On the madness of Smithian economics
It’s a strange and pernicious notion that has been foisted upon Western society by economists: you and I, they tell us, by giving free rein to greed, selfishness, competitive malice, and megalomania, perform a valuable public service. We can spend our days pitting ourselves against the welfare and livelihood of others, and then trust “the market” to transform our venality into a public good…. Somehow, through a kind of magic, the social value will automatically condense out of the numbers and percolate through society as a healing balm…. How could this grotesque notion — the notion that private vice equals public good — gain such widespread acceptance?
The above is from a thoughtpiece by Steve Talbott in AntiMatters:
“The decisive fact, according to Talbott, is that we are on a path. Along that path our task is not the maximization of some numerical value — a “value” that does not distinguish between profit from sales of cocaine and profit from sales of penicillin — but rather the discovery of true values, the struggle to become worthy of them, and the exercise of creative imagination and disciplined work in socially incarnating them.”
Access the journal issue here.
