"The Invisible Foot" of "Self-Maximizing Man"... The worse things get for everyone else the better for them? Is that how "the economy" works?

> Many top billionaires have seen their wealth surge since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/08/349313/

#Billionaires #CovidBillionaires #InvisibleFoot of #EKHunt comes to mind....

> The economy, of course, is efficient but efficient only in providing misery.
--- Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel with E.K. Hunt

> ... He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible foot to promote...[misery]... By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes social misery more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
--- with apologies to Adam Smith

https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/www/books/3/3.htm#3.2.1

#EKHunt #MichaelAlbert #RobinHahnel #AdamSmith #EconomicsOfMisery #TheInvisibleHand #TheInvisibleFoot

Paperwork!
> The more significant the social cost imposed upon his neighbor, the greater will be his reward in... the orthodox assumption of #MaximizingMan that each man will create a maximum of social costs which he can impose on others... this process [is] "the invisible foot" of the #LaissezFaire ... market place. The "#InvisibleFoot" ensures us that in a #FreeMarket ... economy each person.. will.. do his part in maximizing the general public misery...
https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/www/books/3/3.htm#3.2.1
#EKHunt

Business Stuff doesn't make any sense till I remember the principle (maxim? another vile maxim?) of the "Invisible Foot" explained by E.K. Hunt.
> .. The "invisible foot" ensures us that in a free-market ... economy each person pursuing only his own good will automatically, and most efficiently, do his part in maximizing the general public misery.
- https://mstdn.jp/@bsmall2/108195742682747173
- https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/www/books/3/3.htm#3.2.1
#EKHunt #InvisibleFoot #BusinessStuff #WelfareEconomics #NeoLiberalEconomics #DismalProfession

.> Minamata disease was above all a disease of the spirit to which Japan succumbed as growth, money, material wealth come to be valued above the natural environment or humanity. Forgetting the basic principle that the purpose of economic activity is so that human society might flourish, MITI and the Economic Planning Agency decided that, even if a few people were to fall ill or die from mercury poisoning, corporations should be protected. The authorities in Minamata and some residents seemed to think that, even if a minority of people from the town had to be sacrificed to the disease, Chisso Corporation should be protected as the major employer in the town. The actions of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, that was supposed to protect the health and wellbeing of the people, and of the Environment Ministry, whose supposed rationale was the preservation of nature, including not only humans, cats and dogs, but fish and shellfish, birds, and all creatures, was inexplicable to ordinary citizens. Why, as soon as doubts were raised about the industrial effluent, did they not take steps to stop it? Why, sorry for not having warned people at an early stage and having failed to prevent more people from being infected, did they not make sincere efforts to help people? While they resorted to the excuse that there was nothing an individual official could do about it, the disease became rampant and enormous suffering and death was caused.

On FB #MoveToAmend passed on a tweet by #RoberReich about all the tax evasion by the super rich. I wouldn't have paid attention to it but some people I know got to discussing this news and it made me think about #EKHunt's #TheInvisibleFoot , #AdamSmith's values, a recent mastodon post, and #NoamChomsky's classic speach #DemocracyAndEducation
- Democracy And Education, speech by Noam Chomsky .pdf
- E.K. Hunt in on-line book Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics
- E.K. Hunt Mastodon tag (decent guy)
- E.K. Hunt James Buchanan tag (evil guy)

> .. The "invisible foot" ensures us that in a free-market ... economy each person pursuing only his own good will automatically, and most efficiently, do his part in maximizing the general public misery.
https://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/www/books/3/3.htm#3.2.1
#InvisibleFoot #PublicMisery #FreeMarkets #RobertDArge #EKHunt

> .. each man will soon discover that through contrivance he can impose external diseconomies on other men, knowing that the bargaining within the new market that will be established will surely make him better off. The more significant the social cost imposed upon his neighbor, the greater will be his reward in the bargaining process.. D'Arge and I have labeled this process "the invisible foot" of the laissez faire .. market place.
https://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/www/books/3/3.htm#3.2.1
#EKHunt #InvisibleFoot #LaisessFaire

> The darker side of market incentives has been neglected and underestimated. Two modern exceptions are Ralph d’Arge and E.K. Hunt, who coined the less famous but equally appropriate concept, “invisible foot” to describe the socially counter-productive behavior of foisting costs onto others that markets also promote.
https://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/htdocs/books/pareconv/Chapter3.htm
#EKHunt #InvisibleFoot #Market #Economics #ParEcon #ParticipatoryEconomics of #MichaelAlbert and #RobinHahnel

There should be a book with the title

The Big Attitudes directing the Invisible Feet: Billionaire Prop

It could explain away all the interviews and other events by Musk, Trump, Bezos, the Starbucks guy, the VIrgin Airlines guy and all these other people you want to ignore but they keep imposing themselves into your attention...

#EKHunt's #TheInvisibleFoot model for explaining markets just as well as the #InvisibleHand could tie the study together.

AI is Progress,
Progess is A LIe.

See #DavidNoble #ProgressWithoutPeople

There is always someone making decisions and choices somewhere, the magic words like progress, 'invisible hand' ( #EKHunt is more accurate with 'inivisibl foot', See #MichaelAlbert and #RobinHahnel's #QuietRevolutioninWelfareEconomics ), 'free markets' just hide the responsibility.