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Why is Our Culture Hostile to Capitalism?
Part 1 of a Discussion of Peter Foster’s Why We Bite the Invisible Hand Chapter 1 “Cardboard Cut-out Capitalism”
The title of journalist Peter Foster’s book definitely captured my attention: Why We Bite the Invisible Hand.
The invisible hand is a metaphor from Adam Smith that we use in economics to describe how the economy works.
Smith was describing the idea that people acting in their self-interest make decisions about how to earn and spend their money that ultimately result in an optimal allocation of our scarce resources.
People often confuse self-interest to mean selfish, but that was not Smith’s meaning. We are all naturally self-interested in that we try to make the best of the situation we are in. We do not have to take it further than that to selfishness, where we make decisions concerning only ourselves even if it is causing harm to others.
Another way to understand the difference is that Smith believed in virtue ethics, a philosophy that holds people need to develop their moral character by…
