So let me say one thing and then we'll move on for now. If the "system" (which is really not an object at all, rather a name we put on the way we humans barter our time) is not a moral system, whether it be immoral or amoral or anything else, I see a problem. I've voiced this to Jason and Audra already, but thought I'd drop it here as well.
I was listening to NPR yesterday. They were talking about whether our morals are inborn or taught (nature vs nurture). A caller said if most of us are ruled by morals, there must be people on the earth who are amoral and maybe we can study their genetics to find out what is different- and maybe what causes a person to have morals.
The scientist on the show said that was an interesting question and that there are people on the planet who are amoral. They have no bias as to whether an action is "right" or "wrong." They are psychopaths. Their decisions are made based on something other than morals, thus they are more likely to take the path of least resistance or the most personally profitable route. Thereby murdering, raping, bilking people out of money, or whatever else they choose.
And that's the problem I see with capitalism. It's "market forces" push people to do things that are immoral, because the "system" doesn't make decisions based on right or wrong, rather supply and demand, profitability, risk-reward.
Now, I'm open to the possibility that there are other institutions that are in place (or should be) to steer us to modify our behavior despite the market forces and do what is right and just. Could religion be a guiding force? Laws? I assume so.
But the market is so big and diverse and clouded by marketing, it's hard to steer. And most people don't care.
Here's my question for the moment.
If we are to take personal responsibility, despite what the market tells us to do, how far do our responsibilities go? Am I responsible for treating my employees fairly? What about my creditors/suppliers? What about my customers? What about the farms that produce the coffees I roast? What about the people who pick the coffee cherries and cultivate the coffee trees on those farms?
What should I be accountable for?
5 comments:
If the abysmal topic is whether the "system" is moral, I'm inclined to agree (even if I started the whole discussion on the blog). It's an interesting philosophical discussion, so I'm drawn to that. But at the core, aren't the results what we're concerned about, irrespective of how we label the system?
But something that came up in our discussions has stuck with me and disturbed me, and it relates exactly to the second, more important, point of your post. We were discussing that the "success" of the market depends upon the presumption that people act logically--in the most economically beneficial way in response to market changes. That's how "corrections" occur when there has been overstepping or overvaluing, etc.
I think (and I could be remembering wrong--I've slept since then) you and Jason were saying that if people act in an illogical manner--such as against their financial interests--the system doesn't work right.
Which leads me to the additional question to Brian's post. My feeling is that we do, indeed, owe a responsibility in our capitalism, in our business dealings. How far does that go? I'm sure I'm the wrong person to ask from a business standpoint, as I tend to follow the golden rule. I suspect that I often go against my own business interests in my dealings with people out of my feeling of social responsibility.
If everyone did this--acted in what might be considered to be a capitalistic illogical manner--what is the effect on the greater economy? Should I care?
My pollyanna wish is that acting responsibly will have a beneficial effect on the overall economy--sort of a karmic economic reaction. I have absolutely no economic basis for this hope.
From a personal standpoint, it seems to me that we owe a duty to act responsibly in all of our business dealings. To our employees, to our suppliers, to our customers, to quality. In less global days, that would work from a business standpoint, too, as our reputations would presumably act as a market indicator of sorts. Now, as people can hide behind screen names and large corporations and misleading advertisements, I'm not sure it works the same. That doesn't change my opinion about myself or how it ought to be. From that standpoint (my personal one), our responsibility is to do whatever good we can. Which is what I think you are doing, Brian.
Hmm... Brian's post makes me think that maybe capitalism operates in large part as a series of permissions for people to ignore others' interests and needs.
It's interesting, this question of whether morals are a result of nature or nurture. I think it's both. But there is some evidence that we have evolved to be moral creatures (because we evolved to be social creatures, and morality helps us successfully live together).
There was that really well-known economic study where they made the (to economists) shocking discovery that people do not make economic decisions purely out of self-interest. In the study, participant A had 10 dollars and the power to divide those 10 dollars between himself and participant B in whatever way he saw fit. Participant B had the power to either accept A's offer - in which case, both A and B got their money - or to reject A's offer - in which case, neither A nor B got ANY money. Economists predicted that even when A made a paltry offer to B, B would accept, since SOMETHING is better than nothing. So they were shocked at the number of times that - when B was not offered an amount that he or she deemed "fair" - B rejected everything, pretty much just to spite and punish A.
How any social scientist who has ever witnessed human interactions could have predicted otherwise is beyond me. But apparently this had the economists in an uproar. Or something.
I heard about this study at the same time that I heard about a neurological study in which participants in this very same experiment had their brains scanned while playing, and neurologists discovered that the act of witnessing someone being "punished" actually lights up all the pleasure centers in the human brain. Like, watching a perpetrator come to justice is neurologically pleasurable in the same way that sex or heroin or really good coffee is.
ISN'T THAT FUCKING INTERESTING??
So maybe we did evolve to be moral in some way. At a minimum, this explains what I have hitherto regarded as one of life's great mysteries: the enduring popularity of the show "Cops."
So... I don't know. Maybe our need to stick to some kind of code and to punish those who stray from it is innate. But the code itself? I think that's all nurture, not nature. (Or mostly nurture, leaving aside things like incest and murder.) I think decisions about which code to adhere to - even allegedly amoral codes like capitalism - are very much moral decisions.
America is arguably the “grandest” experiment in capitalism – enabling the middle class to become the most powerful and strongest driving force, setting the moral temperature of our country. Dostoevsky whom I love, hate, revere and see as pathetic compels me to question my responsibility (or existence thereof) as a middle class arbiter of what is moral. Increased wealth arguably leads to increased freedom which according to the Elder Zosima (The Brothers Karamazov) produces man "in bondage to the innumerable needs which he has created for himself. . . . as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of needs, men distort their own nature - for many senseless and foolish desires, habits and absurd fancies are fostered in them." Zosima wonders is this freedom? I supposed it depends on whether my needs and desires really are foolish and absurd fancies which are distortions of my true nature or whether my true nature is always evolving with no true absolute. Back to nature vs. nurture. Socrates may help…if there actually exists something called “morals” which are absolutely true (i.e. not relative) and we are meant to be, or are moral, a distortion of our morals (via capitalism or whatever else) is a corruption of one’s true nature. The problem in determining how far your responsibilities reach (child, spouse, neighbor, customer, farmer, stranger) lies in determining the true absolute nature of man and his morals. This is all presuming man has an absolute nature and that there are absolute morals. Are you asking how far your personal responsibilities reach or how far every man’s responsibilities reach? This may or may not be the same question depending on your view of man’s nature and the nature of morality. Are they absolute or are they relative? Is there some absolute true nonrelative man? I guess most people are ahead of me in this guessing game because they have determined that yes it is true we do have responsibilities in the first instance. I suppose if we take Christ’s nature as our absolute, we are accountable for everyone and everything. I think according to Christians he would be our absolute nonrelative man becasue he did not sin - but then again wasn't he god and not man? Taking this view, if you allow capitalism to distort or limit your accountability to anyone, you are distorting your true nature and you have failed. Should we try to be like god or to be god? Psychopaths are a problem. They do exist. If they are an aberration, a distortion, truly and most desperately lacking man’s true moral nature - are they really human at all? Is it our moral nature that defines our humanity? Was it nature or nurture that stripped them of their humanity? How far can you stray from man’s absolute moral nature and not become a psychopath? It appears simple - to determine your accountability, determine man’s true nature.
Thank god, McLaine. We have our answer: just determine man's true nature! :)
I know you're being facetious, in part, and genuine, in part. It's a question as old as our ability to question, I suspect: from where do our morals originate? Is it the nature of our being to be moral? Or is it the influence/mandate of society through religion and laws that cause us to be moral?
I don't know the answers to these questions. I don't study human psychology or sociology from any scientific or data-collecting standpoint; I can only comment from my own experiences. From my experience, it seems the answer is a combination of both societal influences and our original makeup with which we were born. There are some people impervious to societal influences--both the psychopaths and the saints. They are governed by something within that makes them ignore the "good" morals (psychopaths) or the negative influences (saints).
The rest of us, it seems, are some combination of the two--our original makeup (genetic? soul?) causes some of us to be more empathetic and inclined to follow paths to help each other and not cause harm, and societal influences cause some of us who have less natural moral inclination to behave in a more socially responsible way.
My discussions with others inform me that the reason capitalism is the best economic model for humans is because it is the most realistic model for human nature. We are inherently selfish beings, which is why socialism doesn't work, and capitalism caters to that selfishness. If you want to build a better mousetrap, you're more likely to do it in a capitalist society where you can make a buck or a million than you are if you're just doing it to better your socialist society. And people competing to make the buck will cause the best mousetrap to succeed in the market.
Maybe that theory about capitalism and human nature is right, which is depressing for me and my pollyanna nature. But it seems that this theory only works when there are personal responsibilities attached to it--not by law, but by choice. Too much selfishness will cause the system to collapse (or, rather, correct drastically in a way that is harmful to society).
It's the same with our other freedoms. The First Amendment, for example. We have freedom of speech, right? Which would imply that we can say whatever we want, within certain boundaries (no screaming "Fire" in a crowded theater). But if that freedom is not exercised with some responsible restraint, we end up with a drastic correction that harms the very freedom we appreciate. For example, those horrendous people in Kansas who picket funerals, yelling that God hates fags, and the loved one who has just died is burning in hell. Technically, it's their right to say what they want; however, it causes drastic reactions, such as those from courts and legislatures trying to control this behavior. If the freedom isn't exercised responsibly, it causes a limitation on the freedom for all of us.
Which, finally, brings me back to what I see as the point of all of this. If it is true that we are inherently selfish and will act predominantly in our own interests, then responsibility in capitalism has got to be re-connected to how it benefits people to be responsible. I think that we have to learn that we are connected to our behavior--good or bad. I wish I had data that bolstered my butterfly-effect theory of capitalism. I don't.
Until then, for the rest of us who already have some altruistic motives, I think we continue to be as responsible as we can, and maybe it'll catch on.
Couple things in these comments (which I only just read) that are going to take some time for me to digest before commenting.
For now I'll only make a statement. I just got back from Guatemala. In general, and there are definitely exceptions to this rule but, the mill (exporter) doesn't care about the farmer, the farmer doesn't care about the harvester, and the criminal doesn't care about anyone. The coffee economy works a certain way. It's been working that way for generations. And people get pissed off when someone bucks the system.
I have a bad feeling that someone is going to be me.
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