Free Market, Competition, Profit, Loss

The Surplus-Value that a Good has acquired in the Labor process becomes Profit once it is sold.  On the other hand, if it is not sold, its Surplus-Value remains unactualized, so the investment in it is lost.  Thus, in a Free Market, consisting in Competition, there are both Profits and Losses, with the latter perhaps greater in the case of multiple competitors.  Thus, Free Market principles are inconsistent with both National Wealth-accumulation and the image of a 'rising tide lifting all boats.

Free Market, Competition, Advertising

Smith projects that the greatest weakness of a Free Market is its susceptibility to Monopoly.  Specifically, in his estimation, this Monopoly is of Supply.  Accordingly, his solution is to promote variety in Supply, the means of which is Competition.  In other words, the currently popular concept of the value of Competition, as consisting in a means to the production of a superior product, is not Smith's.  Furthermore, as is plainly evident, the decisive factor in actual Free Markets is usually advertising, the correspondence to which of product quality is contingent, at best.  Instead, advertising has become the medium of monopolistic forces, so, Smith's greatest concern has been actualized.

Profit-Motive and De-Humanization

It is difficult to conceive how an instinct to de-humanizing behavior could be the basic human principle.  Now, as has been previously discussed, Usury de-humanizes, in more than one way.  So, just as, according to Aristotle, Chrematistic practice is not "natural", Usury is inhuman.  Furthermore, since charging Interest is extrinsic to any benefit to a borrower, it can be the manifestation of only one motivation of the lender--seeking Profit.  Thus, Profit-seeking de-humanizes the seeker, in more than one way.  But, then, it could not be the basic behavioral principle of a human.  Hence, Smith and his followers are profoundly mistaken in their thesis that it is such a principle.  The mistake is an example of a fundamental flaw of Empiricism--interpreting an observed fact as an immutable law, equivalent to interpreting a chronic disease as a 'normal' condition.  Capitalism thus reinforces the interpretation of de-humanizing behavior as 'normal'.

Usury and De-Humanization

'Human' can connote either an internal characteristic of a person, e. g. fallibility, or their membership in the species.  Likewise De-Humanization can consist in the negation of one or the negation of the other.  Thus, Usury--lending at any interest rate greater than 0--is De-Humanizing in two respects.  First, insofar as the practice aims at an increase in wealth for its own sake, it exemplifies Chrematistic behavior, which, as Aristotle proposes, is illustrated by Midas.  In other words, Usury de-humanizes the usurer.  Second, insofar as it involves the gain of a lender at the expense of a borrower, it consists in a dissociation of two members of the species.  Now, the likely argument that borrowing can be beneficial to the borrower, and, hence, is an example of neither of those two respects, is easily refuted by the point that the Interest dimension of the transaction is extrinsic to any benefit, i. e. that a gift or an interest-free loan is sufficiently beneficial.  So, the deeply-entrenched acceptance of Usury at any rate is an indication of the normalization of De-Humanization in a society.

A Rising Tide and Usury

The phrase 'A rising tide lifts all boats' entails that 'a rising tide' cannot be a Zero-Sum condition.  It seems to connote a period of universal growth, but concrete details are usually lacking when the phrase is uttered.  Nevertheless, one Economic process that it cannot involve is Usury, i. e. lending at a rate greater than 0%.  For, plainly, Usury at any rate is a Zero-Sum transaction, regardless of time-lapse or circumstance, i. e. because gains exactly the increment that borrower repays.  Thus, Usury cannot be part of the kind of period of universal growth signified by the image.

Gestaltism and Cosmo-Economics

The Figure-Ground concept of Gestaltism is useful to Holism, since it can ground the compossibility of Part and Whole in a single Experience, i. e. as foreground to background, e. g. the selective perception of a tree from its forest.  It thus offers an effective argument against Atomism, according to which subsistent Individual entities are given as such.  For example, it provides a reminder that the Sense-Datum that is the foundation of many Empiricisms is arrived at by a process of isolation from a whole experiential background, not discovered as such.  Likewise, the Individual person, including oneself, is given against a backdrop of a society, if not the entire species.  For example, the Cartesian I is the product of not only a series of doubtings, but of the isolation of a room in a building full of other people, etc., the abstraction from which precedes his settling into his chair.  It is similarly applicable to the previously discussed implicit critique of Egoism by Utilitarianism--that self-interested pursuit occurs against a background of General Happiness that gets obscured in the process.  Hence, Gestaltism can be useful in the transition from a Nationalist- to a Cosmo-Economics, in which one's economic activities are conceived by one as part of a global network of production, exchange, etc.

Utilitarianism, Egoism, Altruism

By arguing that selfish motives better promote the General Good than benevolent ones, Smith implicitly acknowledges that there are impulses other than selfish ones.  Thus, his Egoism is normative not descriptive, and, so, diverges from the long tradition according to which even Sympathy is selfish, e. g. on the grounds that it is pleasurable.  Regardless, it is traditional in one respect--it implies that self-oriented behavior and other-oriented behavior are mutually exclusive and antagonistic , an implication that grounds the traditional Egoism vs. Altruism debate.  However, Mill's Utilitarianism challenges that presupposition.  For, he proposes that all behavior aims at General Happiness--a descriptive thesis--which is comprised of the Happinesses of both one's own and that of others.  Hence, on that basis, Selfishness and Benevolence are each special cases of Utilitarian behavior, abstracted from the General calculus, i. e. with the de-emphasised components valued at 0.  In other words, each of those is narrow-minded behavior, and any apparent antagonism is actually contingent and derivative, i. e. in cases when one or the other conflicts with General Happiness.  So, even under Zero-Sum conditions, e. g. when Profit is the specific object of Self-Interest, General Happiness is the goal, according to Mill.  Accordingly, Profit-seeking is subject to the criticism that it is small-minded behavior, as might be, in some cases, Altruism.