…  These could each be considered a superficial personification of a dog: selection of location, development of friendships and trading away surplus.  But if they were given the validity of purpose, and taken together, they would point to profit motive as a vestige of survival instincts and perhaps, in turn, lend moral credibility to our human devices.  However, our instinctual remnants are also the reservoir of immorality:  stealing, rape, or murder.  Clearly, proof of origin alone is not a sufficient indicator of the morality of profit driven behavior, even when that origin lies in survival.  Rather, to be considered moral it must be demonstrated to be more than part of a zero-sum game; for which stealing, rape, and murder cannot.  Concurrently, it should be able to be enacted for purpose outside of self.

Within an economic model that is free of coercion, it can be assumed that participants interact voluntarily as long as they perceive their gains to be greater than losses: by definition non-zero-sum.  This argument is not original, but it is valuable to note two of its central tenets in the story above.  The first tenet acknowledges that a given commodity can simultaneously hold different values as perceived by different parties.  Such valuation is dictated by circumstantial prioritization, which itself evolves and devolves individually.  The very act of location selection by Mama Dog was indicative of a process of valuation, and the self-tethering of an otherwise free-roaming animal to a specific location was strongly suggestive of a change…