In a deep sense, there is no alternative to the “profit motive”. Steven Pinker is right that there is no law of conservation of violence in human societies—with the right institutions, violence can be greatly reduced—but there is something like a law of conservation of self-interest and competition. The only question to ask about an economic system is, therefore, whether people profit through predation and domination, which has been the norm throughout most of history, or whether they profit through innovation and cooperation. When properly regulated, capitalism sustains this superior form of profit seeking, fuelling the unprecedented material prosperity that much of the world enjoys today.