Capitalism at play
Politics and economics - what is the relation? The association of men. And, as Aristotle pointed out so many years ago, the first, irreducible, irreplacable and unforgettable reason that men associate is in order to trade goods - to exchange value for value, each in pursuit of his own life, his own ends, his own purposes. And the ultimate, civilize medium of human interaction is: money.
"For it is not two doctors that associate for exchange, but a doctor and a farmer, or in general people who are different and unequal; but these must be equated. This is why all things that are exhanged must be somehow comparable. it is for this end that money has been introduced, and it becomes in a sense an intermediate; for it measures all things, and therefore the excess and the defect - how many shoes are equal to a house or to a given amount of food. The number of shoes exchanged for a house [or for a given amount of food] must therefore correspond to the ratio of builder to shoemaker.
"For if this be not so, there will be no exchange and no intercourse. And this proportion will not be effected unless the goods are somehow equal. All goods must therefore be measued by some one thing, as we said before. Now this unit is in truth demand, which holds all things together (for if men did not need one another’s goods at all, or did not need them equally, there would be either no exchange or not the same exchange); but money has become by convention a sort of representative of demand …" (Nicomachean Ethics, 1133a17-b)
With this in mind (retrospectively), I visited Wall Street in NYC, and saw the New York Stock Exchange,
with some great sculptural detail of Men at work:
And of course, the greatest bovid of them all:
(Although, as a bovid afficionado, I must point out two major anatomical flaws: our dear Market Bull basically has horse hooves, and to my knowledge no bovid (or cervid - deer - which are very closely related) has upper incisors. Most certainly not Bos taurus, the standard cow, which this is presumably based on. Ah, the license of art :o). Without the horns, who knows where a cladist would classify this critter!)
In the vicinity was Federal Hall, the place where George Washington took the Oath of Office:
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The Carnival of the Capitalists
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Trackback by The Business of America is Business — September 3, 2006 @ 12:45 pm
Carnival of Liberty no. 61
Welcome to the sixty-first edition of the Carnival of Liberty. This is a round-up of blog postings on topics of interest to the Life, Liberty, Property (LLP) group. To skip to a particular set of posts, you can use this…
Trackback by Quotulatiousness — September 5, 2006 @ 6:01 am
In which country do you live? :)
Comment by x — March 20, 2008 @ 1:34 pm