Professional Documents
Culture Documents
We're just awakening to the many flaws in the naive notion that
money need only be accountable to itself. Adam Smith, the father of
free enterprise, would be appalled at the way we've allowed money to
run amok, converting the pursuit of financial returns into a secular
idolatry. He envisioned not financial markets but an engaged human
ity as the animating force through which the pursuit of private gain
becomes a public virtue. Although global capital markets certainly
display an uncanny capacity to seek out profitable investments world
wide, that search has left in its wake grotesque social inequities, op
pressive political systems, and environmental tragedies. That's why, I
suspect, Smith advocated a genuinely self-designed system operating
through what he called "the invisible hand." Only a people- based sys
tem was, he felt, capable of reflecting the complexity of motivation,
aspiration, and purpose that make humans so uniquely human. The
eighteenth-century moral philosopher of considerable repute pub
lished his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, which predates by sev
enteen years his more famous text, The Wealth of Nations. Both books
make it clear that he favored a community-scale system based on per
sonal decisions informed by what he called "human sympathies."
We're just awakening to the many flaws in the naive notion that
money need only be accountable to itself. Adam Smith, the father of
free enterprise, would be appalled at the way we've allowed money to
run amok, converting the pursuit of financial returns into a secular
idolatry. He envisioned not financial markets but an engaged human
ity as the animating force through which the pursuit of private gain
becomes a public virtue. Although global capital markets certainly
display an uncanny capacity to seek out profitable investments world
wide, that search has left in its wake grotesque social inequities, op
pressive political systems, and environmental tragedies. That's why, I
suspect, Smith advocated a genuinely self-designed system operating
through what he called "the invisible hand." Only a people- based sys
tem was, he felt, capable of reflecting the complexity of motivation,
aspiration, and purpose that make humans so uniquely human. The
eighteenth-century moral philosopher of considerable repute pub
lished his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, which predates by sev
enteen years his more famous text, The Wealth of Nations. Both books
make it clear that he favored a community-scale system based on per
sonal decisions informed by what he called "human sympathies."
We're just awakening to the many flaws in the naive notion that
money need only be accountable to itself. Adam Smith, the father of
free enterprise, would be appalled at the way we've allowed money to
run amok, converting the pursuit of financial returns into a secular
idolatry. He envisioned not financial markets but an engaged human
ity as the animating force through which the pursuit of private gain
becomes a public virtue. Although global capital markets certainly
display an uncanny capacity to seek out profitable investments world
wide, that search has left in its wake grotesque social inequities, op
pressive political systems, and environmental tragedies. That's why, I
suspect, Smith advocated a genuinely self-designed system operating
through what he called "the invisible hand." Only a people- based sys
tem was, he felt, capable of reflecting the complexity of motivation,
aspiration, and purpose that make humans so uniquely human. The
eighteenth-century moral philosopher of considerable repute pub
lished his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, which predates by sev
enteen years his more famous text, The Wealth of Nations. Both books
make it clear that he favored a community-scale system based on per
sonal decisions informed by what he called "human sympathies."
We're just awakening to the many flaws in the naive notion that
money need only be accountable to itself. Adam Smith, the father of
free enterprise, would be appalled at the way we've allowed money to
run amok, converting the pursuit of financial returns into a secular
idolatry. He envisioned not financial markets but an engaged human
ity as the animating force through which the pursuit of private gain
becomes a public virtue. Although global capital markets certainly
display an uncanny capacity to seek out profitable investments world
wide, that search has left in its wake grotesque social inequities, op
pressive political systems, and environmental tragedies. That's why, I
suspect, Smith advocated a genuinely self-designed system operating
through what he called "the invisible hand." Only a people- based sys
tem was, he felt, capable of reflecting the complexity of motivation,
aspiration, and purpose that make humans so uniquely human. The
eighteenth-century moral philosopher of considerable repute pub
lished his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, which predates by sev
enteen years his more famous text, The Wealth of Nations. Both books
make it clear that he favored a community-scale system based on per
sonal decisions informed by what he called "human sympathies."
In the same way that you cannot take apart a cell and find its life
force, both markets and democracies defy easy dissection. Their ro
bustness will always remain a mystery, perhaps best known by their
absence. Yet with a policy environment that evokes the proper
breadth and depth of relationships, markets and democracies provide
a container that can hold the human experience like no other system
yet devised. Having worked in some thirty countries, I know it when
I feel it. And also when I don't. Oftentimes, it makes me want to kiss
the tarmac when my plane touches down on U.S. soil. Although we
don't yet have it quite right, we've got it a lot less wrong than most.
Capitalism as a Conversation
Democratic Capitalism: