Greed was publicly reframed as healthy virtue before insider trading became illegal

Evidence

The problem with late capitalism is not the greed of capitalists. That’s the difference between a Marxist analysis and an ethical one — the Marxist one will focus on systems, forms of organisation are central. Capitalism is not bad because CEOs are uniquely evil. It’s the other way around. Anyone who’s in the position of CEO would act as CEOs do. It’s just a systemic pressure that produces that kind of behaviour. Part of the problem is that we are looking at systemic tendencies here. It’s archaic and kind of folk-psychological to focus on these categories which we think apply in everyday life, like more responsibility, to this kind of inhuman system. The scale of what we’re up against is obfuscated by a focus on the ethical. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2110 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Price-fixers had to sanitize illegality to preserve their self-respect; Efficient-markets theory helped legitimate options trading that regulators had long banned — Donald MacKenzie & Yuval Millo, Constructing a Market, Performing Theory, 62; Liberal common-good theory rationalizes reckless private interest — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 797 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Criticizing individual greed strengthens rather than undermines capitalist ideology #complicates (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2110