They taught us to love it. O.k. so we had the old heat of blood, we liked to see our competitors fail, fall, that is the history of this blood. Herding the animals to the cliff, running them off, even though we didn't need, couldn't possibly use all that meat. Cutting down the previous version, cutting down the people around us who didn't toe the line, that is the history of this blood...But that was a long time ago...
Still we do enjoy it. People like to say that the U.S. should have more vacation time like Europe, doesn't work that way though, most people in the U.S. would rather work the overtime, we like to chase the bucks, funnel them, recycle them, move them around. That's the story of our blood dear one, that's the story of this tribe.
You know old Adam Smith, great guy, though a bit of a character, always slipping into reverie, dropped a piece of bread and butter into his tea one time and then declared it was the worst cup he'd ever had, they say he fell into a tanners pit while walking along once, odd looking duck too, but I digress.
Smith he had a lot of good observations, owed a bit to the Physiocrats, but never mind, he was an original, though he bound us to a lot of ideas. Invisible hands, he likes that analogy, invisible hands, the hands that guide economic activity, best left alone, they do it on there own, without any assistance. There is a saying in economics, who feeds Paris? That is the best illustration of those invisible hands. Think about it, Everything gets to Paris every day that needs to be there, with very little waste. Just enough butter. Tires. Shirts. Fish. Dogfood. Shampoo. How does it get there? Who makes the plans to accomplish this amazing feat? NO ONE! The invisible hands make sure all is right. Markets functioning of their own will maximize resources, price signals indicate shortages and offer alternatives. Massage me, baby, take those invisible hands and rub them all over me.
And not only goods and services, the invisible hands allow financial markets to blow capital up like a pimple on teenager with poor hygiene and a greasy diet. Amazing.
Because the people who believe in those hands would tell you that economic planning is evil, it gets in the way of those markets. Never mind that through most of history economic planning was the norm, and not all those times were like Feudal Europe, still when we think of planning we think of the Soviet Union, bread lines, and the like. But you know what, not to defend the blood soaked bastard but even Stalin had a rockin' economy for awhile.
So then we see this and we extrapolate, gotta love that word, models. Yes models, to anticipate how the herd will run, to market to them, to figure how much currency to print for them, to make money, lots and lots of money. And since we're making lots of money we love our models, we worship them like pagan idols, Econosis the great, came down from the heavens in a flaming Mercedes to pass away the darkness and hand us all credit cards.
You know some of the ancient Greeks thought that using capital to make capital was unnatural, we've come a long way from that...But I digress...And then I extrapolate...
So what determines how those invisible hands work? Human nature, the desire to make money, the desire to provide security, and seek pleasure, the desire to balance risk and potential gain, self interest. But it was a snapshot. Somewhere on the dying bones of failed economics, in an emerging and changing world we took a snapshot, somewhere in the around the beginning of the 18th century, and Mr. Smith was one of the prominent photographers.
But he just laid the seeds in the row, as they grew we watched more, calculated, constructed, trying to figure out how people like to make money, and we built the models to make that easier. And capitalism grew like kudzu on a sunny day. Capitalism. The playground of those invisible hands, of unencumbered markets clicking away, feeding Paris.
Capitalism needed some things though, it needed solid currency, and sound monetary policy, it needed property rights, it needed intellectual property protections, so we gave it those, we built those models, we gave that model jet fuel, we watched it burn into the sky. It also needed a motivated workforce, an educated and passive workforce, and gave it that, we passed the labor laws, we built the schools, we armed the constables, we provided the sense of place and people to make the mysteries bind. We provided the FEAR. The fear of unemployment, the fear of illness, the fear of falling behind. And we provided the NEED, the marketers made sure you were checking those armpits, and longing for the leather over the vinyl, and those women, dear God, where do they get them? AND THERE'S THE RUB.
Because you see it's like physics you cant observe without changing the outcome. We say that the invisible hands, the markets operate the way they do because of peoples self interest. But we have tainted the stream. We put the rats into the maze and then said that they lived in mazes. It's like observing that people run out of burning buildings and then saying that since that is the case we can burn as many buildings as we choose. We choose to concentrate on specific traits people have, and build the system to exploit them, and in exploiting them we reinforced the traits and remake people into the image of what the system needs. We have created the face of modern self interest. The twitching of these invisible hands wasn't planned, no, just driven on greed and a tendency toward abuse.
Why do we need charities, why are there poor, why does trash line the streets, why do we kill each other, because we built a system that favors greed over the other traits in humans that we could have spent the last couple centuries favoring. So are the indigent poor failures, or just unpolluted by the cultural blitz? Ha! Wrap your head around that one.
Now this line of thought can lead to some misconceptions, that humans have a nature different than the one which has been cultivated, that was Marx's great error, or that the environment entirely shapes what we are. Markets work for a reason, they work because their mechanics deeply resonate with parts of our nature. But there are many types of markets, and the types we foster today we foster by choice, not because they are the only type.
So it's about time we looked at new markets, it's about time we turned down the fear, it's about time we quit feeding the hungers, it's about time we gave humans a chance to turn into something other than economic cannibals.