An illusion is something that appears to be one thing but is actually something else. Most people on our planet are committed to behaving as if they live in a hostile environment and therefore have a zero-sum-game worldview called “survival of the fittest.” That narrative is obviously not healthy for anyone but seems to work better for some people, at least in a relative sense, than for others.
For example, many people sitting in American prisons today realize that if they had they been executing their scams while working in the corporate sector, on Wall Street or as a lobbyist in the Capitol of our nation, they might still be free. “A robber baron … has a better chance of escaping the law than a small crook because ‘a well-bred expenditure of his booty especially appeals … to persons of a cultivated sense of proprieties, and goes far to mitigate the sense of moral turpitude with which his dereliction is viewed by them.’ One does not ordinarily associate the disposal of ill-gotten wealth with good breeding.”[i] Our current chief executive (Donald Trump in 2020) seems to be benefiting from these exact beliefs, attitudes and values.
Economists today and in the last century or so have had conflicting worldviews. In Thorsten Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), his worldview became, in general terms, what politicians call “the left.” “The rich are merely anthropological specimens whose behavior the possession of money and property has made more interesting and visibly ridiculous. The effort to establish precedence for oneself and the yearning for the resulting esteem and applause are the most universal of human tendencies.”[ii]
What Veblen called “conspicuous consumption” was what Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) identified 2,500 years ago as one of the manifestations of craving and aversion, the source of all human pain and suffering. “The dress, festivals, or rituals and artifacts of the Vanderbilts and Whitneys are more complex; that does not mean their motivation is in any way different from that of their barbarian counterparts.”[iii] Sadly, it has always been thus.
The economist often cited as a champion of “the right” is Milton Friedman (1912-2006), leader of the Chicago school of economics and a lifelong advocate of “free markets.” “The Friedman doctrine [his worldview] precipitated a new era of short-termism, hostile takeovers, junk-bond financing and the erosion of protections for employees and the environment to increase corporate profits and maximize value for shareholders.”[iv]
A modern economist associated with “the left” is Robert Reich, a professor at Berkeley. When working as Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton Reich says, in speaking of Friedman’s worldview, “But there was a flaw in it that he couldn’t have anticipated. In the last half-century, big corporations have gained so much influence over government that they’ve overwhelmed our democracy.”[v]
Economists of both the “left” and the “right” are caught up in an illusion. To find out what that is, refer to the supplemental reading in the link below.
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Supplemental Reading: Illusion, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#33 Good Breeding
[i] Galbraith, John Kenneth. “A New Theory of Thorstein Veblen.” American Heritage. April 1973, p. 37.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Lipton, Martin. “Greed is Good. Except When It’s Bad.” The New York Times. September 13, 2020, p. 2.
[v] Reich, Robert. “Greed is Good. Except When It’s Bad.” The New York Times. September 13, 2020, p. 6.
