(no subject)

[sathor]

"Recall here what Smith was trying to do when he wrote The Wealth of Nations. Above all, the book was an attempt to establish the newfound discipline of economics as a science. This meant that not only did economics have its own peculiar domain of study-what we now call "the economy," though the idea that there even was something called an "economy" was very new in Smith's day-but that this economy operated according to laws of much the same sort as Sir Isaac Newton had so recently identified as governing the physical world. Newton had represented God as a cosmic watchmaker who had created the physical machinery of the universe in such a way that it would operate for the ultimate benefit of humans, and then let it run on its own. Smith was trying to make a similar, Newtonian argument. God-or Divine Providence, as he put it-had arranged matters in such a way that our pursuit of self-interest would nonetheless, given an unfettered market, be guided "as if by an invisible hand" to promote the general welfare. Smith's famous invisible hand was, as he says in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, the agent of Divine Providence. It was literally the hand of God."

Excerpt from David Graeber's "Debt the First 5000 Years"

Emphasis is mine.

Take a moment and really let that sink in. The father of modern economics and capitalism basically said the free market would by its very nature - divine nature - promote the general welfare.

How many examples can you think of where the free market and selfish desires are destroying the planet and our civilization? I can think of a few...at least.