The association of entrepreneurial individuals who join and leave the community-at-large in pursuit of their own private goals and gain leads to unintended consequences and outcomes. Witness our present financial meltdown: Our own monetary and banking Three Mile Island.
The rules of the capitalist game are not developed to serve some preordained common good. In fact much of the "success" of a capitalist depends on the failure, deserved or forced, of ones competition. Which in its Galtist, Ayan Randian mode, allows "supermen" to triumph over the competitor with ruthless skill.
Part Three in a Series
Part One: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Part Two: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Lively discussion below the fold.....
There is literally no Adam Smithian guardian "invisible hand" that protects and predicts success in our ongoing struggle for survival as the marketplace searches for national recovery.
We are rather surrounded by free marketeers--both cutthroat privateers seeking inordinate profits, and solid men of stature/integrity who pursue the common good for reasonable compensation.
..In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose ... be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759
Adam Smith, a man of the 18th Century, could not in his wildest imagination envision or comprehend intricacies and vicissitudes of the kind of market environment, with its speed of light transactions, and its world of national interests, languages and varying currencies, which this market has as it impacts and interacts with the investor, entrepreneur, and producer. The degree with which globalization has become the HAL2001 of the world of finance is just beginning to show as that "unwieldy determinate force" morphs control of the world's future economic commonweal.
The emphasis of future capitalism is on the process of choosing and developing the rules offered for acceptance by the greater community—emphasizing the blessings of the process, defended by a recitation of the merits of capitalism and its prior contributions to society as a whole.
SEE ALSO one kossack's brilliant explication of the "invisible hand" in the context of today's crisis @ http://www.dailykos.com/...
If the rules of the market are just and equable, built on truth and law, the "unintended outcomes" will be sustainable and just a boon to the nation. If unjust the rules of the market are unjust the "unintended" consequences and the outcome of the crimes and deceptions spawned by such will undermine and destroy the social network and the financial institutions with a vengeance.
The value of our currency derives from the "full faith and trust" both of the ordinary man who is the holder of paper money and the institutions--the Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. Government-- which issue and control the orderly flow of money to the community.
It is noble and inspiring to appreciate a system of trade and commerce in America's developing industrial and commercial world--such as was the case in the rapid expansion of production and output in 19th and 20th century America. Adam Smith's concept of a overweening and protective, near mystical "invisible hand,"was reassuring and comforting then. However the modren shift of practice and procedure to a high tech, 24/7 worldwide marketplace under a "free-hand" laissez-faire, less restrictive, deregulated marketplace has given rise to an unprecedented crisis.
The shame of the current situation fraught with frustration is the rapid shift from a "free hand" marketplace to a conniving and crooked "sleight of hand"marketplace--full of manipulation and fraud. The present failed economic model has metastasized hidden in federal legislated niches and coveted loopholes which are nests for unscrupulousness and crooked operators—the dens of thieves.
"Sleight of hand" marketplace conduct has had, and will have, crushing and deconstructive impact on both this present generation and those of the future. We must return to our roots, to our core communal values. We must divest our selves of the practices and attitude of "I’ve got mine" to "I’ll help you get thine and thereby fairly enlarge mine." We must seek an end to rampant greed: We must seek a better world of exchange with a credible system of regulation and honest core values.
If there is a current model accessible and applicable to industrialists, investors, small proprietors, bankers and the public it is the Rotary International's Four Way Test of the things we think, say or do.
I. Is it the truth?
II. Is it fair to all concerned?
III. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
IV. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
So much of the current undertow of Wall Street is reflective of the torch song which croons: These Gucci's are made to walk all over you.
It is not necessarily individuals with superior intelligence or spectacular achievement who unerringly, reflectively care the most about the greater common good.
We have been rewarding a small group of rogue CEO’s, a cabal collaborating and conspiring "cutting the loot" as it were between those have managed the systemic plunder of public and private treasure. A cabal of crooked investment bankers and Wall Streeters in league with K-Street lobbyists and legislators in the nation’s capital--who have made it all inscrutable and quasi-legal.
The bailouts are essentially blackmail against the government and the common man, "save us or we will ruin you."
If we are a "Christian Nation" why is it not self-evident when we seek to invest?