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capitalism is fascinating if we overlook how ugly it is in general. The human race is an ugly race. Human behavior over the past two thousand yars ain't pretty. And into this ugly world emerges capitalism.
Capitalistic behaviors are behaviors engaged in in the world by these ugly persons of the human species/race. Once you consider the circumstances you see that the phenomena of capapitalism are neither bad nor good.
What are capapitalist behaviors? Capitalist behaviors are certain behaviors of individuals within capitalism. What is the nature of these behaviors? Can we clarify? They have as a goal the making of money ----- that phrase is itself vernacular, and crude, of course. If not ugly.
Now, when these persons do what is called making money, what are they doing? This is the kind of question that a real scholarly study concerned with the subject matter of economics would pose but that is not what universities do. When they engage in he scholarly study of economics, they continue instead to study the wrong thing.
By the way, I know that Austrian economics, which I just said some negative things about, does, in the person of its seminal figure Hayek actually enqu8ire in this way. I don't like the answers he gets, but I do admit that Hayek did ask about this.
ReplyDeleteHa Joon Chang at Cambridge says he finds Hayek somewhat interesting, so I should distinguish between Hayek and his very, very low quality disciples or followers if that is what these guys are called. Anyway, I certainly do NOT agree with Hayek in any way. But it is true that Hayek asked about what motivates human economic behavior and human behavior in general. No, I don't like the answer but he seems to be asking the right question.