As you’ve described it, Adaptiveness is very economic. But there are lots of social changes that are hard to explain economically. For example, the expansion of political inclusiveness in the West (Monarchy → Limited Voting Rights → Universal Manhood Suffrage → Universal Suffrage).
There are subfields within economics that attempt to explain precisely these kinds of “social change” using standard microeconomic theory (for instance, public choice).
As kings from medieval times sought to lessen their dependence on the nobility by soliciting the support of town burghers, so did the state in more modern times emancipate itself from the bourgeoisie by enfranchising and buying the votes of successively broader masses of people.
Public choice is an excellent attack on the naive view that all politics is aimed at “improving society as a whole.” And regulatory capture of agencies like the Civil Aeronautics Board, allowing airline rate setting that favored established airlines, is an expected outcome according to public choice theory. But the CAB was abolished eventually.
More broadly, the expansion of so-called “minority rights” is not well-explained by economic theory. Even with the moral justifications supporting employment discrimination law, it is not accurate to say that prohibiting some reasons for hiring and firing workers is more efficient. At best, economic efficiency is unaffected.
There are subfields within economics that attempt to explain precisely these kinds of “social change” using standard microeconomic theory (for instance, public choice).
-Anthony de Jasay, The State
Public choice is an excellent attack on the naive view that all politics is aimed at “improving society as a whole.” And regulatory capture of agencies like the Civil Aeronautics Board, allowing airline rate setting that favored established airlines, is an expected outcome according to public choice theory. But the CAB was abolished eventually.
More broadly, the expansion of so-called “minority rights” is not well-explained by economic theory. Even with the moral justifications supporting employment discrimination law, it is not accurate to say that prohibiting some reasons for hiring and firing workers is more efficient. At best, economic efficiency is unaffected.