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_ Meta Discussion _ Worshippers Of The Unseen Butterfingers (WOTUB)

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

I have to go dig out my Adam Smith and my Max Weber … it may take the weekend, but I didn't want to lose this number …

J☼N

Dynamic List Of Resources —

Adam Smith

Max WeberIf you never read any other Social Theory, read Max Weber first. It was one of the great tragedies of the 20th Century that he died when he did, not only because the program of works he had begun would remain unfinished but also because the moderating influence he was exerting on his country's national and international affairs was suddenly dissipated.

Here is an excellent online resource on Weber —

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

While I ponder bleak and bleary on how to kickstart yet another motiv epicycle of Le Dismal Séance, allow me to quote what PBS wrote on another thread, as I think he's said a big piece of it clearer than I ever will.

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Fri 27th February 2009, 2:21pm) *

Don't try to sell "false equivalence" or "we are all to blame". This disaster was caused by those who made a fetish out of market solutions for all problems. Intellectually this is Milton Friedman, his heir Alan Greenspan, and "the Chicago Boys". When these policies are applied in foreign policy it was called "neo-liberalism". When applied at home it was so ubiquitous that it either didn't have a name or misappropriated the title "economics". They have centers of influence in both the Democratic and Republican party but overwhelmingly dominate the Republican party.

Going forward all nations will have mixed economies. The political economy that prevails in each respective nation will determine the exact mix and "economics" will have to purge itself of fairy tale faith if it is to survive as an academic discipline.


Posted by: Jon Awbrey

As long as I'm excusing my lack of earnest toil on this question by means of theft from the efforts of others, let me link to a very fine work known to me, that serves to beam a much needed searchlight on a scene of action where a whole lot of formerly deprecated invisible hand-waving has already begun to direct the play.

Susan M. Awbrey (2003), “http://www2.oakland.edu/oujournal/files/5_Awbrey.pdf”.

Jon wave.gif

Posted by: Moulton

The other day, Kato posted a link to a segment from a BBC documentary of some interest. Among the points in the segment was the thesis that the so-called invisible hand of an efficient market is invisible because it's not really there.

My colleague, Dan Arielly, who is a behavioral economist, has made quite a splash with his recent book on predictable irrationality.

According to the BBC segment, there are only three demographic groups who are rational: Economists, Game Theory Experts, and Psychopaths.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 1st March 2009, 4:30pm) *

The other day, Kato posted a link to a segment from a BBC documentary of some interest. Among the points in the segment was the thesis that the so-called invisible hand of an efficient market is invisible because it's not really there.

My colleague, Dan Arielly, who is a behavioral economist, has made quite a splash with his recent book on predictable irrationality.

According to the BBC segment, there are only three demographic groups who are rational: Economists, Game Theory Experts, and Psychopaths.


People may be aware of using a metaphor when they speak of the Unseen Hand (UH). Using a metaphor need not invalidate the reasoning that uses it, not so long as the metaphor has an objective referent or a consistent connotation. The meaning that it has may be impossible to approach in just a few words any other way. But people just as often lose sight of the metaphor's meaning by taking it too literally.

Jon Image

Posted by: Angela Kennedy

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Sun 1st March 2009, 9:54pm) *

QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 1st March 2009, 4:30pm) *

The other day, Kato posted a link to a segment from a BBC documentary of some interest. Among the points in the segment was the thesis that the so-called invisible hand of an efficient market is invisible because it's not really there.

My colleague, Dan Arielly, who is a behavioral economist, has made quite a splash with his recent book on predictable irrationality.

According to the BBC segment, there are only three demographic groups who are rational: Economists, Game Theory Experts, and Psychopaths.


People may be aware of using a metaphor when they speak of the Unseen Hand (UH). Using a metaphor need not invalidate the reasoning that uses it, not so long as the metaphor has an objective referent or a consistent connotation. The meaning that it has may be impossible to approach in just a few words any other way. But people just as often lose sight of the metaphor's meaning by taking it too literally.

Jon Image


May I add Michael Jacob's 'invisible elbow' to the mix here? (FRom the Green Economy, 1991) where Jacobs uses the metaphor as a counterpoint to SMith's invisible hand, in order to explain the hidden externalities (costs) to others of certain economic actions (e.g. environmental costs in Jacobs discussion). There could be many others of course.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Angela Kennedy @ Mon 2nd March 2009, 3:11am) *

May I add Michael Jacobs' "invisible elbow" to the mix here? (from The Green Economy, 1991) where Jacobs uses the metaphor as a counterpoint to Smith's invisible hand, in order to explain the hidden externalities (costs) to others of certain economic actions (e.g. environmental costs in Jacobs discussion). There could be many others of course.


I haven't read that, but will definitely http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=Michael+Jacobs+%22Green+Economy%22+%22Invisible+Elbow%22&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=off.

When I first read your comment, I got a mental image of the Butter on the Fingers being due to the spreading of the Grease on the Elbow, and then I had to wonder whose Palm is getting Larded in the Process — but I think we all know the answer to that.

Anyway, let me pick a random reading that looks apt — here's an excerpt from a pre-publication prospectus by Jacobs himself:

QUOTE

The invisible elbow

Sometimes these external costs are paid in money. The West German timber industry loses around $800 million each year from the effects of acid rain. And agriculture pays further costs of $600 million in the loss of soil fertility which is also the fault of acid rain? But often the costs are not quantifiable. How do you measure the cost of brain damage to a child? And what price do you place on the species made extinct in the rainforest?

Nearly all environmental problems are 'externalities'. If consumers had to suffer all the pollution caused by the products they bought, they wouldn't buy them in such damaging quantities. It is precisely because costs are passed on to third parties that we let them occur. Environmental degradation is a genuine case of passing the muck.

There is an exception — the contamination of food and water by chemicals is an externality. If you buy a fruit or vegetable coated with pesticide residues then you are the person being poisoned. You are paying the cost of the pollution yourself — although lots of other people may pay too, such as the workers spraying the pesticides and future generations whose water is polluted. This is why there has been such a boom in organic foods and mineral waters. Consumers may not care what happens to others but they are certainly worried about the costs they pay themselves.

But all the other environmental problems affect people too indirectly to make them act. How many people will voluntarily give up driving cars to prevent acid rain or global warming? If I act alone it won't have any significant effect on the problem. So if I don't know that you will co-operate with me, why should I lose out by cutting down on my consumption?

Because only co-operative action can tackle environmental problems, they will not be resolved by unhampered market forces. Indeed, it is precisely market forces which bring them about. Environmental problems occur through the combination of millions of individual economic decisions. These decisions are taken privately, without reference to what everyone else is doing, because nobody can know what everyone else is doing. Added together, market forces generate an overall result which no-one can predict.

This is the 'invisible hand' which the economist Adam Smith argued brought general prosperity. But it can equally be an 'invisible elbow' which brings the earth's precarious ecological balance crashing down like a pile of cans in a supermarket.

Bronzed, rich and dying

To protect the environment we must force consumers and producers to make decisions which take wider interests into account. We need to 'internalize the externalities' — to bring all the costs back into the box so that the consumer pays the full price. Market forces have to be controlled and there are two main mechanisms for doing it.

— Michael Jacobs (1990), "http://www.newint.org/issue203/price.htm", New Internationalist, Nº 203, January 1990.


Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Dialogue Concerning The Two World Systems —

http://web.archive.org/web/20080714174450/http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/quotes.htm#jump2.

J₪N

My Favourites —

QUOTE

The rich … divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal proportions among all its inhabitants.

— Adam Smith (1759), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part IV Chapter 1



QUOTE

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

— Adam Smith (1759), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I Section I Chapter I



Available on Virtually Simulated Gold Plaques for a Nominal Donation of £1,000,000 Each — Get Both for Only £1,999,999 !!! — Brought to You by the Loving Hands and Expert Craftsmanship of the Madoff Mint.

J₪N

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Another one of those month-long weekends, but I did finally manage to get a nice initial collection of resources together —

J☼N

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 26th February 2009, 9:46am) *

I have to go dig out my Adam Smith and my Max Weber … it may take the weekend, but I didn't want to lose this number …

J☼N

Dynamic List Of Resources —

Adam Smith
  • Adam Smith (1759), http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/tms-intro.htm.
  • Adam Smith (1776), http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-intro.htm.
Max Weber
  • Max Weber (1904/1930), http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/cover.html, Talcott Parsons & Anthony Giddens (trans.), Unwin Hyman, London & Boston.
If you never read any other Social Theory, read Max Weber first. It was one of the great tragedies of the 20th Century that he died before he could finish the program of works that he had started.

Here is an excellent online resource on Weber —
  • http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

I think we might want to consider the role of Invisible Sharp Elbows have in making sure the politically well connected get their "cut" in any legislative attempt at mitigating the damages caused by market. I suspect we will be seeing rather a lot this soon.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Notes —


Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Mon 1st March 2010, 9:56am) *

Notes —
  • http://www.maxweberstudies.org/.
  • http://www.sociosite.net/topics/weber.php.
  • Kent, Stephen A., http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~skent/.
  • Kim, Sung Ho, “Max Weber”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/weber/.


Ok Jon, help us out here. Kent seems to be interested in how people who start out participating in a social movement or cause (like maybe building an encyclopedia?) can become cult zealots. I can see the application to WP. Weber is a very comprehensive founding thinker in social science. So his work is very broad and it is not easy to see which exact aspects apply here. He did believe that Marx was too materialistic in his understanding of capitalism and that religious ideas, especially Protestantism, have as much to do with capitalism as markets and factors of production. So how do we tie these together?

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Mon 1st March 2010, 2:56pm) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Mon 1st March 2010, 9:56am) *

Notes —
  • http://www.maxweberstudies.org/.
  • http://www.sociosite.net/topics/weber.php.
  • Kent, Stephen A., http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~skent/.
  • Kim, Sung Ho, “Max Weber”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/weber/.

Ok Jon, help us out here. Kent seems to be interested in how people who start out participating in a social movement or cause (like maybe building an encyclopedia?) can become cult zealots. I can see the application to WP. Weber is a very comprehensive founding thinker in social science. So his work is very broad and it is not easy to see which exact aspects apply here. He did believe that Marx was too materialistic in his understanding of capitalism and that religious ideas, especially Protestantism, have as much to do with capitalism as markets and factors of production. So how do we tie these together?


Just a bit of Weber Surfing. I started out trying to track down a quoted phrase in Weber's PE & SOC — probably so familiar to his German readers that he didn't bother to give the source — but the stuff I ran into along the way looked interesting, too. The http://mindyourmaker.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/max-weber-on-social-evolution/#comment-2413 on http://mindyourmaker.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/max-weber-on-social-evolution/ sent me to a paper by Kent, but I ran out of time for reading it till later tonight.

Jon Image

Posted by: radek

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Mon 2nd March 2009, 7:00am) *

QUOTE(Angela Kennedy @ Mon 2nd March 2009, 3:11am) *

May I add Michael Jacobs' "invisible elbow" to the mix here? (from The Green Economy, 1991) where Jacobs uses the metaphor as a counterpoint to Smith's invisible hand, in order to explain the hidden externalities (costs) to others of certain economic actions (e.g. environmental costs in Jacobs discussion). There could be many others of course.


I haven't read that, but will definitely http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=Michael+Jacobs+%22Green+Economy%22+%22Invisible+Elbow%22&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=off.

When I first read your comment, I got a mental image of the Butter on the Fingers being due to the spreading of the Grease on the Elbow, and then I had to wonder whose Palm is getting Larded in the Process — but I think we all know the answer to that.

Anyway, let me pick a random reading that looks apt — here's an excerpt from a pre-publication prospectus by Jacobs himself:

QUOTE

The invisible elbow

Sometimes these external costs are paid in money. The West German timber industry loses around $800 million each year from the effects of acid rain. And agriculture pays further costs of $600 million in the loss of soil fertility which is also the fault of acid rain? But often the costs are not quantifiable. How do you measure the cost of brain damage to a child? And what price do you place on the species made extinct in the rainforest?

Nearly all environmental problems are 'externalities'. If consumers had to suffer all the pollution caused by the products they bought, they wouldn't buy them in such damaging quantities. It is precisely because costs are passed on to third parties that we let them occur. Environmental degradation is a genuine case of passing the muck.

There is an exception — the contamination of food and water by chemicals is an externality. If you buy a fruit or vegetable coated with pesticide residues then you are the person being poisoned. You are paying the cost of the pollution yourself — although lots of other people may pay too, such as the workers spraying the pesticides and future generations whose water is polluted. This is why there has been such a boom in organic foods and mineral waters. Consumers may not care what happens to others but they are certainly worried about the costs they pay themselves.

But all the other environmental problems affect people too indirectly to make them act. How many people will voluntarily give up driving cars to prevent acid rain or global warming? If I act alone it won't have any significant effect on the problem. So if I don't know that you will co-operate with me, why should I lose out by cutting down on my consumption?

Because only co-operative action can tackle environmental problems, they will not be resolved by unhampered market forces. Indeed, it is precisely market forces which bring them about. Environmental problems occur through the combination of millions of individual economic decisions. These decisions are taken privately, without reference to what everyone else is doing, because nobody can know what everyone else is doing. Added together, market forces generate an overall result which no-one can predict.

This is the 'invisible hand' which the economist Adam Smith argued brought general prosperity. But it can equally be an 'invisible elbow' which brings the earth's precarious ecological balance crashing down like a pile of cans in a supermarket.

Bronzed, rich and dying

To protect the environment we must force consumers and producers to make decisions which take wider interests into account. We need to 'internalize the externalities' — to bring all the costs back into the box so that the consumer pays the full price. Market forces have to be controlled and there are two main mechanisms for doing it.

— Michael Jacobs (1990), "http://www.newint.org/issue203/price.htm", New Internationalist, Nº 203, January 1990.




The thing is, this view is pretty standard within economics. Even Milton Friedman supported "internalizing the externalities" (despite the so called Coase Theorem (warning: Wikipedia article on the subject is horrible), which also came out of the Chicago School) in one way or another.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(radek @ Wed 3rd March 2010, 4:02pm) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Mon 2nd March 2009, 7:00am) *

QUOTE(Angela Kennedy @ Mon 2nd March 2009, 3:11am) *

May I add Michael Jacobs' "invisible elbow" to the mix here? (from The Green Economy, 1991) where Jacobs uses the metaphor as a counterpoint to Smith's invisible hand, in order to explain the hidden externalities (costs) to others of certain economic actions (e.g. environmental costs in Jacobs discussion). There could be many others of course.


I haven't read that, but will definitely http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=Michael+Jacobs+%22Green+Economy%22+%22Invisible+Elbow%22&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=off.

When I first read your comment, I got a mental image of the Butter on the Fingers being due to the spreading of the Grease on the Elbow, and then I had to wonder whose Palm is getting Larded in the Process — but I think we all know the answer to that.

Anyway, let me pick a random reading that looks apt — here's an excerpt from a pre-publication prospectus by Jacobs himself:

QUOTE

The invisible elbow

Sometimes these external costs are paid in money. The West German timber industry loses around $800 million each year from the effects of acid rain. And agriculture pays further costs of $600 million in the loss of soil fertility which is also the fault of acid rain? But often the costs are not quantifiable. How do you measure the cost of brain damage to a child? And what price do you place on the species made extinct in the rainforest?

Nearly all environmental problems are 'externalities'. If consumers had to suffer all the pollution caused by the products they bought, they wouldn't buy them in such damaging quantities. It is precisely because costs are passed on to third parties that we let them occur. Environmental degradation is a genuine case of passing the muck.

There is an exception — the contamination of food and water by chemicals is an externality. If you buy a fruit or vegetable coated with pesticide residues then you are the person being poisoned. You are paying the cost of the pollution yourself — although lots of other people may pay too, such as the workers spraying the pesticides and future generations whose water is polluted. This is why there has been such a boom in organic foods and mineral waters. Consumers may not care what happens to others but they are certainly worried about the costs they pay themselves.

But all the other environmental problems affect people too indirectly to make them act. How many people will voluntarily give up driving cars to prevent acid rain or global warming? If I act alone it won't have any significant effect on the problem. So if I don't know that you will co-operate with me, why should I lose out by cutting down on my consumption?

Because only co-operative action can tackle environmental problems, they will not be resolved by unhampered market forces. Indeed, it is precisely market forces which bring them about. Environmental problems occur through the combination of millions of individual economic decisions. These decisions are taken privately, without reference to what everyone else is doing, because nobody can know what everyone else is doing. Added together, market forces generate an overall result which no-one can predict.

This is the 'invisible hand' which the economist Adam Smith argued brought general prosperity. But it can equally be an 'invisible elbow' which brings the earth's precarious ecological balance crashing down like a pile of cans in a supermarket.

Bronzed, rich and dying

To protect the environment we must force consumers and producers to make decisions which take wider interests into account. We need to 'internalize the externalities' — to bring all the costs back into the box so that the consumer pays the full price. Market forces have to be controlled and there are two main mechanisms for doing it.

— Michael Jacobs (1990), "http://www.newint.org/issue203/price.htm", New Internationalist, Nº 203, January 1990.




The thing is, this view is pretty standard within economics. Even Milton Friedman supported "internalizing the externalities" (despite the so called Coase Theorem (warning: Wikipedia article on the subject is horrible), which also came out of the Chicago School) in one way or another.




"I found a flaw" Greenspan, in his blubbering testimony before congress explaining how the "free market" let the rich allocate risks to the those least able to absorb them.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Wed 3rd March 2010, 2:38pm) *


"I found a flaw" Greenspan, in his blubbering testimony before congress explaining how the "free market" let the rich allocate risks to the those least able to absorb them.

What an asshole. This guy has spent his WHOLE LIFE in an industry (the financial industry) where the main goal is to keep the profit for yourself, while getting somebody else to assume the risk. Thus, people don't invest for themselves and take the risk-- they run hedge funds whereby they "manage" other people's money and take a fraction of it, while the OTHER people take the risk. They don't trade stocks; they become stock traders where they make a commission on sales, and thus benefit whether the sales are good or not. They write books for other people on how to get rich, and they themselves make money from the writing. Even better, they write investment newsletters, and have investment TV shows.

Geeze, Greenspan. Just take a look at the ordinary way most people make money on Wallstreet. Derivatives were TOTALLY predictable. And if you knew about them, what did you THINK was going to happen with them? Did you think the people who bought these loans were going to go down with ship? You're a better man than I, Gunga Din? Please.

And BTW, don't blame Milton Friedman for this one. This is Greenspan and Rand. Friedman believed in truth-in-labeling. And he died with a lot less money than Greenspan will.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

I've been thinking about "markets" and flagged revisions. Maybe a little about Weber too. It seems to me there are two kinds of Oppose votes on the issue:


The some of the former might be eventually brought on board but the latter never will. The are the Ayn Rands and Alan Greenspans of wikis.


Posted by: Jon Awbrey

There's some kind of disconnect here.

People who affect devotion to the Will and Wisdom of the Market may say they think the crowd is smarter than them, but that is obviously just part of the con. They have no intention of submerging their worship of self in any kind of collectivism. What they really believe is that they secretly know the Will Of The Deity Formerly Known As God, and that it always intended to leave the kingdom to them.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Weber started with the Doctrine Of Predestination (DOP) and the effect that it has on the psyche of the believer. It creates an effectively unsoothable anxiety whose compulsions can be diverted but transiently through the conspicuous accumulation of material wealth. Note that I say "accumulation" not "consumption", since the truest of the true believers are forbade to enjoy the fruits of their unceasing labors.

Jon Awbrey

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Fri 5th March 2010, 12:36pm) *

Weber started with the Doctrine Of Predestination (DOP) and the effect that it has on the psyche of the believer. It creates an effectively unsoothable anxiety who compulsion can be diverted but transiently through the conspicuous accumulation of material wealth. Note that I say "accumulation" not "consumption", since the truest of the true believers are forbade to enjoy the fruits of their unceasing labors.

Jon Awbrey


"Editing for free" is a perfect vehicle then. It gives a way of measuring accumulation (edit counts) without providing any possibility of consumption.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart …

QUOTE

Ideas formulated by Nietzsche were major sources of Weber's inspiration for the last, pessimistic section of The Protestant Ethic (Mommsen, 1974:106, see 79). Those of us who know Weber's work primarily through Parsons' translation fail to realize this because, once again, of deficiencies in Parsons' rendering of a crucial and revealing phrase. Both Tiryakian (1981:27) and Turner (1982:87) quote part of the paragraph in which the telling phrase occurs; I will quote the entire paragraph, and cite the German at the appropriate points.

No one knows who will live in this cage (Gehäuse) in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of the old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage (die ‘letzten Menschen’) of this cultural development it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved’ (Weber, 1920b:182; 1920a:204).

The translation problem is clear: in the original German Weber referred to Nietzsche's “last men” (Nietzsche 1883:128–131, 325) as those who would be “ ‘specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart.’ ” He even put letzten Menschen in quotation marks, so that his readers would be certain to pick up the Nietzschean allusion to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Parsons' translation of the German phrase as “the last stage,” not to mention his omission of the quotations around it, inarguably misrepresents what Weber tried to convey (Fleischmann, 1964:233; Mommsen, 1965:600–602).

— Stephen A. Kent, “Weber, Goethe, and the Nietzschean Allusion : Capturing the Source of the “Iron Cage” Metaphor”, Sociological Analysis, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 297–319, Oxford University Press. Stable URL : http://www.jstor.org/stable/3711612.



Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart …

QUOTE

The “specialists without spirit” quotation that Weber offered was not taken verbatim from Nietzsche. Rather, Weber himself constructed it with the tenor of Zarathustra in mind (Mommsen, 1965:602). That he would construct such a passage should not be surprising since (in contrast to Weber's limited use of Bunyan) consideration of Nietzsche's philosophy is evident throughout his life's work (see Fleischmann, 1964). An excellent example of his indebtedness to Nietzsche occurs in Weber's 1918 speech entitled “Science as a Vocation” (which was published in the following year). In this speech, Weber's scorn for the overextension of both scientific promises and scientific technique parallels his famous lament about “ ‘specialists without spirit’ ” in the final section of The Protestant Ethic:

After Nietzsche's devastating criticism of those ‘last men’ who ‘invented happiness,’ I may leave aside altogether the naive optimism in which science — that is, the technique of mastering life which rests upon science — has been celebrated as the way to happiness. Who believes in this? — aside from a few big children in university chairs or editorial offices (Weber, 1946:143; 1947:13).

— Stephen A. Kent, “Weber, Goethe, and the Nietzschean Allusion : Capturing the Source of the “Iron Cage” Metaphor”, Sociological Analysis, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 297–319, Oxford University Press. Stable URL : http://www.jstor.org/stable/3711612.


Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE

    When Zarathustra had spoken these words he beheld the people again and was silent. “There they stand,” he said to his heart; “There they laugh. They do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears. Must one smash their ears before they learn to listen with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and preachers of repentance? Or do they believe only the stammerer?
    “They have something of which they are proud. What do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it; it distinguishes them from goatherds. That is why they do not like to hear the word ‘contempt’ applied to them. Let me then address their pride. Let me speak to them of what is most contemptible: but that is the last man.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra : A Book for All and for None, Walter Kaufmann (trans.), The Modern Library, New York, NY, 1995. Originally published in parts, Also Sprach Zarathustra, 1883, 1884, 1892.



Posted by: victim of censorship

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Fri 12th March 2010, 6:37pm) *

QUOTE

    When Zarathustra had spoken these words he beheld the people again and was silent. “There they stand,” he said to his heart; “There they laugh. They do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears. Must one smash their ears before they learn to listen with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and preachers of repentance? Or do they believe only the stammerer?
    “They have something of which they are proud. What do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it; it distinguishes them from goatherds. That is why they do not like to hear the word ‘contempt’ applied to them. Let me then address their pride. Let me speak to them of what is most contemptible: but that is the last man.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra : A Book for All and for None, Walter Kaufmann (trans.), The Modern Library, New York, NY, 1995. Originally published in parts, Also Sprach Zarathustra, 1883, 1884, 1892.





Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Raising this back to consciousness for the sake of current discussions on the http://p10.alfaservers.com/pipermail/cpov_listcultures.org/.

My 2 Cents —

QUOTE

What's Up the Sleeve of the Invisible Hand?

Let me pick up another “fast and loose” thread from http://p10.alfaservers.com/pipermail/cpov_listcultures.org/2010-June/000204.html.

It's a natural human tendency, when faced with overwhelming complexity, to wish it all away with some radically simplifying belief or mythology. That would be my guess as to why the Myth of the Invisible Hand is every bit as popular on the Internet today as Jolly Old Saint Nick and visions of sugar-plums <feel free to insert your local color here> are in the fantasies of pre-critical children.

That is probably why variations on the theme of Adam Smith's “Invisible Hand” are such frequent topics of discussion at The Wikipedia Review. Against that backdrop I personally find that the best resource for trying to understand the conversion of ethical motives into economic motors lies in the work of Max Weber, beginning with his analysis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

http://p10.alfaservers.com/pipermail/cpov_listcultures.org/2010-June/000210.html


Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Thu 26th February 2009, 8:46am) *

Dynamic List Of Resources —

Adam Smith
  • Adam Smith (1759), http://web.archive.org/web/20080613201526/http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/tms-intro.htm.
  • Adam Smith (1776), http://web.archive.org/web/20080802203003/http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-intro.htm.
Max Weber
  • Max Weber (1904/1930), http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/cover.html, Talcott Parsons & Anthony Giddens (trans.), Unwin Hyman, London & Boston.
If you never read any other Social Theory, read Max Weber first. It was one of the great tragedies of the 20th Century that he died when he did, not only because the program of works he had begun would remain unfinished but also because the moderating influence he was exerting on his country's national and international affairs was suddenly dissipated.

Here is an excellent online resource on Weber —
  • http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm.

The links to some of the works above have gotten broken over time. I will try to replace them with WebArchive links, but the WayBack Machine has momentarily burned a fuse, so here are links to alternative sources:

Adam Smith

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 15th June 2010, 9:00am) *

Raising this back to consciousness for the sake of current discussions on the http://p10.alfaservers.com/pipermail/cpov_listcultures.org/.

My 2 Cents —

QUOTE

What's Up the Sleeve of the Invisible Hand?
It's a natural human tendency, when faced with overwhelming complexity, to wish it all away with some radically simplifying belief or mythology. That would be my guess as to why the Myth of the Invisible Hand is every bit as popular on the Internet today as Jolly Old Saint Nick and visions of sugar-plums <feel free to insert your local color here> are in the fantasies of pre-critical children.

That is probably why variations on the theme of Adam Smith's “Invisible Hand” are such frequent topics of discussion at The Wikipedia Review. Against that backdrop I personally find that the best resource for trying to understand the conversion of ethical motives into economic motors lies in the work of Max Weber, beginning with his analysis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.



Gee, I'm glad you reposted this, since it gives me the chance to say "bullshit." I think the idea of the above, is that Adam Smith is literally worshipped, primarily by right-wing God-fearing conservatives, who equate the evolutionary behavior of markets with the Protestant Ethic, and are therefore somehow "anti-progressive," inasmuch as this helps them deny giant capitalist conspiracies. Which, in turn, ironically take the place of "Intelligent Design" in the sphere of left wing economics.

This debate on the biological side goes back at least to Darwin's deliberately reading Adam Smith when he was trying to work out his idea of "apparent top-down design by means of bottom-up uncomplicated simple behavior." Thus "explaining" why the natural world appears designed, without actually being designed. And at the same time "explaining" why honeybees, ants, and beavers all look like they earnestly display the Protestant Ethic of accumulation for accumulation's sake, which Protestants have long taken to be a Providentally-assigned behavior, which stands as symbolical on its own. Consider the number of honeybees and ants that populate protestant sermons.

When in fact, all these creatures are none of them ethical, moral, foresighted, religious, thrifty, or even "industrious vs. lazy" in the way we understand these terms. They simply behave as their genes tell them too, end of story. The result appears vaguely capitalistic, because in many environments, only accumulation far past present consuption levels, will allow future survival.

Consider the squirrel as capitalist, mindlessly collecting more acorns than it can ever eat that year. We now know that forgotten caches of nuts sprouting later, play an important role in the dispersion of trees, even though what squirrels do, is surely not for the benefit of oaks. It's almost like some invisible hand helping oaks along, though. ermm.gif ohmy.gif

If we could ask squirrels, surely that's the way THEY would justify it all--- no? wacko.gif

As I've noted, Marx, during Darwin's lifetime, agreed with Darwin about the struggle between creatures to survive, as well as the amoral barbarity of the natural world. But Marx went on to accuse Darwin of simply recreating, in his theory, the economic underpinnings of his own English society. In other words, Marx held the Darwin was wrong, simply because his theory of "apparent design" in biology was too much like Smith's "apparent design" in macro-economics, which in turn Marx thought was wrong. Because macroeconomics (so said Marx) was instead due to Marx's own "designing deity": class-struggle and the intelligent actions of (evil) self-interested individual capitalists and capitalist classes.

But this is just one more instance of the dishonesty of Marx. He himself was a thorough-going atheist. Saying Darwin was wrong about where species came from, puts Marx under the intellectual obligation to say where instead they DO come from, and doing it without invoking a giant design conspiracy. He didn't, and couldn't, have done any such thing. Obviously Darwin is correct about nature, unless one demands a God to do it all. The cognitive dissonance would doubtless have been too much for Marx to admit that. Because as it is, Marx, always eager to play the Big Intellectual, leaves his readers without any answers at all. Biologists who were truly Marxists would need to give up, and frame no theories at all. They'd simply have to go back to being mere stamp collectors, and descriptive naturalists.

Good luck with that, you Commies. tongue.gif

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Sun 5th December 2010, 8:37pm) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 15th June 2010, 9:00am) *

Raising this back to consciousness for the sake of current discussions on the http://p10.alfaservers.com/pipermail/cpov_listcultures.org/.

My 2 Cents —

QUOTE

What's Up the Sleeve of the Invisible Hand?

It's a natural human tendency, when faced with overwhelming complexity, to wish it all away with some radically simplifying belief or mythology. That would be my guess as to why the Myth of the Invisible Hand is every bit as popular on the Internet today as Jolly Old Saint Nick and visions of sugar-plums <feel free to insert your local color here> are in the fantasies of pre-critical children.

That is probably why variations on the theme of Adam Smith's “Invisible Hand” are such frequent topics of discussion at The Wikipedia Review. Against that backdrop I personally find that the best resource for trying to understand the conversion of ethical motives into economic motors lies in the work of Max Weber, beginning with his analysis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.



Gee, I'm glad you reposted this, since it gives me the chance to say "bullshit". I think the idea of the above, is that Adam Smith is literally worshipped, primarily by right-wing God-fearing conservatives, who equate the evolutionary behavior of markets with the Protestant Ethic, and are therefore somehow "anti-progressive," inasmuch as this helps them deny giant capitalist conspiracies. Which, in turn, ironically take the place of "Intelligent Design" in the sphere of left wing economics.

This debate on the biological side goes back at least to Darwin's deliberately reading Adam Smith when he was trying to work out his idea of "apparent top-down design by means of bottom-up uncomplicated simple behavior." Thus "explaining" why the natural world appears designed, without actually being designed. And at the same time "explaining" why honeybees, ants, and beavers all look like they earnestly display the Protestant Ethic of accumulation for accumulation's sake, which Protestants have long taken to be a Providentally-assigned behavior, which stands as symbolical on its own. Consider the number of honeybees and ants that populate protestant sermons.

When in fact, all these creatures are none of them ethical, moral, foresighted, religious, thrifty, or even "industrious vs. lazy" in the way we understand these terms. They simply behave as their genes tell them too, end of story. The result appears vaguely capitalistic, because in many environments, only accumulation far past present consuption levels, will allow future survival.

Consider the squirrel as capitalist, mindlessly collecting more acorns than it can ever eat that year. We now know that forgotten caches of nuts sprouting later, play an important role in the dispersion of trees, even though what squirrels do, is surely not for the benefit of oaks. It's almost like some invisible hand helping oaks along, though. ermm.gif ohmy.gif

If we could ask squirrels, surely that's the way THEY would justify it all — no? wacko.gif

As I've noted, Marx, during Darwin's lifetime, agreed with Darwin about the struggle between creatures to survive, as well as the amoral barbarity of the natural world. But Marx went on to accuse Darwin of simply recreating, in his theory, the economic underpinnings of his own English society. In other words, Marx held the Darwin was wrong, simply because his theory of "apparent design" in biology was too much like Smith's "apparent design" in macro-economics, which in turn Marx thought was wrong. Because macroeconomics was instead due to Marx's own "designing deity": class-struggle and the intelligent actions of (evil) self-interested capitalists.

But this is just one more instance of the dishonesty of Marx. He himself was a thorough-going atheist. Saying Darwin was wrong about where species came from, puts Marx under the intellectual obligation to say where instead they DO come from, and doing it without invoking a giant design conspiracy. He doesn't, and can't, do any such thing. Obviously Darwin is correct about nature, unless you want a God to do it. The cognitive dissonance would doubtless have been too much for Marx to admit that. Because as it is, Marx is left without any answers at all. Truly Marxist biologists would have to give up and frame no theories at all. They'd simply need to go back to being mere stamp collectors and descriptive naturalists.

Good luck with that, you Commies. tongue.gif


huh.gif Huh?

All I did was suggest a reading of Max Weber as an antidote to certain liturgies of popular mystification, spawned by cynical exploiters of Adam Smith in much the same way that all manner of inhumanities are spawned by certain cults of Bible-thumpers. But those inhumanities arise from the hearts of the book-thumpers in question, not necessarily from their authors' intentions, existent or otherwise.

I have no interest in misplaced biological metaphors like social darwinism, so let's not muddy the waters with patent nonsense like that.

Jon dry.gif

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Da Capo …

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Mon 2nd March 2009, 8:58am) *

Dialogue Concerning The Two World Systems —

http://web.archive.org/web/20080714174450/http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/quotes.htm#jump2.

J₪N

My Favourites —

QUOTE

The rich … divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal proportions among all its inhabitants.

— Adam Smith (1759), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part IV Chapter 1



QUOTE

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

— Adam Smith (1759), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I Section I Chapter I



Available on Virtually Simulated Gold Plaques for a Nominal Donation of £1,000,000 Each — Get Both for Only £1,999,999 !!! — Brought to You by the Loving Hands and Expert Craftsmanship of the Madoff Mint.

J₪N



Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Returning to this topic for the sake of a discussion on http://www.policymic.com/.

http://www.policymic.com/profiles/258/chris-miller • http://www.policymic.com/articles/america-needs-evolution-not-revolution

Jon Image

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ 14 Oct 2011)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-geX7D4hgM

There are few things the mainscream media loves better than a granfallon, and there is no bigger granfalloon than the motley crew of accidental pilgrims they lump together as baby boomers.

What I keep saying about class identity applies as well to generation identity. If you really believe that “[your] parents’ generation is battling to preserve a system that no longer works and are unwilling to make any sacrifices to fix it”, then you need to look around at the folks your age. You'll find that just as many of them affect that Ruling Class mentality, that Last Generation (après moi le déluge) presumption as any other age in history.

So watch out for that …

— http://www.policymic.com/profile/show?id=1110 • http://www.policymic.com/article/show?id=2012#comment-22967