The Market for "Good" and "Bad" behaviors
Behaviorism and the Market for behaviors
If we think of behaviors in people as we think of services offered by businesses
Then good behavior is merely a service people offer to other people to create happiness in other people
A behavior is good or bad based on the sentiment of the community reviewing that behavior
A service is good or bad based on the sentiment of the customer
In other words, behaviors are produced by rational entities if the cost outweighs the benefits
In other words, profitable behaviors lead to social rewards at minimum and possibly financial rewards
Unprofitable behaviors are behaviors which have high costs which outweigh whatever the benefits are
To be moral as a person could be compared to being efficient in business
A person if rational wants to get the best quality of life possible for the least cost (profit seeking in the social sense)
A person who is perceived as moral is able to win a status competition
A moral ranking is something a society does which triggers a status competition
A moral high ground is an example of a moral ranking and a status competition and people want to be perceived at being at the top of the moral mountain
Good behaviors could be interpreted as "beautiful" behaviors
Bad behaviors could be interpreted as "ugly" behaviors
Morality is trendy, like fashion, if it's a data driven form of morality
If it's a form of morality which does not take society or public sentiment into account then it may not be fashionable
Religion which believes in the afterlife may include costs such as hell which is a punishment after death to make certain behaviors more expensive to believers
-Religion can also make certain behaviors more rewarding to believers, such as to give to the poor
To make sense of the idea of "market for behaviors" is to think of morality in economic terms. Any behavior adapted is to support the wellbeing of others if the focus is on external wellbeing, or to support internal wellbeing of the individual adopting the behavior. For example if an individual believes in hell then this "doing the right thing" could simply be to adopt behaviors which optimize for avoiding hell and reaching heaven.
To increase the probability of good behaviors is to simply reward good behaviors. People have to know what behaviors they consider good. In Bitcoin good behaviors are the behaviors which support the continued growth and operation of the Bitcoin network. In Steem perhaps good behaviors are the behaviors which the Steem community offers Steem Rewards to encourage. The Reward Pool is the behavior shaping algorithm which creates the market for the behaviors of witnesses, bloggers and others.
One problem with Steem is that it does not offer much in the way of social rewards or psychological rewards. The UX has to be vastly improved to offer psychological rewards. The social rewards would require Steem to be perceived as an exclusive high status app where just interacting with Steem gets you seen as someone unique and special. Kind of like just getting into Harvard or Yale is something people see as rewarding in terms of the status and virtue signalling.
If virtue signalling is a thing then status competitions are real. If status competitions are real then perhaps there are moral markets. Markets which seek to reward behaviors which adopt the values of the participants. Rewards could include "status". So if going to college is seen as a good thing to do then perhaps this gets rewarded in some way until it is no longer seen as a good thing to do. Is the best thing to do simply the thing which produces the most rewards?
These are open questions.
Winegard, B. M., Winegard, B. M., Geary, D. C., & Clark, C. J. (2018). The Status Competition Model of Cultural Production.