Crime Against Humanity: Pensée Unique in Economics, 10

The first assumption is that of the “invisible hand”: by that term they mean that individuals are motivated by self−interest and that, if allowed to operate freely, in pursuit of their individual self−interest they would spontaneously reach, as if led by an “invisible hand”, an equilibrium producing the best possible outcome for all. Sounds good when said like that. Now, let’s put it on the workbench and take it apart.

“Individuals are motivated by self−interest.” And also, “Individuals are motivated by accumulation of material wealth alone.” In other words, “me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, grab stuff, clench stuff, lug stuff around, and to hell with anyone and anything else!” They call it, “the theory of consumer”.
Independently of the other neoclassical tenets, this assumption is relevant in itself; moreover, it is so also because incentive structures are developed and used on the basis of an assumption: to persuade people to buy this and do that they use incentives and methods based on the motivation assumed.
You have learned about ethics as the greatest good for all: survival as the result of a group effort in producing and exchanging endless survival factors and forms of mutual help, in which no one survives alone and basically there is only one good and it is the good for all, no one and nothing left out. And there are both material and non−material survival factors produced and exchanged: there is bread, and there is love. Now, you can go and inspect for yourself whether it is true or not: whether individuals, communities and life thrive or wither according to whether individuals act selfishly and materialistically or cooperatively and all round. And in doing so you may find people in various conditions, more or less good or bad, acting on motivations corresponding to their conditions: the better one’s condition, the more one’s motivation is ethics; the worse one’s condition, the more one’s motivation is self−interest, if one is motivated at all.