Fixing the Economy—In the Direction of a Moral Approach
“Self-disciple, a sense of justice, honesty, fairness, chivalry, moderation, public spirit, respect for human dignity, firm ethical norms—all of these are things which people must possess before they go to market and compete with each other.”
- Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy
To hear the loudest voices playing the proverbial blame game of thrones tell it, the people most wrecking havoc on our economy are the greedy super rich hording wealth with no care for the social consequences or the envious lazy poor seeking handouts with no thought to their personal responsibility. These accusations of vice simplify the cause of the crisis far too much—though I dare say one group has an itsy-bitsy shred more influence on the economy than the other—but the accusers on both sides of the debate are not altogether wrong about what ails us. Vice thrives in our economic system. More to the point, we collectively encourage vicious behavior from both the haves and the have-nots.
For the free market to work justly, it must reward and encourage virtue, and it must be situated in a higher moral framework. Our approach to the market doesn’t often offer such rewards and encouragements, and as a rule, we don’t give thirty nickels for social justice. Aside from our widespread devotion to materialism and consumerism, we as a society largely define success as the maximum attainment of profits by any legal means necessary. We incentivize not the production of quality products for the betterment of all, but rather the pursuit of wealth at any cost. We too little prize social responsibility, respect for the dignity of workers, or the preservation of the environment. As a matter of principle and course, we forget the universal destination of goods in our mad chase after the golden apple. Put simply: our economic behavior is morally disordered. This disorder is the fault of us all, though I dare say some bear a teenie-weenie bit more responsibility for it than others.
Among other reforms for getting our economy back on track, those responsible for structuring and ordering the economy have to 1) find effective ways to incentivize virtue and discourage vice, but also 2) establish safeguards to function at the point where these incentives and discouragements reach their limit of efficaciousness. Encouraging benevolence and charity shouldn’t mean that people’s livelihood is at the mercy of chance benevolence and charity. No amount of social engineering can make people virtuous, but while we can and should encourage virtue as a matter of design, justice demands that we provide for our needs and the needs of one another together as an organized social whole, and not simply in a way that relies on the affluent among us who have a care for the common good. A virtue-centered approach to the economy has its rewards, but on its own it is insufficient for achieving social justice.
Comments are closed.
Kyle,
Thank you. This is soooo good.
Paul
Well said. I agree completely.
Very well said, Kyle.
Thank you.
Put simply: our economic behavior is morally disordered.
Indeed it is. We are partitioned into competing economic units that strain the bonds of fraternal solidarity. We are alien to each other and have all the attributes of a highly dysfunctional family. It leads to social pathologies and it is the antithesis of the gospel.
The morally successful or just economy resembles the features of a family where self sacrifice, sharing, mutual respect and the awareness of each others needs are taken for granted. They succeed or fail together, and to work against the common good is shameful.
I’m not certain if the gospel points to any particular ‘economic solution’. If so, its one that points to upside down values of simplicity, spiritual poverty and powerlessness. There is a spiritual reality where overaccumulation and blindness to the needs of others brings doom. (Luke 12:13-23)
Kyle, very well said, but let me raise a critical question motivated by my reading of Zizek. You call for “A virtue-centered approach to the economy” but by its nature modern capitalism is amoral. Moreover, it has the powerful ability to appropriate and thereby subvert any attempts to deflect it from its own “true nature.” Thus, for instance, look at the many ways in which capitalism has appropriated the rhetoric of the environmental movement, repackaging the imperative “consume!” as “consume green products and it will be okay!” Underlying this is still the relentless logic of consumption, acquisition and power.
Perhaps we need a new social order, one that looks, superficially, like capitalism, but is constructed on a very different set of principles.
“Perhaps we need a new social order, one that looks, superficially, like capitalism, but is constructed on a very different set of principles.”
David. I ask this question…Is there some new social order imaginable that wouldn’t require an order of penitents to witness its need for conversion?