Posted on 07/18/2003 4:22:53 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Is Economics All There Is?
Let me invite you to join a crusade to change the culture and stop the present trend of treating us, our country, the world, everything and everybody in it as mere economic units.
I was reminded of the necessity of this when reading a news story in a local paper about the Fourth of July. It was, in fact, just about how businesses catering to visitors fared during the holiday weekend. They did well, but is that what the Fourth of July has become: just another business opportunity? Is it a "good" Fourth if the merchants make money and a "bad" Fourth if they don't make as much as they did last year? What does making money have to do with the Fourth of July anyway?
The answer is nothing. The Fourth of July is our celebration of political independence. It is about freedom, not money. It is about our country, not our economy. The fact that economic activity is necessary to sustain our flesh-and-blood bodies does not mean that economics is the be-all and end-all of our existence. We are human beings and citizens, not consumers. Our lives are much more than what we eat or wear or drive, just as our country is far more than its gross domestic product.
Think for a moment about the mentality that says the way to describe the Fourth is to talk to the merchants about how much business they did. You see the same mentality everywhere and year-round. Christmas stories are done the same way: Are sales up or down? Globalization — which means the takeover of the world's resources and labor by multinational corporations — is presented as a nondebatable fact.
If you protest a corporation closing its American plant and relocating to a cheap-labor country, the corporation acts as if that is inevitable and dictated by economic necessity. It is not. It is, in fact, immoral and socially detrimental. Corporate types who make those decisions should be shunned by their fellow citizens. It is far more important for Americans to have decent-paying jobs than it is for any corporation to make excessive profits.
We have to stop allowing economics to be used as a trump card. Capitalism is like math. It is amoral. It is good at producing wealth; it's bad at distributing wealth. Unless it operates within a moral framework it will produce an unjust society. The answer to every question is not "It's profitable" or "It's unprofitable." There are social and political values that have to be taken into account.
It's unfortunate that many politicians today see the role of government as assisting corporations to make profits. That's not the legitimate role of government at all. That is a corruption of government, and today it is so rampant that politicians don't even think twice about sounding as if they were representing the chamber of commerce instead of the people.
We should seek to separate government and business for the same reason we separate government and religion. Instead of negotiating more managed trade agreements to facilitate the loss of even more American jobs, Congress should be figuring out ways to punish the practice of offshoring with punitive taxes and tariffs.
America as a nation was poor a lot longer than it's been rich. It wasn't money that created this country and made it great, but there has always been a conflict between those whose god is money and those who have different values, whether they be a just society, political liberty, religious freedom or good stewardship of the land. In the later half of the 19th century the money worshippers raped the land, exploited the American people and created slums and hellish working conditions.
Today's robber barons will re-create those 19th-century conditions if we continue to let them dominate the government and our very thoughts. Remember, we are human beings with souls, not cogs in some economic machine.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
That people like me spend their professional lives using numbers to describe the state of an economy is really just about trying to quantify risk. But the debate between economic systems is about decision making, and who makes the decisions. If the government puts a law in place which makes it illegal for you to do what you would otherwise do, then they have made a decision for you and enforced that decision with (at least the threat of) force.
Now you have given up your freedom, but your company will stay where it is. Of course, you'll have to charge more now, so you'll lose business, but maybe you can convince the government to put another law in place which takes away the freedom of choice from your customers. This goes on ad infinitum under socialism.
Personally, I think a businessman doing what he must to make his business as profitable as posible is the most moral thing a man can do. I think the immorality of the authors equation is when someone has the nerve to try to convince him that he should give up his freedom of choice for the benefit of others.
All this because the author can't understand the law of comparative advantage.
Actually, I think I have a better book for you to read. Hayek is a classic, but it reads a little slow. Try reading "Knowledge and Decisions" by Thomas Sowell. Personally I think it's the best Economic text I've ever read.
Cheers.
Sorry I didn't make myself clearer or perhaps I am sorry that you took in so personally, unnecessarily, whichever applies. I meant that it is always necessary to leave out many aspects of a subject in a format such as this due to time and space constraints, just as you replied. That was a general statement, not one directed to you or concerning your style, etc.
all the best -
Cheers,
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