It all started at the moment when two scientists from Yale University decided to “humanize” a group of monkeys in a simple and quick way - to introduce commodity-money relations into their environment. The test subjects were a group of Capuchins - the most hopeless primates in terms of training.
Expulsion from paradise
The Capuchins lived freely in their aviary - they ate, drank, made love and did not think about anything else, until the insidious researchers offered them an alternative - to earn money and spend it with obvious benefit for themselves.
To begin with, the scientists provided their experimental subjects with work. A lever appeared in the aviary, which had to be pulled in order to get a delicacy inaccessible to the unemployed. Pulling the lever turned out to be difficult - this action required serious efforts from the little monkey and gave her little joy.
But the reward was very attractive, and soon almost all the Capuchins in the aviary were eager to earn their bunch of grapes or chocolate, diligently pulling the lever.
When the Capuchins had already mastered the connection: "work is a delicacy", the scientists moved on to the next stage. Money appeared in the aviary - multi-colored plastic tokens (each color had its own denomination), with which the work with the lever was paid, and now only they could be exchanged for grapes, apples or sweets.
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How many times the monkey pulled the lever, so much it received tokens at its disposal. Now in the enclosure the Capuchins had everything like people: earned - received a salary in small or large "bills", went to the "store" (the door through which researchers gave food to monkeys in exchange for tokens) and bought a tasty thing, according to prices.
The humble charm of the free market
From that moment on, the monkey community, which had previously been quite cohesive, began to sharply stratify. There were "robbers" who did not work themselves and took the tokens from the workers. A separate block was organized by "accumulators", collecting more and more money in order to get a lot of goodies at once.
A team of workaholics pulled the heavy lever dozens and even hundreds of times in a row in order to earn as much as possible in one approach, and then immediately spend everything. The lazy ones kept to the side, only occasionally approaching the lever. Having received one or two of the most modest tokens at face value, they were content with little, preferring to mess around.
The rich monkeys tried to stay away from the poor. And those, in turn, tried in every possible way to get closer to the well-to-do in order to steal their cherished tokens. In short, normal civilized life began.
Then scientists began to change prices for delicious things. If earlier a bunch of grapes cost as much as one apple (the Capuchins, of course, preferred grapes), now apples have become several times cheaper than grapes.
The monkey community, in turn, quickly restructured. Cheap apples became the main dish, and grapes were bought only occasionally, as they say, for a holiday.
Very soon, one of the monkeys deceived the researchers and ran away only to open the box in which the scientists kept the tokens. I tried, so to speak, to "rob the bank."
And finally, the peak of "humanization". One of the Capuchins paid the female for what he previously received for free. The "night lady", honestly working out the token, immediately spent it on grapes.
The whole experiment took several months, which was enough for the monkey to turn into a man. And you say - Darwin, evolution. Everything is much simpler.
Igor NIKITIN