You can’t see the Smithian invisible hand because it doesn’t exist.
Gods or spooks?
Indeed, reminds me of several things ‘the velvet fist in an iron glove’ metaphor of American domestic and foreign diplomacy, policy (read: economic).
Of course, blind faith keeps one in blinders and from seeing the Red Right Hand…
All money is a matter of belief.
~Adam Smith
So are other things, when all belief is codified into the cupidity of the mighty dollar…
In Mammon We Trust:

The nations are not bodies-politic alone, but also souls-politic; and woe to that people which, seeking the material only, forgets that it has a soul. Then we have a race, petrified in dogma, which presupposes the absence of a soul and the presence only of memory and instinct, or demoralized by lucre. Such a nature can never lead civilization. Genuflexion before the idol or the dollar atrophies the muscle which walks and the will which moves. Hieratic or mercantile absorption diminishes the radiance of a people, lowers its horizon by lowering its level, and deprives it of that understanding of the universal aim, at the same time human and divine, which makes the missionary nations. A free people, forgetting that it has a soul to be cared for, devotes all its energies to its material advancement. If it makes war, it is to subserve its commercial interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly, and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes, of monstrous opulence and monstrous misery; all the enjoyment to a few, all the privations to the rest, that is to say, to the people; Privilege, Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from Labor itself: a false and dangerous situation, which, making Labor a blinded and chained Cyclops, in the mine, at the forge, in the workshop, at the loom, in the field, over poisonous fumes, in miasmatic cells, in unventilated factories, founds public power upon private misery, and plants the greatness of the State in the suffering of the individual. It is a greatness ill constituted, in which all the material elements are combined, and into which no moral element enters. If a people, like a star, has the right of eclipse, the light ought to return. The eclipse should not degenerate into night.

Ive left the author and the work out deliberately.
Discuss 😉

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 24 2007 22:46 utc | 3

you all may have seen this last summer – but in light of Bolton’s claim that he argued against a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel – a video – To Lebanon With Love
http:///
To Lebanon With Love
I cannot watch it without crying, but I bet Bolton can.

Posted by: Susan | Mar 25 2007 0:07 utc | 5

@Juannie #6
There seems to be an intrinsic characteristic of Homo Sapiens that manifest simultaneously as a death wish and a reach-for-the-stars propellant.
Indeed, Octavio Paz calls it the subconscious war between the libido and the death instinct. However, this psychological dynamism is all the more complicated also, by the waring factions of the conscious, subconscious, unconscious and the superego.
Humanity is conflict, civilization in collective neurosis.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 25 2007 2:53 utc | 7

b:
Perhaps the one who turned your attention to Adam Smith was Bill Moyers?
A Time For Anger, A Call To Action
Moyers quotes Time :

When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it is ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price and most of them never see it coming. This is what happens if you don’t contribute to their campaigns or spend generously on lobbying. You pick up a disproportionate share of America’s tax bill. You pay higher prices for a broad range of products from peanuts to prescriptions. You pay taxes that others in a similar situation have been excused from paying. You’re compelled to abide by laws while others are granted immunity from them. You must pay debts that you incur while others do not. You’re barred from writing off on your tax returns some of the money spent on necessities while others deduct the cost of their entertainment. You must run your business by one set of rules, while the government creates another set for your competitors. In contrast, the fortunate few who contribute to the right politicians and hire the right lobbyists enjoy all the benefits of their special status. Make a bad business deal; the government bails them out. If they want to hire workers at below market wages, the government provides the means to do so. If they want more time to pay their debts, the government gives them an extension. If they want immunity from certain laws, the government gives it. If they want to ignore rules their competition must comply with, the government gives its approval. If they want to kill legislation that is intended for the public, it gets killed.

Then delivers your money line :

Looking backwards, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. What has been happening to working people is not the result of Adam Smith’s invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious literalism opposed to any civil and human right that threaten its paternalism, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us.

Then delivers that same ole, same ole, dreadfully boring, tried and true answer :

What’s to be done?
The only answer to organized money is organized people.
Again:
The only answer to organized money is organized people.
And again:
The only answer to organized money is organized people.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 25 2007 7:46 utc | 9

from Moyers: a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us.

While some people still prattle endlessly about political labels, liberals & such, there was a great paragraph in Jan. edition of Pelosi’s local rag stating that she had put on House Banking & Finance Comm. x-Dem. members from districts that are large & will have tightly contested races for re-election requiring beaucoup bucks. So, children, is there any question whose interests these Congresscritters are to represent should they wish to keep their jobs? After all, she could have packed the committe w/the few folks who actually care to represent us, but can you imagine what the Wall St. Propaganda Apparatus (NYT, WaPo, et al) would have said had she appointed instead Barbara Lee, Kucinich, etc…

Posted by: jj | Mar 25 2007 8:37 utc | 11

jj, this seems like a bah-ah-ah-ad idea.
On the other hand, sheep that are genetically altered to create viable organs to transplant into their human dna donors is a positive step towards keeping us peeps alive, albeit at the demise of the sheep.
Rich topic for comment and lampooning, this is a quantum step past philosophical debate re: who should get the resource revenues (people vs. people) to who should get the free organ transplants.
Larry Niven wrote some SF books about a society where organ donation came from criminals, and what happens in that scenario is that crime becomes legislated downward to the absurd point that jaywalking costs you a kidney, or so.
The upside is better medicine and health for us all (humans) but the ethical concerns are mighty.
Thanks for the link.

Posted by: jonku | Mar 25 2007 10:32 utc | 13

Just because it’s invisible doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The thing is tho, It only ‘exists’ in a competitive system. Doesn’t make any difference in a controlled economy like the nost successful country in the world today. ie. Communist China. The ‘invisible hand’ does work tho, in the shark tank that is so called free enterprise. When there are no more little fish to eat, they eat each other. And then????

Posted by: pb | Mar 25 2007 16:48 utc | 15

Adam Smith is reviled or venerated (depending on one’s point of view) as the father of laissez-faire capitalism. In fact, laissez-faire came along after Smith.
Ol’ uncle Adam was against the British mercantile system of state monoplies and guilds, which he found to distort and disrupt the functioning of the Market.
He believed that the state had a vital role to in a nation’s economy play: namely to ensure that markets function for the benefit of the populace, not vice-versa.
The modern equivalent of the British East India Company or the old trade guilds are companies like Bechtel, Halliburton, Boeing or Northrup-Grumman.
These corporations have little or nothing conection to the functionings of a “free market”, rather, they enjoy all the freedoms and benefits of a market corporation while possessing a status as de-facto government-sponsored monopolies.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 25 2007 17:06 utc | 17

On Israel, America and AIPAC
By George Soros

.
The case against those who disagree with Israel’s current policy is spelled out in detail by Alvin H. Rosenfeld in a pamphlet published by the American Jewish Committee.[3] After reviewing the rise of new anti-Semitic currents, particularly in the Muslim world and Europe, Rosenfeld equates anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism and asserts that Jewish critics of Israeli policies reinforce both. He acknowledges that criticism by itself is not anti-Semitic; indeed, he writes, “the biblical prophets stood on the side of justice and were never hesitant to denounce their people’s behavior when they saw it deviating from the standards of justice.” But, he contends, “to condemn Israeli actions and, at the same time, to forego any realistic historical and political frameworks that might account for such actions” is not acceptable. The use of “exaggerated and defamatory terms,” he writes, renders Israel indistinguishable from the “despised country regularly denounced by the most impassioned anti-Semites.”
To call Israel a Nazi state…or to accuse it of South African–style apartheid rule or engaging in ethnic cleansing or wholesale genocide goes well beyond legitimate criticism.
To talk about victims turning into aggressors falls in his view in the same category.
To buttress his case, Rosenfeld examines the writings of a number of critics. In particular, he focuses on a collection of essays whose authors, in his own judgment, make Noam Chomsky appear as an “almost conservative thinker,” but the list also includes Tony Judt, a distinguished historian, whose crime consists of suggesting a possible binational solution for Israel, and Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, who wrote, among other things, that the “sanest choice for Israel is to pull back to defensible—but hardly injurious—borders” and to get out “of most of the West Bank”—a policy often advocated in Israel itself. Rosenfeld resorts, without any personal knowledge of the people he attacks, to primitive accusations of self-hatred, lumping all these critics together as people who are “proud to be ashamed to be Jews.” He concludes that “the cumulative effect of these hostile ideas, which have been moving steadily from the margins to the mainstream of ‘progressive’ opinion, has been to reenergize ugly ideas and aggressive passions long considered dormant, if not dead,” i.e., anti-Semitism.
Rosenfeld’s argument suffers from at least three elementary errors in reasoning. The first is guilt by association. The fact that constructive critics of Israel say things that, when taken out of context or paraphrased in provocative ways, can be made to sound similar to the comments of anti-Semites does not make them anti-Semitic or supporters of anti-Semitism in any way. Second, there is a lack of factual evidence. Are the expressions used by the critics really “exaggerated and defamatory”? That depends on the facts. What is the more appropriate term, “Israel’s still incomplete security fence” or “an Apartheid Wall?” That can be determined only by considering the actual impact the wall is having on the lives of the Palestinians, a subject ignored by Rosenfeld and AIPAC.
Third, the professed respect for criticism is a sham when it is not permitted “to condemn Israeli actions and, at the same time, to forego any realistic historical and political frameworks that might account for such actions.” As presented by Rosenfeld, this formula implies that Israel’s actions have to be justified, right or wrong. The appeal to a “realistic framework” aims to rationalize the Israeli position. Criticism ought to be considered on its merits and not by any other yardstick. Suppressing criticism when it is deemed to be unpatriotic has been immensely harmful both in the case of Israel and the United States. It has allowed the Bush administration and the Sharon/ Olmert government to pursue disastrous policies
….
AIPAC is protected not only by the fear of personal retaliation but also by a genuine concern for the security and survival of Israel. Both considerations have a solid foundation in reality. The same two factors were at play in the United States after September 11 when President Bush declared war on terror. For eighteen months thereafter it was considered unpatriotic to criticize his policies. That is what allowed him to commit one of the greatest blunders in American history, the invasion of Iraq. But at that time the threat to our national security was greatly exaggerated by the Bush administration. Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney went so far as to warn that the threat would manifest itself in the form of a mushroom cloud. In the case of Israel today the threat to national security, even national survival, is much more real. Israel needs the support of the United States more than ever. Is this the right time to expose AIPAC’s heavy influence in American politics? I believe this consideration holds back many people who are critical of the way AIPAC conducts its business. While the other architects of the Bush administration’s failed policies have been relentlessly exposed, AIPAC continues to be surrounded by a wall of silence.
…
But now I have to ask the question: How did Israel become so endangered? I cannot exempt AIPAC from its share of the responsibility. I am a fervent advocate of critical thinking. I have supported dissidents in many countries. I took a stand against President Bush when he said that those who don’t support his policies are supporting the terrorists. I cannot remain silent now when the pro-Israel lobby is one of the last unexposed redoubts of this dogmatic way of thinking. I speak out with some trepidation because I am exposing myself to further attacks that are likely to render me less effective in pursuing many other causes in which I am engaged; but dissidents I have supported have taken far greater risks.
I am not sufficiently engaged in Jewish affairs to be involved in the reform of AIPAC; but I must speak out in favor of the critical process that is at the heart of our open society. I believe that a much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can’t make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC. Palestine is a place of critical importance where positive change is still possible. Iraq is largely beyond our control; but if we succeeded in settling the Palestinian problem we would be in a much better position to engage in negotiations with Iran and extricate ourselves from Iraq. The need for a peace settlement in Palestine is greater than ever. Both for the sake of Israel and the United States, it is highly desirable that the Saudi peace initiative should succeed; but AIPAC stands in the way. It continues to oppose dealing with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas.
Whether the Democratic Party can liberate itself from AIPAC’s influence is highly doubtful. Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC’s influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it. But this is not possible without first disposing of the most insidious argument put forward by the defenders of the current policies: that the critics of Israel’s policies of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and Gaza engender anti-Semitism.
The opposite is the case. One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of silence that has protected AIPAC would help lay them to rest. A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it.
Anticipating attacks, I should like to emphasize that I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel’s policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel’s policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby’s success in suppressing divergent views.

Posted by: annie | Mar 25 2007 18:55 utc | 19

Holy moly ! Did you guys and gals catch this little tidbit with regards to the 5th Amendment Republican Monica Goodling?

Goodling is a 1999 graduate of Regent University “Law” School. Regent University was founded in 1978 by Pat Robertson. She graduated from law school in 1999?! And she’s already the senior counsel to the Attorney General of the United States?! She must be one spectacular fucking lawyer to have such a short resume yet such an exalted status.

Laura Rozen at War and Piece has a bit more…
Another Harriet Myers? Another stealthy planted Influential reconstruction dominionist?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 27 2007 5:17 utc | 21