I have to admit you're beyond me in much of what you've thought about in this subject, William. For example, I'm not familiar with Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"; and the distinction between equality of "condition" and of "opportunity" is far from clear to me.
Still, what I can see is that you tend to announce condemnations based on what philosophers call the "reification of abstractions", and an assumption of uniformity of performance within that imaginary entity. I'll give two examples. You say: "America has come to despise the old fashioned sense of morality and ethics, the real and visible hand, when it comes to the implementation of capitalist economics. Now it's proper to only follow the money, care about the money, ignore values that any society needs, and claim that unfettered self-interest is the only true and impartial way to manage wealth." When I first began to go abroad I was startled, aghast, and then angered by the assumption that "America" was a single, monolithic, homogeneous thing. Our publishing house had an author who regularly began observations with, "Like all Americans, youb&" She was a "successful" author, with large sales that were important to us because we were a small house just beginning to grow. It would hurt us financially if I were to alienate her. Nevertheless I wrote her, "Some Americans are smart and some are dumb, some are educated and some are ignorant, some vicious and some virtuous, some bigots and some devoted to human rights. The one thing we aren't is ALIKE." I reject assertions that begin, "America has come tob&", and I deny that any of the accusations in your paragraph above describe the way our capitalist publishing house did business. We rejected potentially profitable books we felt were "morally" deleterious, and we went ahead with the publication of books we were "warned" would bring dire repercussions upon us. And we certainly published books we felt deserved publication but which we knew would lose money. Once, we sold the Japanese language rights of one of our books to a Tokyo publisher, and we sent the authors their share of the advance. Three years later, that house sent us a large check for additional royalty-earnings. But by then the writers had split up and effectively disappeared. We took righteous pleasure in tracking them down so we could send them their share. Over time, as I came to understand our complicated industry-standard author-contracts more, I revised ours. I concede I took delight in watching agents squinting at the revisions, working to discern what new advantage I was trying to sneak in. In fact the revisions were largely devoted to eliminating contractually allowed intricate devices a publisher might cunningly use -- to the great detriment of authors. Throughout those years we, largely unprompted, increased the benefits to our employees. In sum, your assertion, "America has come to despise the old fashioned sense of morality and ethics," is false and nasty. The second example of reification I deny is this: "The inherent concept of capitalism ignores and actually discredits that idea of an overarching morality." There is no "THE inherent concept of capitalism". Whenever any speaker starts out saying, "I am now going talk about THE concept ofb&" you can know he is going to be wrong. Just think of how many "concepts" of "art" this forum has heard. None was THE concept, because (claim I) concepts are mental entities, and they are as various as the mental apparatuses and assorted experiences of the people who entertain them. To insinuate that all "capitalists" are the same is flatly wrong.
