Posted on 02/02/2007 5:37:44 PM PST by shrinkermd
A writer calling himself "Adam Smith"--you'll see the irony in a moment--nuked me recently on my Forbes.com daily blog. He wrote: "You are too much of a materialistic person to understand the purpose of life. [You big mouths at magazines] find followers who want nothing but money, which they think buys happiness. It's not too late for you to drop your crap and look for the meaning of life--it is certainly not in making money. I wish you luck."
Sorry, Mr. Smith. I do not consider moneygrubbing the purpose of life. Never have. The use of God's gifts comes closer for me.
Still, moneygrubbing--a.k.a. the search for profit--has its purpose. Money (profit) is a tool. It is capital. Without capital there is no capitalism. Innovation starves. Prosperity weakens. Societies stagnate. God-given gifts wither. This is especially true for humanity's wonderfully zany outliers: artists, inventors, entrepreneurs. They need capitalism more than anyone.
Money is good, therefore, because capitalism is good. It delivers the goods, literally, and better--broadly and individually--than does any other system. Hugo Chávez would argue that point, but he's nuts.
Can we go even further and say that capitalism is good because it is moral? Following that logic, can we say: The purer the form of capitalism, the more moral it is? Is capitalism perfectly moral--enough to sustain itself over many generations?
Yes, say Ayn Rand's followers. But most of us would not go that far. We think a capitalism that lacks outside moral influences and pressures, restraints and safety nets would, sooner or later, fail.
Bill Ziff, a successful magazine capitalist who died last year, spoke for most of us: "[Capitalism] is not in itself sufficient to create values. It depends on what human and religious values we, ourselves, bring to our affairs. Insofar as those values fail, we would all descend toward a lawless, inhumane, cutthroat society that will no longer harbor our civilization."
Good Works or Redistribution?
Conservatives and liberals agree on little these days. But most agree on this: Capitalism works, but it is insufficiently moral. Conservatives--allow me to paint them with a broad brush--believe capitalism works best when it is spun with golden moral threads, when it weaves in those old values learned in church, charities, service clubs and the like.
Liberals are more skeptical. They know capitalism will produce losers as well as winners. They feel the winners must be forced into helping the losers. Forced help hurts everyone, say conservatives. Redistribution discourages winners from producing and losers from trying. It leaves everyone bitter.
Such is the national debate we find ourselves engaged in as the Democrats take power in the Senate and House. The minimum wage is a form of redistribution. It forces employers to pay workers more than their productivity merits, puny as those paychecks may be. Higher payroll taxes are also redistribution. Who believes higher payroll taxes will show up as higher monthly payments for the employee's retirement?
Restrictions on free trade are yet another form of redistribution, although you may not think of them as such. Tariffs imposed by the U.S. are usually countered by tariffs from other countries. That's what trade wars are all about--retaliation. Trade wars force American companies that are winners in the global economy--the IBMs, FedExes and Citigroups--to give up some of their winnings so that struggling domestic tool and textile manufacturers can stay in business. Trade protectionism asks California to subsidize Ohio and South Carolina.
Generally, Democrats favor forced redistribution more than Republicans do. Republicans--again, in general--would prefer to fix capitalism's shortcomings through good works and giving. This forces Republicans to higher standards of conduct, by the way. Bad people, in power, can redistribute as easily as good people. Only good people can inspire us to good works and giving.
Have Republicans succeeded in holding themselves to this higher standard? Hah! The top two Republicans in the House, John Boehner (Ohio) and Roy Blunt (Missouri), can't summon enough moral courage to say no to "earmarks"--a sneaky form of redistribution. Demo-crats are proud of redistribution. They have no need to be sneaky about it. Democrats will always play the redistribution game better.
Paging Adam Smith
What did Adam Smith--not my blogger critic but the real one--say about capitalism and morality?
The great Scotsman seemed to say two contradictory things. In The Wealth of Nations (1776) he wrote these famous words about self-interest: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." This sounds like selfishness: Greed is good.
But Smith never believed that. In his earlier book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Smith defined self-interest not as selfishness or greed but as a psychological need to win favor within one's society. Smith revised The Theory of Moral Sentiments after he wrote The Wealth of Nations. He did not change his belief that moral sentiments and self-interest are the same thing.
Let's not forget our Adam Smith. When we do, capitalism loses its moral authority, and the redistributionists win.
Caveat emptor...
Gravity is a property of the physical universe antecedent to all human existence.
Capitalism is an economic system designed by humans, controlled by humans, utilizing humans. Humans are fundamentally moral beings.
Yes! Good advice. I'll be buying none of the ideas that you are trying to sell here.
Go ahead and report abuse again, Thin Skin.
cahvez and mugabe are selective capitalists for themselves, socialists for others
OK, got it! Just checking... :)
Exactly. Add Hillary, Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller, Rangel, et al to that list too.
Yes, caveat emptor. That is the credo of any serious capitalist not wanting to be played a fool.
Let me guess, you sell used cars... no wonder...
The fact that the most corrupt among us are often put on pedastals of power and fame negates that idea all by itself.
Morality is rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
The Latin phrase that most closely resembles your latest bit of imparted wisdom is "caveat venditor" but that just a slight quibble and you will probably defend yourself against the criticism anyhow.
Now, are you going to finally answer my two-part question?
Money represents the value in a just exchange of goods and services. It is neither morally good, or bad, because it's simply a medium of exchange. The good and bad depend on the particulars of the transaction.
The Dictionary was written by a Christian...
I guess not.
"There's a sucker born every minute." (P.T. Barnum)
Capitalism, and economic freedom is the highest form of morality, because it allows the individual to choose to do what is good.
The fact that some individuals choose to do what is not good, should not be an indictment on capitalism, but rather on the individual's themselves.
I don't think any other New York lawyer would be different...
"...If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be that private ownership of the means of production is a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. All civilizations have up to now been based on private property.
Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art, and literature. There is no experience to show that any other social system could provide mankind with any of the achievements of civilization. Nevertheless, only few people consider this as a sufficient and incontestable refutation of the socialist program.
On the contrary, there are even people who argue the other way round. It is frequently asserted that the system of private property is done for precisely because it was the system that men applied in the past. However beneficial a social system may have been in the past, they say, it cannot be so in the future too; a new age requires a new mode of social organization. Mankind has reached maturity; it would be pernicious for it to cling to the principles to which it resorted in the earlier stages of its evolution. This is certainly the most radical abandonment of experimentalism. The experimental method may assert: because a produced in the past the result b, it will produce it in the future also. It must never assert: because a produced in the past the result b, it is proved that it cannot produce it any longer.
In spite of the fact that mankind has had no experience with the socialist mode of production, the socialist writers have constructed various schemes of socialist systems based on aprioristic reasoning. But as soon as anybody dares to analyze these projects and to scrutinize them with regard to their feasibility and their ability to further human welfare, the socialists vehemently object. These analyses, they say, are merely idle aprioristic speculations. They cannot disprove the correctness of our statements and the expediency of our plans. They are not experimental. One must try socialism and then the results will speak for themselves.
What these socialists ask for is absurd. Carried to its ultimate logical consequences, their idea implies that men are not free to refute by reasoning any scheme — however nonsensical, self-contradictory, and impracticable — that any reformer is pleased to suggest. According to their view, the only method permissible for the refutation of such a — necessarily abstract and aprioristic — plan is to test it by reorganizing the whole of society according to its designs. As soon as a man sketches the plan for a better social order, all nations are bound to try it and to see what will happen.
Liberals and socialists are the ultimate materialists. For every social problem their answer is more money thrown at it and more government control. They always discount the influence of spiritual and moral courage, perseverance, hard work and ingenuity.
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