excerpt:

and this predation metaphor (at the heart of the vulgar Darwininism so beloved of neocons and outright Randians) applies not only to our relationship with other biota and indeed the earth's crust, but to our relationship with each other. the biggest thief and looter rises to the top and is admired for it, everyone loves a winner, only sissies care about other people, nice guys finish last, and so on.

the predation/competition metaphor is so strongly ingrained in Anglo ideology that when Schwendener and others first documented symbiotic organisms (notoriously lichen), the English scientific establishment (the London Consensus you might say, since England was then the "indispensable nation" and imperial hegemon) had a hissy fit denying and suppressing his research, ridiculing anyone who dared to discuss or republish it. "Schwendenerist" actually became briefly a term of public ridicule for -- guess what -- an unmanly flipflopper, a fellow who can't make up his mind which explanation of a phenomenon is correct, who can't "take a firm stand."

the model of admirable predation is the only one that can romanticise and ennoble the practise of profit-taking. or perhaps the practise of profit-taking grows out of the combination of a predatory mindset and the invention of money and compound interest. but at any rate, the attitude of Homo sap. to the planet and to each other is increasingly one of N bio people all dreaming of being top predators. there is only one end game for such a mindset: they will eat the planet bare, and then they will eat each other.