Capitalism: 2-Year-Olds Prefer It

Posted on September 10, 2012 by
news357.com

An interesting view of capitalism, from the novel Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow (1993):

 Rational self-interest is Carl’s creed. He worships at the altar of the free market. The same way Freud thought everything was sex, Pagnucci believed all social interaction, no matter how complex, can be adjusted by finding a way to put a price on it. Urban housing. Education. We need competition and profit motive to make it all work. It is, I know, quite a theory. Let everybody struggle to get their bucket in the stream and then do what they like with the water they fish out. Some will make steam, some will take a drink, a few fellows or ladies will decide to take a bath. Entrepreneurship will flourish; people will be happy; we’ll get all this nifty indispensable stuff like balsamic vinegar and menthol cigarettes. But what kind of ethical social system takes as its fundamental precepts the words “I” “me” and “mine”? Our two-year olds start like that and we spend the next twenty years trying to teach them there’s more than that to life.
 

 

 

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