The Wall-Street Bull: King of the Digital Herd

Look at all the nature this man has in his backyard.

An orchard

Mac: Not a chance. I’m proud of my orchard. The Herd will destroy it. Why would I let them in?

Bill: You’re seeing this the wrong way. It’s not what the Herd can do for you, it’s what you can do for the Herd.

Mac: I can close my door to them.

Bill: I urge you against it. They are much too many, and much too hungry. Have faith! Their droppings are good fertilizer.

The Electronic Herd

Sociologist David Harvey comments that capitalism never solves its problems, it merely moves them. Crippling debt and investment failure do not go away but simply choose new victims every few years. There is strong symbolic support behind this in the Electronic Herd analogy. The Herd never stays in one place for too long; it must keep moving to find new pastures, and it rarely fails to leave behind a desert.

There is some gorgeous irony about the capitalist belief in nature and natural law, and the point made in the previous week about how the environmental quality in the Global North is an illusion. The Global South is getting wrecked and witnesses of this would be more unsure about the naturality of capitalist globalization.

Nature at Work?

“Globalization is a natural process.”

– Thomas Friedman