The Origin of Evil, Updated

Thorstein Veblen, who invented Institutional Analysis on his personal quest for the origin of evil, would have called Larry Fink a predator and compare him to one of the Bronze Age invaders who supported himself by plunder and raiding the villages of sedentary farmers who are the real creators of wealth, defined as whatever meets human needs, the good and useful things and the artisan's tools that make them. Veblen came from what I call the "real original Populists", settlers in the Midwest bringing agrarian traditions dating back to the cooperative communitarian ethic that somehow survived from the Neolithic. It was perverted by the time George Wallace got ahold of it.

I call Fink a parasite. A taker instead of a maker. Like the Bronze Age invader who conquered an agrarian society, he sets himself up like a lord demanding tribute in exchange for protection from other raiders. (The Kirghiz steppes were a crappy place to live until the plow was invented.)
Finance can start out like symbiosis. In our civilization's recent history, finance stepped in when the savings of sole proprietors and partnerships weren't enough for massive industrial expansion. But there's an entropy in human arrangements and organized efforts. It's periodic. The pattern is that flexible, purpose-driven social structures harden into systems of privilege, or self-serving power structures that take on lives of their own and seek to serve their own purposes even at the expense of the rest of society. Elite self-interest will shift from service to extraction and generate social pathology. Carl Sagan would pontificate on how short-sighted and ultimately suicidal this is for the society as a whole. It can't last. The system breaks down.
The last guy I hung around with on Xitter had improved on my favorite theory of the origin of evil as some kind of existential or psychogalvanic shock. We're born with the expectation of being taken care of by our parents, tribe, or village. It's like a personal contract with society. If it's violated, then power triumphs over truth. It's the Kurgan again.
Finance was brought to heel by the New Deal, but the New Deal was flawed by the continued inclusion of private lenders and commercial banks in the federal spending programs. This is how the banksters reasserted control in NYC's fiscal crisis, the beginning of bond vigilantism, eventually Carter's "assimilation" and appointment of Volcker the Usurer to Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Eventually the Pax Americana was transformed into a protectionist racket that extorts from the rest of the world.
This guy, Steve Hall, has shown how what I call Chinese II keeps an iron heel on finance's neck instead of a leash that can be broken. I'm not ready to romanticize the People's Republic of China, but in macrohistorical terms it IS a new civilization and it's kung fu was artful enough to trick the West, its s-curve plateauing (diminishing returns), to send its manufacturing contracts there. China made itself look like a host to our post-bicentennial parasite.
This macrohistorical method, to which I give Veblen the credit, aims (as described by Chiocchetti’s analysis) aims to explain change mechanisms, but instead of moral absolutes he deliberately rejects theological explanations, metaphysical dualisms, and cosmic good versus evil narratives. What is truly ironic is that this kind of dualism was invented by our Indo-European ancestors on those same damn steppes, where the limbic system was always set to trigger into fight-or-flight. It's in our grammar, it gave us Greek two-valued logic, and Persian Zoroastrianism, which keeps flaring up in Christianity whenever it wants to scapegoat any other "Enemy" other than the real one. It also gave rise to the Mandate of Heaven that Genghis Khan used to justify his carnage. And this outlook is held by 25-35% of our fellow citizens. England didn't send its best and brightest to these shores. King James was no saint, but he had the acumen to ship these problematic Puritans to America. Next came the Cavaliers to create what is now the Neoconfederacy.
I don't know how I got my conscience. It ain't much but maybe I inherited a bullshit detector along with my neurodivergence. Cognitive dissonance can cause me an almost physical pain.
The solution is always to invest in constant improvements in mobilizing raw materials to meet human needs. MMT proposes an end-run around the bankster chokepoint.

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