http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fable_of_the_Bees
Mandeville's fable of the bees (The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits) had an impact on the thinking of the time and Adam Smith was influenced by it. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 3:51 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: FW: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker Ed wrote: > I don't think capitalism is exploitive. Not intrinsically. I borrowed money from a friend to buy my first big studio. She made a few bucks on money she didn't need for anything else just then. A friend put several years of sweat equity into an alternate energy company, taking less than market salary. The company failed but he's not angry as he knew all the principals worked in good faith. I just spotted this squib (take a little out of context here): This undoing of democracy to which Roy refers, and the dystopian society that is being created in its place, can be grasped in the current subordination of public values to commercial values and the collapse of democracy into the logic and values of what might called a predatory casino capitalism where life is cheap and everything is for sale. [1] > However, what we've found time and again is that, no matter how nicely > a system can be explained theoretically, it doesn't really work that > way. Why? Invariably, the system gets taken over by people who make > it work to their advantage. But one of the axioms of capitalism is that if everyone with capital tries to make the system "work for their advantage", then such nice certainties such as the guiding hand, unique equilibria and convexity will guarantee the best of all possible worlds. At least we can agree that the Soviet apparatchiki who turned the (putative) communist system into state capitalism for their own benefit were acting contrary to communist principles. The capitalists who are exploitive or predatory are just following the rules. Or maybe I just have a jaded view of capitalism as it has been embodied in my lifetime. - Mike [1] http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13998-the-new-extremism-and-politics-of-di straction-in-the-age-of-austerity -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
