Part 3 of a Discussion of Peter Foster’s Why We Bite the Invisible Hand Chapter 12 “Homer Economicus” Foster asserts that anti-capitalists have long feared that people’s desire to raise their standard of living would devolve into envy-driven conspicuous consumption that would trump virtue. (p. 264) Related to this criticism…
Tag: Consumerism
Why We Bite the Invisible Hand
Bernard Mandeville’s Dark Take on Commerce and the Persistence of Flawed Ideas
Part 2 of a Discussion of Peter Foster’s Why We Bite the Invisible Hand Chapter 6 “Tuesdays with Mandeville” As introduced in the last blog, Bernard Mandeville pioneered writing about the hypocrisy he thought was endemic to commerce that was a conversation happily continued by many to follow. Foster dives…
Why We Bite the Invisible Hand
Penning Hypocrisy: Writers Making Money Criticizing Capitalism
Part 1 of a Discussion of Peter Foster’s Why We Bite the Invisible Hand Chapter 6 “Tuesdays with Mandeville” Foster is tracing anti-capitalist thought across many writers of the West, and in this chapter he hits one I had not heard of: Bernard Mandeville who was born in 1670 in…