Posted on 10/08/2009 7:35:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Inevitably, the crisis on Wall Street has revived the never-ending notion that markets undermine morality. Oliver Stone, ever restless to recapture the days of former glory, has begun production on a sequel to the 1987 movie Wall Street, which immortalized Gordon Gekko as the symbol of markets and greed. But the debate on how markets affect morality has not always been a slam dunk for capitalism's naysayers. Matthew Arnold, especially in his influential 1868 book, Culture and Anarchy, might have been spectacularly critical, but Voltaire's passionate defense of markets, most eloquently stated in his 1734 Philosophical Letters, made him the most influential hero of the new bourgeois age. He proposed quite reasonably that peace and social harmony, as opposed to the religious strife common until then, would flow from the secular religion of the marketplace.
After two and a half centuries of this fascinating debate, I have to say that my own sympathies lie with those who have found markets, on balance, to be on the side of the angels. But I should also add that I find the specific notion that markets corrupt our morals, and determine our ethical destiny, to be a vulgar quasi-Marxist notion about as convincing as that other vulgar notion that ownership of the means of production is critical to our economic destiny. The idea that working with and within markets fuels our pursuit of self-interest, greed, avarice and self-love, in ascending orders of moral turpitude, is surely at variance with what we know about ourselves.
Yes, markets will influence values. But, far more important, the values we develop will affect in several ways how we behave in the marketplace.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Yawn. This old argument bores me. The market is not moral. It is a mechanism for distributing scarce goods efficiently. We get our morality elswhere.
Trade is a legitimate thing. The Bible calls for fair weights and fair measures, not for collectivizing a society.
Author concludes and asks :
“The financial markets did not produce Madoff’s crookedness; Madoff was almost certainly depraved to begin with. The financial sector corrupts morality in the same sense that the existence of an escort service corrupted Eliot Spitzer. Should we blame the governor’s transgressions on the call girls rather than on his own flaws?”
There is a difference between greed and self interest. Greed destroys wealth. Self interest builds it.
I want to see stories on how greedy government is.
The politicians, those who write the laws, go to Washington as paupers, but retire as multimillionaires. Who's worse?
“Trade is a legitimate thing. The Bible calls for fair weights and fair measures, not for collectivizing a society.”
I’m not saying the market doesn’t conform to any moral system, nor that its results aren’t in line with traditional Western morals. I’m saying the market itself doesn’t produce morals. It is simply a social mechanism. You get the idea that collectivization is bad, apparently, from a 2,000 year-old religion, which itself grew from an even older moral tradition. You didn’t arrive at your conclusion because you love freely fluctuating prices and several property.
Well let's not all run around chanting that it's "good" this time, like we did last time, OK?
What a pity to be informed merely by Stone or Voltaire or even Rand.
dog gone. you were doing so good in that first post, and then you crashed.
You are correct: "we get our morality elsewhere," sort of. "Mechanisms" aren't amoral. A hammer is a mechanism. Is it "amoral?" It's designed for a constructive purpose. That in itself is a moral purpose. Can it be used immorally? Of course it can. The mechanism has a moral purpose. Its use depends upon the morality of the user.
You don't need a 2000 year old religion to know that -- honest reflection will teach you -- but that religion certainly knows it and can tell you a good deal more about markets and morality.
You speak of this mechanism as if it is a natural law of some kind, or even self existent. So let's say it is (even if doing so is a bit of a concession at this point). All of creation (or nature, if you prefer) has the principal of life built into it -- it's always growing, pushing through, multiplying, creating and recreating itself (after its kind). There's a hint of morality in that "natural law."
You are so right: Capitalism is not an “ism”, it requres
a democratic form of government to function.
“Well let’s not all run around chanting that it’s ‘good’ this time, like we did last time, OK?”
Listen closely to what Michael Douglas says. “Greed, *for lack of a better word*, is good. Greed works.” He’s using the word greed to describe self-interest and the profit motive. Mostly because that’s the word socialists use—because it comes to them ready-made for propaganda purposes—and it’s not easy to get anyone to listen to you when you come up with your own euphamism. Better to accept the word, tell us why it’s not so bad, and thus redifine it.
He’s attempting to steal the word away, just like homos call eachother fags and we like to call ourselves capitalists. Perhaps it’s not good longterm strategy. Even for those who bought into Ayn Rand’s elevation of rational self-interest, it was tiresome to read fifty straight pages damning altruism and brother-love. Also, in Gordon Gekko’s case, he actually was greedy in the bad sense, which didn’t help his speech in retrospect.
“A hammer is a mechanism. Is it ‘amoral?’ It’s designed for a constructive purpose. That in itself is a moral purpose.”
I don’t think we’re in the same argument, at this point. You know the hammer’s purpose is moral because something, rationality, religion, tradition, whatever, tells you so. You don’t know it from the hammer itself, and that’s why it absolutely is “amoral”. No one learns morality from their hammers.
Again, it isn’t that the market order is impervious to moral judgment. It isn’t that its means and ends are beyond good and evil, or that it cannot be said to conform to any particular moral system. It is that it does not by itself produce a moral system. In fact, it can be rightly said having a market system at all is predicated on a pre-existing moral system. We’d never have the free market in the first place had not a solid moral system evolved in its own.
“You speak of this mechanism as if it is a natural law of some kind, or even self existent.”
It is natural, in a sense. That’s a tricky word, since it’s come to mean primal or instinctual, in recent years. To borrow from F.A. Hayek, the market order, much like religion and other traditional moral systems, lies between instinct and reason. No one knew how to live by it out of the womb, and no one dreamed it up out of their heads. It evolved in practice, gaining steam as the societies that adopted it thrived by it and passed it on to other groups, most importantly the coming generations.
“All of creation (or nature, if you prefer) has the principal of life built into it — it’s always growing, pushing through, multiplying, creating and recreating itself (after its kind).”
I won’t stipulate to that. If it were not for the fact that the market order had outlived and outproduced other manners of living, it wouldn’t be worth studying or defending. It is not that the market order is natural, and possesses the virtue of all life. It is that it’s successful; that it has proven itself.
“There’s a hint of morality in that ‘natural law’”
Once again, no. Unless you automatically associate whatever’s natural with an all-powerful, all-knowing God. We can take or leave any part of nature, as we choose. That’s what morality is: picking and choosing what we like (in a manner of speaking). If we had to accept everything that was because it is, we wouldn’t be moral.
“Is it ‘amoral?’ It’s designed for a constructive purpose. That in itself is a moral purpose.”
Oh, and I forgot to add, you argue that the hammer itself is moral because it was designed with a constructive purpose. Seems to me the morality would adhere to the desing, not the object, and thus the designer, i.e. the human. It has a moral purpose because someone told it to.
“The interesting question is this -— is it the role of government to make laws to FORCE actors acting within the marketplace to ACT MORALLY?”
It depends on what you mean by “within the marketplace”. If this excludes violence, fraud, and other means of coercion, then no. Even if they go beyond this point, general rules—or the original meaning of “regulation,” that is to make regular—aren’t so bad, as long as they don’t impede efficiency.
The important point is that government absolutely has a mandate to impose morality on the marketplace. It’s just that the morality they impose ought to be the one that’s most conducive to economic prosperity. But I don’t want to encourage our dear leaders to run a magnifying lense over the economy to determine what is and is not most conducive. The best we could hope, if we leave them to their whims, is a rational utilitarianism, which is bad enough. That’s why we gift them with the laissez-faire mindset. Give doing nothing the benefit of the doubt, always.
“To defend one-self ? or for the owner to kill and maim ?”
Both. For the owner to defend himself via killing and maiming.
The poor people whose votes they "purchase" through promises of "goodies" derived from the labor of their neighbors also are displaying greed for "goodies."
Why have we allowed liberal talking heads and politicians to define the potential for greed in every human being as being exhibited only by business persons, corporations, or the "wealthy"?
Using "greed" as a perjorative against the "wealthy" misidentifies the problem and gives cover to those who wish to accumulate power over other the lives of others, while they claim to decry "greed" and to attribute lofty motives for themselves.
Nowhere do the wisdom writings indicate that greed in the heart of a poor man for another's earnings is any less evil than that in the heart of a Madow for the millions he can obtain in a Ponzi scheme.
Pardon!!! Of course, my fingers went off on their own. It’s Madoff.
ok, forget the hammer if it bothers you. a market is a social entity, anyways, and therefore is “alive.” its very existence is a moral proposition.
i’m sorry. what on earth are you saying? greed has already been defined. greed is not a virtue. greed had a meaning before socialists used it, and attempted to link it inextricably to capitalism, which of course is one of the more enduring modern myths.
“i’m sorry. what on earth are you saying? greed has already been defined. greed is not a virtue”
I’m saying listen closely to the dialogue. He clearly says “for lack of a better word”. You may not agree that redifining it is appropriate, but that’s what’s being done. Oliver Stone is deck-stacking, obviously, poisoning the speech before it even starts. He expects, as is reasonable, for the audience to dismiss him at the inception. Therefore, any concessions he makes to free market philosophy is pure profit. He gets to please its defenders knowing all along the fix is in.
“a market is a social entity, anyways, and therefore is ‘alive.’ its very existence is a moral proposition.”
Morality is not about what is; it’s about what Ought To Be. No living entity, be it a blade of grass or a social system, makes any moral claim by itself. As Hamlet said, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Is this a definition?
Why? Wherefrom does this follow?
Not a definition. A way to tell the two apart. Madoff was greedy, he destroyed wealth. Gates worked in his self interest, he created wealth.
Because capitalism does not have a social component. It
functions in the economic sphere, however it needs a free
and unfettered economy to function. That’s where a democratic form of government comes in. Socialism, on the
other hand, is all encompassing: it mandates a government
controlled social structure and government controlled economy.
"Because capitalism does not have a social component."
The same is true about socialism in its strict form: one allows for individual property rights to private goods, and another for government's rights.
Democracy refers to the process of selection of a government.
"functions in the economic sphere,"
Also problematic: one speaks of a legal environment of an economy, not the other way around.
Both greed and self-interest refer to motivation, that is, something existing before the act. According to you, however, we cannot tell the two apart until we see the results, that is after the act. That is certainly problematic, isn't it?
Actually, "greed" is in the same relationship to "self-interest" as "rich" with respect to "wealthy."
The latter terms are value-neutral, and the former are their disparaging equivalents. That's all.
Also, what evidence do you have to support your claim that Maddoff destroyed wealth? Fraud is not necessarily wealth-destroying: in every transaction the amount of wealth is constant. Think about that.
This is a fascinating and complex topic. You make some interesting points. Off the top of my head, let me respond to your challenge that fraud doesn’t necessarily destroy wealth.
Every time someone is a victim of fraud he is marginally less likely to participate in the market in the future. Fewer market transactions, less wealth. In a free market it is a transient effect. The first time someone mixes sand with his wheat to get a dishonest profit the market is disrupted. If every one starts doing it, the market would adjust, prices would drop and things would get back to normal (except the end user would be stuck with the expense of separating sand from the wheat). Fraud is worst in a regulated market. Say the price of a basket of wheat is fixed at 10 moneys. Now when people start mixing sand with wheat everyone gets poorer and stays poorer.
This well may be, but (i) one has to differentiate the existing wealth and wealth creation, and (ii) the model is incomplete: one has to model explicitly choices other than abstention from the fraudulent market (the victim typically goes to some other market when suffering a setback in a given one --- witness the real estate bubble after the burst of the DotCom bubble --- in which case even creation of new wealth is unchanged).
I agree with you when you say that this point fascinates many. My personal take is that it is because of the "common sense" perpetrated by media and uneducated folks: fraud is equated with robbery, hence loss. People do not understand, of course, that the loss is NOT macroeconomic: there is a countervailing gain to the robber. But, if a robbed one feels a loss, the folks reason, there must be a loss.
The problem is that markets are essentially an amoral tool and we are trying to overlay morality on top of this. Markets are a collective tool, morality is a quality that individuals bring with them when they participate.
No serious definition would use "controlling" without specifying what is being controlled.
"without individual rights"
This is false: socialism is government's ownership of the means of production.
"(that is my definition)."
You are being a bit self-congratulatory here: your own definition has already become "common?"
Can you name one dictatorship that allows free market
capitalism? Socialist countries control more than the
means of production: for example, Sweden and Denmark.
It makes perfect sense: it is clear that among other elements
there must be a “controlling central government” to
enforce its social doctrine upon the people.
"Can you name one dictatorship that allows free market capitalism? Socialist countries control more than the means of production: for example, Sweden and Denmark."
The question of what is observed is different from the question of what is a necessity.
For instance, a body that is free from action of a force will continue moving with the same velocity indefinitely. Is this true? Yes, of course: this is the Law of Inertia. Have you seen such a body? Of course not: it is impossible to see a body free of action of any force --- at least because there is Earth's gravity.
Logical relationship among concepts is often different from what is directly observed. Socialism does not logically require dictatorship etc. It has often been argued, successfully, that human nature is such that non-economic freedoms are curtailed after socialism is established. THat well may be but, in an of itself, socialism is nothing but government's ownership of the means of production.
You didn’t answer the question regarding the existance of
a dictatorship that allows free market capitalism. In my opinion, your positions have nothing to do with what is
happening in the real world.
I did answer that question by saying that whether A is necessary for B is a different question from whether A and B are observed in the real world. I also gave an example.
"have nothing to do with what is happening in the real world."
That is exactly the issue. What happens in the world are FACTS. You made a statement with an EXPLANATION of those facts. There is a difference, and I tried to attract your attention to that difference.
If you think that symbolic logic is going to arrive at truth, it can’t happen. All symbolic logic does is organize
thought.
"If you think that symbolic logic is going to arrive at truth, it can’t happen."
You have inserted the word "symbolic" as if it makes your statement any more weighty. For a person tha claims familarity with such logic, your statement is surprisingly incorrect: symbolic logic derives truthfulness if formulae from the assumed truthfulness of axioms.
Most importantly, I did not say that logic will yield the truth; I said violations of logic, on which you appear to insist, will NOT yield the truth.
I guess, I have either sufficiently attracted your attention to this issue or have failed to do so. In either case, I have nothing to add.
Have a good one.
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