… is from page 286 of Kristian Niemietz’s excellent 2019 book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies:
[O]ur economic intuitions are a legacy of the tribal age. Most anti-capitalist arguments, then, no matter how much complex-sounding sociological jargon they may use, are really just sophisticated rationalisations of primitive urges.
DBx: ’tis true.
While the motives of those who plead for improving the economy consciously through the use of coercion exercised by an authority are often laudable – and while they sometimes couch their arguments in mathematics downright rococo in their complexity – all of these people assume that the modern economy is simply a scaled up tribal economy. They do not understand that modernity differs from the tribe categorically. The complexity of the modern economy is far too vast for primitive-brained humans – for that’s what we all are – to begin to comprehend and much less to consciously arrange to suit any of our fancies.
