Here's a Tom Hartmann quote (http://www.truth-out.org/stop-them-eating-my-town65481 ) that quite succinctly captures the exasperating arrogance (and maleficent ignorance) of "free-market" ideologues:
--In the worldview of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, everybody in the world is motivated purely by “self-interest.” There are the “smart” people pursuing their own self-interest (also known as “the rich”) and the “lazy” people pursuing their own self- interest by using an instrument of force (government regulations, minimum-wage laws, collective bargaining laws, and the like) to extract wealth from the “smart” people for themselves. These latter people are labeled by Randians and Friedmanites as “parasites” or “moochers.”--
There was a time when an argument could be made that such "smart" (which today simply means amoral) people were entrepreneurs, inventors, people with useful ideas who were motivated to implement those ideas and make life better for others...and the more they succeeded in doing so, the wealthier they become. That still may hold true for some. But in general, since the age of Reagan (an epoch we continue to wither in), the majority of those "smart" folks are simply the sly, cunning, amoral ones. Quite often, absolute shitheads.
...and thus the downfall of the American economy, the "American dream"...and American-style capitalism throughout the world.
1 comment:
As if it was human qualities that count and not the power the human wields. But Friedman sang a sweet song to the powerful. Reagan, Thatcher served them well (but also accelerated and sharpened the contradictions of their systems). But these are questions of degree surely? I remember talking to an entrepreneur when hitching across the States in the early-70s that it was possible to grow a good idea or business to a certain size but then you are against the big boys and they do you in. The free market never got and hardly ever gets a real chance. Not sure if I believe the Rumination that there was a time when motivated and effective enterprise was reliably a key to real wealth/power (the young computer and web folk of today more of an example, perhaps?) There is much mythology. American Dream or Fantasy? Inventors so often turn out to have stolen ideas.
The half of the playing field in which almost all of us play our productive enterprising life is at the bottom of a very steep slope (nob hill).
If you are born into money you have the hired muscle, don’t you? You buy lawyers and government people and their hired guns. Entrepreneurs are the ones you buy up, steal from or shut down. Smart people are the ones you hire to make sure you avoid acting in anything but your so-called “self”-interest (more truly the lust of ever-horny money itself). Just saw a great clip of Bill Hicks (“On Marketing”), where he tells the advertising and marketing folk in his audience “just fucking kill yourself”
Karl got it righter than Ayn or Milton. It is the moochers who generally add the value to everything; the smarts hired by the lazy rich are the parasites.
Silver linings. We know they know everything that we say or write. Now they know that we know the same about them. The next tranche of Wikileaks will come from the world of banks and corporations. Food for microvens.
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