ON GREED CF NYT EMPATHY

"Our greatest problem, I believe--echoing Tocqueville--is one of mores and values.  Greed has created a new elite, with tremendous consequences, and greed reigns unchallenged.  Associations, which Tocqueville thought so important in American political life, remain very powerful today--but nearly all the most powerful ones are on the right.  Half a century ago the NAACP and the AFL-CIO were perhaps the two most powerful lobbies in Washington.  Today they do not remotely compare to the NRA, AIPAC, the network of groups funded by the Koch brothers, or the Chamber of Commerce...." DK

 

Interestingly enough, back in 1776, when Adam Smith published The Wealth Of Nations,  he held, I believe, a chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow. His name has become associated with a doctrine, laissez faire, which had been articulated earlier by others.

 

Individual greed, unrestrained by corrupt and degenerate monarchic and aristocratic government interference, was considered a moral, and not merely an economic, virtue.

Hume was refused such a post, up there, at that time.

Smith was an advocate for empathy. Perhaps that is where the NYT recently took the concept from....

Here is my recent post on their article:

"EMPATHY RATIONALITY

'Does empathy guide or hinder moral action?'

I don't have to actually read the article....

Where do they get people willing to write pap like this?"

 

This is the NYT's recent plunge into what DK calls mores and values, though they have the other foot firmly planted on shore in the Smithian tradition of laissez faire and 'greed is good for you', and moral for you, at the same time!