Op-Ed
In America, We Do Not Apologize
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The Bull Market
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Remember your tenth birthday, when you had chocolate all over your face and you despaired because the chubby kid had a bigger piece of cake than you? The cake had your favorite radioactive Ninja Turtle on it, but one of your “classmates” (he wasn’t even your friend, but your mom knew his mom) took the piece of cake you wanted — the one that had Michelangelo’s nunchucks on it. Instead, someone handed you a piece with the turtle’s crotch.
This was a life lesson you would never forget. Everybody wants a piece of your cake, and, if you want to be really happy, you need to keep them from getting it.
Had you not had the tenth birthday party experience, you may have realized there is always someone wanting to eat your cake after reading self help’s The Secret (or better yet, watching the DVD). Long known only to great minds like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, not to mention Buddha and Martin Luther King (if you don’t believe me, watch it) and today’s renowned experts — personal transformation specialists, spiritual messengers, and feng shui masters — the secret is now out.
Materialism is happiness. And remember to keep in mind the “law of attraction,” which states you should stay away from negative energy. Like the Mother Teresas of the world making you feel bad for blowing off Habitat for Humanity to spend Spring Break over a toilet bowl. Instead, think of yourself: you’ve grown beyond the turtle’s crotch.
In fact, this theory has been a long-standing principle in great capitalist tradition. In another time, when slavery was the backbone of our economy, and the world was war-torn, Adam Smith, the Scottish “moral philosopher,” moralized (and I paraphrase), “if people screw each other over, this is best for everyone.”
As you may know from Econ 101, your fanatical Ayn Rand-loving uncle, or even the waiter in the film Dirty Dancing, who cites Rand’s The Fountainhead as a reason not to use birth control, this miraculous idea that self-interest is best for society is the result of an convenient “invisible hand.” This hand intercedes to pick up after our whipped-cream frosted avarice and assure that everything turns out for the best. Everything.
As students, many of us have already grasped this concept. Take those of us who wake up before six to be the first to register for classes. You set your clock to the atomic time; as the second hand reaches the hour, you keep clicking your mouse profusely. Acting out of economic self-interest (you know that if you wait too long, the easy professors will be taken), you get your classes, causing the system to crash and leaving the competition with Friday night labs.
Other examples abound: you may tell a peer you “think but aren’t sure” the midterm is Thursday when you know it’s on Wednesday. You say you gave more money for the bill than you did, or you tell her that you got very drunk last night and didn’t mean what you said, but she was great. Yes, you have what it takes to succeed in our world.
And thanks to the invisible hand, your actions will lead to the greater good that will “trickle down” upon the rest of us. Later, when you become a doctor or lawyer, you will help your friends who missed their midterm get the social services they need — at a slight discount, of course, to your usually-inflated charge.
In the past, the opposite ideology has destroyed our Great Nation. “Liberal” crusaders offered “handouts” to lazy people looking to steal our chocolate cake. These lazy people included poor children, people with disabilities, and old folks (ages fifty-five to John McCain).
Fortunately, today many are “seeing the hand” again. Economic policies are finally ensuring that the wealthy eat all their cake. The U.S. has more inequality than Burkina Faso and about a dozen or so other third world countries. (As a side note, the lowest inequality occurs in Scandinavian countries, where they also have really high life expectancies and really long maternity leave and really low crime). We all know that once the rich get exorbitantly wealthy enough, then the cake will finally trickle down to the poor. Although three hundred years of the invisible hand has proved otherwise, we may just be getting there.
It’s a dog eat dog world, and you need to do what you must to survive. Give the world your invisible finger. Flip them the bird. Don’t waste your time protesting injustice halfway across the world or bother recycling your paper. Go out tonight and hand in a stock paper from your fraternity instead. You’ll get an “A” either way. Have a good time, don’t think about the bill your parents (or society) is paying. Who needs free-trade coffee when it tastes the same? Save the pennies to buy more budget beer.
And when you finally graduate, you can continue working for the greater good through self-interested behavior. Ignore the propaganda of Barack Hussein Obama, who this past May advised graduates, “You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should. But I hope you don’t.” According to Barackonomics, “Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself.”
But deep down inside, you know you really want the Lamborghini promised you in The Secret. Obama-mania will fade, and the people of America will demand a return to those economic policies of Bush, Reagan and Caligula. Consider Adam Smith’s own take on who is truly poor. Smith states instead, “The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.” In short, don’t end up like the poor, and think neo-liberal.
What does it matter if Smith also encouraged us to “feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections” and cautioned that, “no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” A Lamborghini is fast.
Dmitri Koustas is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He can be contacted at dkoustas@cornellsun.com. The Bull Market will appear alternate Thursdays this semester.
Which do you prefer?
Two countries consist of two people each. In one country, one person makes $1 a year and the other $1.10 a year. In the other country, one person makes $30,000 a year and the other makes $300,000 a year. There's more "inequality" in the second country.
It doesn't mean anything to say "The U.S. has more inequality than Burkina Faso and about a dozen or so other third world countries." Third world countries are on different scales.
"As you may know from Econ
"As you may know from Econ 101, your fanatical Ayn Rand-loving uncle, or even the waiter in the film Dirty Dancing, who cites Rand’s The Fountainhead as a reason not to use birth control, this miraculous idea that self-interest is best for society is the result of an convenient “invisible hand.” This hand intercedes to pick up after our whipped-cream frosted avarice and assure that everything turns out for the best. Everything."
I think you need to reread The Fountainhead, if you even read it to begin with.
"Other examples abound: you may tell a peer you “think but aren’t sure” the midterm is Thursday when you know it’s on Wednesday. You say you gave more money for the bill than you did, or you tell her that you got very drunk last night and didn’t mean what you said, but she was great. Yes, you have what it takes to succeed in our world."
There's a difference between acting in your own self-interest and being a dishonest cheat. Howard Roark acted in his own self-interest in The Fountainhead by not compromising his own ideals and creativity. This is a far cry from your examples above.
The two comments above
The two comments above completely miss the point. The author is being facetious, showing that Adam Smith's principle of the "invisible hand" is often misconstrued narrowly to justify selfish behavior, whether in the marketplace (i.e. unfettered capitalism) or in a neo-Social Darwinism. As a result, in pursuing only a personal happiness, we lose sight of what is truly important. Excellent column with many good (and humorous) points, I look forward to reading more.