Human Behavior in "Hobbes' State of Nature" of China: An Experimental Study.

Hobbes' greatest work, Leviathan, pursues the theme that in the condition in which people "lack a common power to keep them all in awe", known as the State of Nature, human nature would result in a state of war of every man against every man. This state approximates the current situation of China, in which market traders wildly yield commodities of bad quality for each other by taking advantage of ineffective supervision. Our study examines Hobbes' argument and explores the relevant policy implications by translating the State of Nature into the language of an economic experiment and then conducting the experiment. The results show the weaknesses of human nature against peace, including the pursuit of being better off in comparison to others, pre-emptive motivation and seeking rectification that drives Hobbes' pessimistic conclusion. Meanwhile, the evidence does not show any possibility that emotion of ethnic in-group and fierceness of competition might unite people into cooperating as a remedy as the situation gets worse. Moreover, the sentimental response to being exploited is "regret" for doing kindness, which makes the bottomup spontaneous reform of a supervision system impossible. Thus, the reform launched as an initiative by government is expected to be the only way to end the smoke-free social conflicts for China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]