Capitalism’s Invisible Hand Doesn’t Generate Public Good

Source: Shutterstock

If you came into a windfall, would you be more enthusiastic about buying yourself something big or giving to charity? If honest, most of us would admit that buying ourselves something big would be the more motivating prospect. Direct benefit to ourselves is generally more motivating than distributed benefit to others.

Apply this to large institutions and you’re confronted with a fundamental feature of capitalism. In a competition between for-profit and non-profit campaigns, the for-profits have a motivational advantage. They’re buying themselves something big. Their campaigns reward directly. Wealthy individuals and corporations serving self-interest will generally prevail against non-profit campaigns in the public interest. A self-funding campaign beats a charity-funded campaign almost every time.

Libertarians recognize this. It's why they say that for-profits are so efficient. But efficient at what? Not promoting general welfare.

Read more >

Comments

George Carlin Explains How the System is Rigged | Video

George Carlin was more than just a comedian - he was an insightful social/political commentator as is demonstrated here. In this monologue from eight years ago, no punches are pulled, no sacred cows are exempt when he reveals the truth about the America we presently live in.

Schools Must Equip Students to Navigate Alt-right Websites That Push Fake News

More than 60 percent of America’s middle and high school students rely on alt-right internet sites as credible sources for their research papers. The students are using alt-right sites to write papers on topics that range from free speech and the Second Amendment to citizenship, immigration and the Holocaust. These were among the key findings of a preliminary survey of 200 teachers I conducted recently to develop a snapshot of how common it was for middle and high school students to turn to alt-right websites. As a researcher who specializes in teaching what is known as “ hard histories ,” including slavery, the Holocaust and other genocides, this finding is of concern, particularly as the nation approaches the one-year anniversary of the tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia . Who they are The alt-right is a connected set of far-right groups , beliefs and individual people . They believe in white supremacy, and that it is under attack by multiculturalism, ...

The World on a Billionaire's Budget

Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world. Reed Saxon/AP Photo By Andrew D. Hwang , College of the Holy Cross The world’s wealthiest are prospering. As of February 2017, there were about 2,000 billionaires in the world . This micro-elite controls over US$7.6 trillion , an increase of 18 percent from 2016. A billionaire’s spending power is difficult to grasp, both because most people do not correctly intuit large numbers , and because a billion dollars far outstrips most people’s experience. What does a household budget look like to a billionaire? To find out, let’s scale down a billionaire’s income to $50,000, the median American income , adjusting budget items proportionally. A year in the life of Joe Billionaire To start, we need to estimate a billionaire’s annual income. In the 30 years from 1987 to 2016, Bill and Melinda Gates amassed about $120 billion. This figure represents $80 billion in net worth and $40 bill...

Illusions Revolt!

Search This Blog