Human Weakness Enables Market Bubbles: A Nietzschean Perspective

As a young idealist in business school, I believed in the efficient market hypothesis; an efficient market based on perfect competition would obviate excess profits (e.g., monopoly rents) while keeping prices as low as possible. I assisted a professor with his article on the NASD (National Association of Securities Dealers) as a stellar example of industry self-regulation. The ideology cutting off the far left of my peripheral vision, I dismissed the possibility that an industry would look the other way on a miscreant firm as executives of other companies fear accountability from the industry association. Moreover, the business practitioners may profit, at least in the short term, from foisting on the general public the illusion of industry self-regulation, which can serve as a front protecting a squalid underbelly.

The full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.