Thursday, April 01, 2010

The End is Nigh - Or Maybe Not

Paul B Farrell, JD, PhD writes Paul B Farrell’s Wall Street War Zone HERE

There are 25 Reasons the “Invisible Hand,” the Soul of Capitalism, is Dead!”

“What most distinguishes the “New American Capitalism” from Smith’s original brand of capitalism? We’ve lost our ”soul.” In the New Capitalism there is no soul, it is dead. Wall Street, the original spirit-guide of capitalism is now soulless, lacking a moral compass. That was not the goal of Smith’s model: In his Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith clearly saw capitalism driven by a moral code. The “invisible hand” guiding capitalism and government was not a soulless network of materialistic algorithms designed simply to maximize wealth and concentrate power in the hands of the few. But it is today. We wrote about this historic turning point at length for MarketWatch in “The Death of the ‘Soul of Capitalism:’ 25 reasons why America has ‘lost its soul’ and collapse is inevitable.”


Comment
Another apocalyptic deluded doom-laden prophesy with an indeterminate date upon it.

Like the others, it misses the point.

Systems do not have ‘souls’. Capitalism, no more than hunting, shepherding or farming, has a ‘soul’ or whatever is meant by that as a metaphor.

Society is moved by individuals, not by a sui generis entity somehow disembodied within it. That’s the problem with turning metaphors into objects.

Of course, Paul Farrell has a ‘soul’; he is of the sort that he wishes everybody else is – a man frustrated by the soulless others who make up society. He doesn’t ‘lack a moral compass’.

No doubt before the recent financial upheavals, Paul Farrell also didn’t like capitalism, or Wall Street, or whatever is the object of his bile today. He’s always had the view of himself as a man worthy of praise for his moral behaviour. It’s not him; it’s the damn system …

As we say in Scotland, “Aye, that’ll be right’.

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