I understand the ideology behind the idea of a self-regulating market, but it’s exactly that – an ideology. If the market could actually self-regulate, we wouldn’t need any regulation – people would do the honorable thing, people wouldn’t take advantage of others, and greed would disappear.
Apparently, you don’t understand the self-regulating market. It isn’t about “honor”, “not taking advantage” and lack of “greed” at all, it’s about whether or not people pursuing their own self-interest benefits society as a whole, specifically as it pertains to that society’s standard of living in a material sense. It’s an empirical question that is resolved by looking at the respective economies of, say, Hong Kong and Zimbabwe. Where would you rather live? Where is the market more important in orienting the activities of people day-to-day?
“Greed” is a constant in human life, much as Gordon Gekko said. The only people who aren’t “greedy” are people who are dead. If your ideal society is a society without “greed”, I suggest you are most likely to find it at your local cemetary.
Do people learn nothing from the study of history or does it just seem that way to me?
