wasted money on lavish dinners on government credit cards, threatened residents with property tax increases if they didn't vote for a wheel tax on their registered vehicles, and provided grant dollars to nonprofit organizations run by their own families.

Could the viability of each of these governments culturally find themselves subject to Darwin's process of natural selection, where one is more likely to culturally adapt, survive, and prosper than the other?

A new Stanford University study [1] shows that human culture may be subject to natural selection.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2008) — The process of natural selection can act on human culture as well as on genes, a new study finds. Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that cultural traits affecting survival and reproduction evolve at a different rate than other cultural attributes. Speeded or slowed rates of evolution typically indicate the action of natural selection in analyses of the human genome.

Polynesian outrigger canoe. The Stanford team studied reports of canoe designs from 11 Oceanic island cultures. They evaluated 96 functional features (such as how the hull was constructed or the way outriggers were attached) that could contribute to the seaworthiness of the canoes and thus have a bearing on fishing success or survival during migration or warfare. (Credit: iStockphoto/Flemming Mahler)

Deborah S. Rogers, a research fellow at Stanford, said their findings demonstrate that "some cultural choices work while others clearly do not."

"Unfortunately, people have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term," she said. "We need to begin aligning our culture with the powerful forces of nature and natural selection instead of against them."

Examples of cultural approaches that are putting humans at risk include "everything from the economic incentives, industrial technologies and growth mentality that cause climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity, to the religious polarization and political ideologies that generate devastating conflict around the globe," Rogers said. "If the leadership necessary to undertake critically needed cultural evolution in these areas can't be found, our civilization may find itself weeded out by natural selection, just like a bad canoe design."