Competitive Indifference

Before Charles Darwin redefined competitiveness
as drawn by the examples he found in nature
and lengthened the age of the earth by millions of years
Adam Smith set the human rate for short term indifference
between people, with his ideas of Markets.

To Smith markets were not merely mechanisms
for the exchange of goods,where human labour
autonomously modified itself according to the value
a factory owner put on it so he may remain in profit.

To Adam Smith everything except God, Royalty and Parliament
was fit for barter in the universal market
where everything was human and of relative value,
the better to be easily bought and sold.

In this new market place, led by empire,
the wealth of the rich was derived
from a semi-divine right of wealth
derived from favours from the court
of still nearly absolute kingship.

Beneath the rich were the worthy poor
who served the rich and lived in debt
because part of the wealth of the rich
was in the debts they left unpaid to their tradesmen.

Beneath the worthy poor were the unworthy poor,
expelled from the land that no longer supported them
they were used up as labour in factories
that treated them worse that slaves
when slavery was still legal, all because
the ultimate in market values
was about extending the choice in human misery.