Mind's Eye Out of the mouths of babes

"We think children are born with a skeleton of general expectations
about fairness," explains Sloane, "and these principles and concepts
get shaped in different ways depending on the culture and the
environment they're brought up in." Some cultures value sharing more
than others, but the ideas that resources should be equally
distributed and rewards allocated according to effort are innate and
universal.
Other survival instincts can intervene. Self-interest is one, as is
loyalty to the in-group -- your family, your tribe, your team. It's
much harder to abide by that abstract sense of fairness when you want
all the cookies -- or your team is hungry. That's why children need
reminders to share and practice in the discipline of doing the right
thing in spite of their desires.
Still, says Sloane, "helping children behave more morally may not be
as hard as it would be if they didn't have that skeleton of
expectations."
This innate moral sense might also explain the power of early trauma,
Sloane says. Aside from fairness, research has shown that small
children expect people not to harm others and to help others in
distress. "If they witness events that violate those expectations in
extreme ways, it could explain why these events have such negative and
enduring consequences."

The above is from a recent Science Digest. It's really this kind of
morality I think might help us in forming an economics. Doing the
right thing in spite of desires. What we need, of course, is more
understanding of how we violate this childishness as rationalising
adults.