An Unbridled Error
Stephen Fleischman, writer-producer-director of documentaries (see www.amahchewahwah.com, e-mail stevefl@ca.rr.com), writes in the
The Smirking Chimp HERE:
“Hypocrisy Unbridled”
“Going back to Adam Smith, the concept that the "invisible hand" of the free market would keep the capitalist economy in balance has been the conventional wisdom. Capitalism must grow or die. And grow it did. Mergers and acquisitions became the modus operandi as corporate enterprises struggled with their competitors to survive.”
Comment
Stephen Fleischman writes a racy and articulate polemic against the “hypocrisy” of certain ideas about capitalism, as taught him from his long experience in tv news media.
Yes, the “conventional wisdom” may very well be as stated above, but this view has nothing to do with anything Adam Smith wrote. The “conventional belief” was an invented myth by certain economists in the 1950s. Indeed, it is a distortion of the significance of Adam Smith’s single reference to “an invisible hand” in Book IV of his Wealth Of Nations which also discusses markets in Books I and II, without mentioning “an invisible hand”.
This is more than an academic quibble. If you believe that markets are kept in “balance” (whatever that means!) by such an entity then you are in severe danger of complacency when events show that markets are out of “balance”.
Recent events have shown how fragile such beliefs attributed to Adam Smith are with leading personages, such as Alan Greenspan, who included in his very public “mea culpa” a renunciation of his belief in the “invisible hand”, as if Adam Smith had somehow let him down and was responsible for his own self-deception, courtesy, it may be said, of listening too much to Ayn Rand.
The Smirking Chimp HERE:
“Hypocrisy Unbridled”
“Going back to Adam Smith, the concept that the "invisible hand" of the free market would keep the capitalist economy in balance has been the conventional wisdom. Capitalism must grow or die. And grow it did. Mergers and acquisitions became the modus operandi as corporate enterprises struggled with their competitors to survive.”
Comment
Stephen Fleischman writes a racy and articulate polemic against the “hypocrisy” of certain ideas about capitalism, as taught him from his long experience in tv news media.
Yes, the “conventional wisdom” may very well be as stated above, but this view has nothing to do with anything Adam Smith wrote. The “conventional belief” was an invented myth by certain economists in the 1950s. Indeed, it is a distortion of the significance of Adam Smith’s single reference to “an invisible hand” in Book IV of his Wealth Of Nations which also discusses markets in Books I and II, without mentioning “an invisible hand”.
This is more than an academic quibble. If you believe that markets are kept in “balance” (whatever that means!) by such an entity then you are in severe danger of complacency when events show that markets are out of “balance”.
Recent events have shown how fragile such beliefs attributed to Adam Smith are with leading personages, such as Alan Greenspan, who included in his very public “mea culpa” a renunciation of his belief in the “invisible hand”, as if Adam Smith had somehow let him down and was responsible for his own self-deception, courtesy, it may be said, of listening too much to Ayn Rand.
Labels: Ayn Rand, Greenspan, Invisible Hand
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