How the Prisoner of Game Theory Torches Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”

Must capitalism be justified with secular myths, and if so, have the myths changed from the early to the later modern periods? This question amounts to asking what the difference is between classical liberals like Adam Smith, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill, and neoliberals such as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and the Clintonian centrists who’ve more recently run the American Democratic Party. <h1>The moralizing of classical liberals</h1> Classical liberals were upbeat about the transition from a feudal hierarchy to a more open, “liberal” society in which everyone has more equal freedom to participate in the economy. Essentially, liberals argued that even with the death of God and the elimination of his earthly representatives — the king and the pope, together with their entourages, mystagogues, and coercive regimes — society could progress because Reason saves the day. Every person has the power to reason, and even if we start from the most primitive initial conditions, such as from a point of animalistic self-interest, we tend to reason that we’re more likely to get what we individually want in life if we cooperate in society. Theoretically, we move from the state of nature, in which everyone’s at war with everyone else and life is nasty, brutish, and short, as Thomas Hobbes said, to the social contract in which we implicitly surrender our absolute liberty and compromise to reap the benefits of society, such as the pooling of resources. <a href="https://aninjusticemag.com/how-the-prisoner-of-game-theory-torches-adam-smiths-invisible-hand-e214bc606180">Learn More</a>