DAVID SOLWAY: Life in the Biodome: Capitalism for All Its Shortcomings Has Found a Way to Work with Human Nature. “I could not help reflecting that the biodome was in a certain sense a metaphorical surrogate for Western civilization, evolving through a long history of trial and error into a comparative haven for its cultural and national species. It provided a favorable environment for human flourishing, bestowing a degree of shelter, sustenance, leisure and freedom never before seen for those who would otherwise have found themselves in a state of nature where life, as Thomas Hobbes famously wrote in Leviathan, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The Greeks gave us the idea of the sovereign human mind and the Judeo-Christian nexus bequeathed the idea of the infinitely precious human soul. These gifts were the materials from which the biodome of the West was gradually assembled.”

Interesting piece, well worth your time.

I’ve always thought of capitalism as the non-system system, where people have enough political and economic elbow room to set up their own little systems inside of it.