Are you kidding me? Whatever happened to the concept of skeptical review of speculation ... and speculation is all that any belief really is. (What? Of course I am an existentialist. Why do you ask?)
Some background from wikipedia.com:
The invisible hand is a metaphor coined by Adam Smith to illustrate how those who seek wealth by following their individual self-interest, inadvertently stimulate the economy and assist society as a whole. In the general opinion, in The Wealth of Nations and other writings, Smith claims that, in capitalism, an individual pursuing his own good tends also to promote the good of his community, through a principle that he called “the invisible hand” of the market, which ensures that those activities most beneficial and efficient will naturally be those that are most profitable. The specific mechanism for this, Smith saw as being the free price system.The biggest problem with Adam Smith's conjecture is that there is no such thing as a "free price system" BECAUSE individuals are unwilling (under the dictum of the invisible hand to pursue self-interest) to give up any advantage that skews the market in their favor. In other words, they are unwilling to pay all the costs incurred in "earning" their profits. Economists call these costs left unpaid "externalities", and aptly so so because while they exist, they are external to the price system. For instance, cancer caused by second-hand cigarette smoke, or the digging up and dumping of mountaintops into valleys and streams below to get at coal seams, are externalities.
What is more, a market or price system just doesn't spring miraculously into existence. It arises, layer by layer, on an emerging system of economics within a community of people ... and while that foundation may seem permanent, it isn't. It needs to be renewed generation after generation by educating each new generation, by maintaining and enhancing infrastructure, by building on what we have without allowing the foundation to deteriorate. If these costs aren't paid, the system is not maintained and it collapses ... sooner or later.
It is this community system as a foundation that is the platform for individual performance. Even if "the sky's the limit", launching oneself from a swamp or a crumbling deck is not the best way to reach the sky.
The simple facts of people paying their bills on time, of obeying traffic laws so trucks can move goods, of sending their kids to school each day and all that goes with that effort ... and yes, even being willing to suffer the indignity of welfare rather than resort to robbery ... all this and more that people do in working to make a community work economically ... can dissolve into a Hobbesian jungle or an autocratic dictatorship before our very eyes if people lose faith in the ability of their community to provide economic justice, to be treat them fairly in return for their effort and commitment.
What do you think it is going to be like around here when people wake up to the fact that our brilliant idiots in charge of economic policy have given away our labor rights so they can live in mansions?
Note: My god, there are those who still think Clinton was a democrat (small "d")! He was and is a Rockefeller Republican. Get real, folks.
No comments:
Post a Comment