How we got to our current financial crisis, in pictures

This is in response to a few folks who've commented/emailed about my Social Darwinism paper from December, wanting to know how I support my assertion that our current financial crisis is directly attributable to the concepts behind Social Darwinism and its related philosophical thought forms. I've included a few links to background and informative sites. I hope you find this both informative and entertaining:

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How we got to our current financial crisis, in pictures:

This guy started the ball rolling with his contention that the life of man was "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short"...

He might be forgiven this, because in his day things weren't always pretty...

But then along came the world's first official economist, who, along with others, laid the
foundation for the idea of "laissez-faire" economics, or the "invisible hand"...

And then in the mid-1800's, along came another fellow who liked what he heard from Darwin's evolution ideas, and started thinking maybe it could apply to societies, not just birds and frogs... you know, kind of a "Social Darwinism". He thought up a peachy-keen catch-phrase for it: "survival of the fittest"...

And since "Social Darwinism" gave a scientific sheen to the societal benefits of greed and rapacity, these guys jumped on the bandwagon wholeheartedly...

Because, after all, they considered themselves "The Masters of the Universe", while everyone else were mere moochers...

Which tended to make them somewhat unpopular with the "moochers"...

Although that would never get in the way of just calling your opponents names to change the debate...

Even when things seemed just a little obviously unbalanced in society...

And even when things were REALLY unbalanced, Social Darwinism was all the rage...

Until it lead to this kind of stuff...

Which really made people think it wasn't such a good idea after all...

So Social Darwinism was discredited and pretty much left the (outwardly visible) scene... except the free-market parts, of course... because for some true believers in the free-market, the laissez-faire aspects still seemed like a great idea (shhh... but we don't want to call it Social Darwinism any more... it's just good old-fashioned "capitalism" now)...

Some of the most avid of laissez-faire free-marketers have recently held positions of leadership in our great land...

Resulting in policies which have really been a bang-up success for everybody...

Or, in the opinion of a disgruntled few, feeling a little dumped on...

Until thanks to deregulation, over-speculation, and sometimes outright fraud, and the whole thing came crashing down (again)...

Although some were still better off than others...

Leaving the true-believers with the thinnest of threads upon which to hang their beloved laissez-faire beliefs...

As they Rush to proclaim their new leader...

Who commands the remaining true-believers...

(And who bears a disturbing resemblance to previous leaders of their cause)...

The vast majority of the rest of the nation...

Chose someone who promised Change to lead them...

Even though he's probably wondering what the heck he was thinking...

He seems to be on the right track, and hopefully, so is the global economy...

Which just goes to show that for every person who believes that life is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short"...

There are a few who believe we're on the path to a major reset of our, and maybe the world's, economic structure...

And possibly a chance for a new view of how we should live in the world...