Two questions for neoliberals

  1. Is the Invisible Hand of the free market really able to regulate human life to the benefit of all involved if organized labor is excluded from the conception of the free market and seen as an alien threat to its operation rather than an intrinsic and necessary part? Is organized labor perhaps one of the fingers of the Invisible Hand?
  2. Is it true what Boltanski says of Adam Smith, that Smith saw empathy as a necessary condition for the proper social functioning of the free market? This means that the common belief that things will take care of themselves in the equilibrium of opposing tensions of ruthless self-interest is a distortion of the original idea, and the emergence of the user experience profession can be seen as a restoration of Smith’s ideal from its industrial-age social Darwinist distortions.

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