Better Metaphors

Max Borders has a fantastic piece on metaphors for the economy. Naturally, metaphors are of great interest to us literary types. For example, he points out that

A much more accurate metaphor for the economy is an ecosystem. We are simultaneously independent and interdependent. We can no more fix an economy than we can fix a rainforest or a coral reef. At best, we can leave it alone. Such is not the faith of a "market fundamentalist," but the implication of a tradition informed by evolutionary thinking, the science of complexity and self-organizing systems.

This is something with which I certainly agree, and have argued elsewhere.