Economic Morality

[2ndRateMind]

This was originally posted in the 'Christian philosophy and ethics forum'. It didn't get much response. Forgive me for troubling you with an issue that troubles me.

The English economist and philosopher, Adam Smith, apart from studying how pins are made, and reporting the same at quite inordinately boring length in his 'Wealth of Nations', (1776) made a quite surprising statement in the same book.

He claimed that 'private vice is public virtue'. He meant that what we would call consumer spending makes for employment, and increases the potential tax take of the government, which, if spent wisely, could improve the lot of all. But that private vice - extravagance, imprudence, careless consumption - worries me a little. The maxim from the film 'Wall Street', that 'Greed is good', seems to be a direct descendent of this line of thinking. I need hardly remind you that avarice, gluttony, envy and pride are four of the seven deadly sins.

Is that vice an acceptable price to pay for public works and dead end jobs, like the manufacture of pins? Are there any other instances in ethics where the vice of the individual, magnified and multiplied into a social disposition, makes for a communal virtue? What is the appropriate Christian attitude to private vice, and should it be ameliorated, indeed, negated, by considerations of beneficial impacts on the nation as a whole? Even if the nation benefits by an aggregate effect, is that ever sufficient to balance undeveloped moral stature in it's citizens? Or is it the case, as the ancient Greeks believed, that for a nation to flourish, it's component individuals must flourish, and for them to flourish, they must be virtuous?

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

 

[DarkProphet]

The axiom of "greed is good" is fatally flawed. Yes, spending can create jobs and tax revenue but that is only part of the line. If you apply greed to the manufacturer and extend it to it's limit then they can justify selling lead tainted toys or dumping toxins into the drinking water just to save and make money. The same thing applies to the congressmen in charge of the taxes, if they were to apply greed to it's limit then they would just spend it on projects that only benefit their districts, and by extension their careers. Things like bridges to no where and meaningless research projects.

 

[BobW188]

No, actually I think "Greed is good" really came to be pre-eminent when we forgot that capitalism was a way to distribute goods and came to believe it is a way to maximize profit at all costs, including too-easy credit and sucker-born-every-minute ads and sales strategies. Smith stands at least relatively innocent.
You may have heard how our former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, recently testified how he simply didn't forsee how supposedly intelligent people could so totally ignore their own rational self interest. Yet they very obviously did. Perhaps Smith underestimated our capacity for greed.

 

[OphidiaPhile]

No, actually I think "Greed is good" really came to be pre-eminent when we forgot that capitalism was a way to distribute goods and came to believe it is a way to maximize profit at all costs, including too-easy credit and sucker-born-every-minute ads and sales strategies. Smith stands at least relatively innocent.
You may have heard how our former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, recently testified how he simply didn't forsee how supposedly intelligent people could so totally ignore their own rational self interest. Yet they very obviously did. Perhaps Smith underestimated our capacity for greed.

Well said.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

This was originally posted in the 'Christian philosophy and ethics forum'. It didn't get much response. Forgive me for troubling you with an issue that troubles me.

The English economist and philosopher, Adam Smith, apart from studying how pins are made, and reporting the same at quite inordinately boring length in his 'Wealth of Nations', (1776) made a quite surprising statement in the same book.

He claimed that 'private vice is public virtue'. He meant that what we would call consumer spending makes for employment, and increases the potential tax take of the government, which, if spent wisely, could improve the lot of all. But that private vice - extravagance, imprudence, careless consumption - worries me a little. The maxim from the film 'Wall Street', that 'Greed is good', seems to be a direct descendent of this line of thinking. I need hardly remind you that avarice, gluttony, envy and pride are four of the seven deadly sins.

Is that vice an acceptable price to pay for public works and dead end jobs, like the manufacture of pins? Are there any other instances in ethics where the vice of the individual, magnified and multiplied into a social disposition, makes for a communal virtue? What is the appropriate Christian attitude to private vice, and should it be ameliorated, indeed, negated, by considerations of beneficial impacts on the nation as a whole? Even if the nation benefits by an aggregate effect, is that ever sufficient to balance undeveloped moral stature in it's citizens? Or is it the case, as the ancient Greeks believed, that for a nation to flourish, it's component individuals must flourish, and for them to flourish, they must be virtuous?

Best wishes, 2ndRateMind.

Lot's of deceptive rhetoric here. For example the manufacture of pins as a dead end job. It is unlikely that many would make a career out of working in a pin factory. It may be a good job to get one through college, however. I expect that such factories have provided a needed product for hundreds of years while providing temporary or entry level employment. Fast food places are the same, providing part-time jobs for thousands of young people who have no intention of making a career of it. These are only dead end jobs if one is stupid enough to try support a family from it.

The Greeks are correct. Society can only flourish if its citizens are virtuous, and they remove those who aren't. We in America believe we can let our (human) garbage pile up around us and not be affected by the smell. The best way to assure assets is to eliminate liabilities. But because we are lawless by nature we cannot bring ourselves to punish those who daily destroy what we have so painstakingly built for ourselves. We cannot even bring ourselves to put to death criminals who commit the most vile acts of murder imaginable. In view of the way we manage ourselves there is little hope for us.

owg