This version of the American Dream, as I understand it, is that if we just turn loose the benevolent dictators of business, they will generate jobs and opportunities aplenty to make us all rich.  Unfortunately, time and again the dream proves to be  something like another opiate for the masses; only a few benefit, for a wide variety of reasons.  We can rarely have a reasonable discussion on the subject, however–true believers never believe they’re unfettered enough, and have an ugly habit of blaming all sorts of things when the utopia never arrives.

Is this world view any less naive than, say, the stereotypical (and largely mythical) ideals they attribute to the “hippies” of the ’60s?  They believe so, confident they’re the worldly voices of reason.  Where more traditional Utopian “wackos” dream of a future, this sort is always harkening back to a past, a rose-colored sense of good old days.  As near as I can pin it down, these periods were when robber barons strode the earth, and the other 99% of us fought for their scraps.  That is, the vision seems no more realistic.

Coincidentally, this crowd talks of religion a lot, and tends to regard Darwin as something stuck to the bottom of one’s shoe.  Yet they think society should be organized around The Market, and really believe in social Darwinism.  All of life is marketing, and you namby-pambys should be hustling sales 24/7.

Since this world view centers around competition, I’m surprised it seems to forget how humans react to this activity.  A few may remember and implement their Sunday School lessons; others will throw tantrums, many more will do anything to “win.”  Ethics tend to become situational, an “all’s fair…” sort of thing.  Then there’s always the temptation (usually taken) to “game the system”:  see myriad high finance scandals, Savings & Loan debacles of the ’80s, current mortgage and investment bank fiascoes, etc.

I’d like to think I’m a reasonable fella, and I’m just trying to figure this all out.  I believe in capitalism, albeit like Churchill believed in democracy–it seems to be the best we can do, but it can always be better.   I don’t mind trying my hand at the private sector game, I just want fair rules evenly enforced.  I don’t play board games with hotheads who pull fast ones, and I resent CEOs who are rewarded for the same thing.

Yes, Virginia, there is a role for government; there’s just no way of avoiding institutional referees to keep the system honest.   The pendulum keeps swinging back and forth; like an insistent toddler, business rushes out the door, insisting “I can do it myself.”  Soon enough, they’re forced back to the comforting arms of government when they’ve proven they can’t quite trust the other children to play nicely.  The enabling regulators, on the other hand, can easily be persuaded to forget we just went through this and relax their rules.  With business safely reined in, sometimes they can’t help but over-regulate; not as often as folks claim, but ossified institutions are no good either.

I’ve run a small business for years, and I’m alternately amused and exasperated at the cycles (“fool me once…”).

In an attempt to get some of that “easy money” people keep going on about, I looked at one of many new trading markets out there:  Forex (a way to play the value of one foreign currency off another).  I’m amazed at the number and size of such things, where tens (or hundreds) of thousands of people are betting with computers.  And it’s truly the Wild West in some of these–they’re so new there’s virtually no oversight, and crooks and idiots abound.

The point is, fairly quickly on I discovered a vital fact:  as with most markets, it made no sense.  Developments that should objectively provide impetus for a move one way could easily result in just the opposite.  I was discouraged that no matter how much I “knew,” this game was probably always going to evade me.

A market is individuals, making decisions based on many things–but detached reason is not actually chief among them.  Each attempts to anticipate the others, in a compounding wave of behavior that can make lemmings look reasonable.   See “chaos theory,” etc.  My, humans can invent endless ways to play with numbers.

In such a milieu, a few prosper, many break even, more yet lose their shirt.  Of those that “win,” a tide eventually comes along they don’t handle, and they too go under.  If you’re fortunate enough to win for awhile–congrats, enjoy it while it lasts.   To ascribe more to it than that–as some do, fashioning political movements or quasi-religions–is surely making your silk purse from a sow’s ear.