HOGMANAY HUMOUR FOR WHEN NEW YEAR STRIKES TONIGHT WHERE YOU ARE

Foghorn Leghorn - self described as ‘Member: 3524775’  aged 45, New Jersey, USA) asks (31 December) on ‘Soda Opinions: everybody’s got one’: HERE

“Is the internet an arena where Adam Smith's invisible hand does battle with Karl Marx's oppressive fist?”

To start the “discussion”, Foghorn Leghorn offers a view:

“Adam Smith's invisible hand has an advantage here since it is invisible and the Marxist fist is not. Maybe that is why the fist is so paranoid that it needs to spy on its own people.”

Comment

Beyond parody! 

Marxist ‘fists’ are visible and tyranny cannot function without them. Prices are visible and markets cannot function without them.

Trouble is that believers in actual “invisible hands”, including the very bright people who teach economics - some of whom win Nobel prizes - have created a powerful myth from a metaphor that is out of control and when they start infuencing policies at the highest level, they discredit their profession (and the memory of Adam Smith, who taught Rhetoric for 16 years alongside his moral Philosophy and Political Economy classes) and knew what role a metaphor plays in an English language sentence. Unfortunately modern readers who believe in actual "invisible hands apparently don't.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO READERS, WHATEVER YOUR OPINIONS OR AFFILIATIONS.