The choices engendered by the
paradox raise ethical questions, not the least of which is our responsibility
to future generations. Those questions often arise in the context of how
individuals procure the energy required for survival, including which means of
production to employ. Two choices exist at each end of that spectrum. (There
are degrees and variances.) One may cooperate in a division of labor based on
merit where everyone shares in the production and distribution of the product,
or they may appropriate other people's labor by means that may or may not be
equitable. Historically, the former has produced the most efficient societies,
which may deteriorate by virtue of the conflict between individual and
collective interests that Darwin observed, which leads to adaptations through
means employing something like the second choice. Without ethics, that will
probably happen.
Stealing other people's labor
requires force, deception, or a regime for stigmatizing some people as inferior
and therefore subject to a higher class's right to exploit their labor. Part of
that regime includes the accusation that all those who recognize the pervasive
role of class in all societies are fomenting "class warfare." America is not
exceptional in this regard. Class is more subtle here but it exists in crucial
ways. We were the last civil society to ban slavery and we still exploit
immigrants and the poor. Exploitation of other people's labor is embedded in
capitalism. The less you pay for labor the more you profit from it. Like
natural selection, the market makes no value judgments outside of
profit--measured by the virtual wealth of money.
The market may discourage merit-based
divisions of labor, encourage short-term strategies, and in other ways produce
inefficient and wasteful practices. Deception suppresses relevant information
to a point where agendas, not research, determine views of reality. Science
becomes the enemy. Government stands by while the public suffers the extortion
(like health care costs) of a privileged elite who pay very little for the
public benefits they receive, insisting all the time that they have a right to
keep all their money and be free from taxes. Within this world view, ethics
only get in the way of the righteous pursuit of profit.
How the ethical questions raised
by the paradox Darwin identified (community versus individual interests) are
answered will determine whether a culture will prosper or end up like Somalia
and other places where corruption and intimidation prosper. We are what we
adapt to. No invisible-hand exists for ethics. If natural selection cannot sort
out the short term from the long term at the outset, the market certainly cannot.
Competition is a sacred cow in
America, but natural selection demonstrates how destructive it can become when
contests between individuals damage the wealth we all require to survive.
Survival requires a set of norms for internalization by individuals and for
public policy that limit destructive competition. No market exists for that
purpose. The market cannot, in light of the paradox, resolve the conflict
between individual aspirations and community needs.
These points remain obvious,
uncontestable by anything but denial, yet propaganda by extreme conservatives
has blocked all discussion and substituted slogans for facts. When crippled by
manipulation, the market serves that purpose by ignoring the obvious lethal
consequences of our present means of production and distribution--putting aside
these consequences as so called "externalities."
Another overlooked feature of
natural selection defines what we worship. It defines "God" as the thing we
believe we must obey to survive. Natural selection dictates that result. Those
who make the right choice survive. When we were hunter-gatherers, we worshiped
animals. We only killed what we needed and what we needed was clear. Later we
observed the mathematical certainty of the stars and worshiped the heavens. Math
made technology possible--including virtual wealth like money. Virtual wealth
has the unfortunate feature, unlike food, of not disclosing how much is enough
to satisfy its holder.
Today few possess any hard
assets. Most people survive on wages or income from small businesses. Their
sole means of survival depends upon money. Consciously or unconsciously, they
worship money. The logic and mythology of money governs their decisions. The
world's oldest con game establishes a priesthood that claims all knowledge of
God--a very marketable commodity in the context of worshipping idols. The world
of finance is filled with people who play the role of priests to a public made
slaves to money. They invent all sorts of mythical algorithms that are supposed
to disclose the logic of money--the idea being that money has its own
invisible-hand that they can divine. While considerable controversies arise
over what constitutes the logic of money and the meaning of its myths, several
precepts provide bedrock for the extremes the religion of money fosters. They
reflect the marriage of Calvinism and virtual wealth.
As God, money may determine how
we perceive virtue. Those who have money God loves and those who do not have
money God does not love. Therefore, any support from government interferes with
God's judgments. Like athletes on steroids, it distorts the competition to
prove God's love. Only self-made men need apply. With some obvious exceptions,
acquiring money serves God's purposes. Those who make it need not concern themselves
with decency. The unintended consequences, the externalities, and the impact on
the needs of others are all forgiven by God's love. The act of making money is
sanctified. How you make it and how much you can get of it that way provides
the basis for class in America. Money as God becomes self-validating.
So goes the logic and myth of
money at its extremes. As extreme as this sounds, no other algorithm explains
the irrational behavior that has gridlocked all solutions to what are becoming
insurmountable problems, such as global warming. The use of taxes to provide
equitable reallocations of wealth that are necessary to finance changes in
production and to discourage harmful means of production have become
unthinkable even to those who claim liberal credentials. I refer the reader to
Robert Frank's definitive exposition of these points (The Darwin Economy ). He discloses how some
transfers of wealth, unthinkable to many conservatives, can make needed changes
possible, affordable, and equitable. His research leads him to conclude that a
society that does not transfer some income from the rich to the poor (by taxes)
always ends up addressing the needs of the poor in much more costly ways (p
111).
While few will admit their
fealty to money, everyone is consciously or unconsciously infected by it to
some degree or other. We are what we adapt to and much of what we must adapt to
turns on money. It is a matter of survival. Nothing will change until the means
of production and distribution change and that will not happen without an
accounting system that reflects the real costs, including externalities of the
way we do business. We cannot design sustainable means of production without
full accounting. If wasting makes money, there will be waste. One can
underestimate the value of money as a facilitator of commerce. The mistake more
frequently made assigns intrinsic value to money. It is a tool not to be
worshipped, as in the Bible's First Commandment, as a craven image.
One of the great mysteries for me, which I can only
explain through the religion of money and the common individualistic goal of
"Making It Big," the America pathology, is how people can fear big government
but not fear excessive wealth in the hands of so few. These concepts justify
the strange idea that power in the hands of a representative,
democratically-elected government is somehow more dangerous than power in the
hands of a largely unaccountable financial oligarchy.
This
oligarchy has decided that the way to address the shortfall in real wealth caused
by technology and by the population explosion is to return to an industrial
form of feudalism rather than to increase efficiency and sharing. Their vision
of the future is one in which a small elite hold a monopoly on wealth and
knowledge. The masses attend substandard schools and lack access to health care
or higher education without crippling sacrifices to pay for extraordinary
costs. Most will work, until the day they die, for what do not amount to
minimum wages today.
I have concluded that
nothing can change as long as people continue to adapt to the wrong thing. As
long as money provides the measure of all things, corruption will continue.
Change requires a different accounting system, one based on resource
consumption. Taxes on damaging activities and consumption are more effective
than regulation and are better for the economy than traditional taxes. Frank, The
Darwin Economy , outlines the ways
various consumption taxes can help the economy that put the lie to many
assumptions about the market.
Survival of the species
provides the sustainable basis for morality and ethics. Morality not based on
the survival of our children's children, as a first principle, only serves the
agenda of the Religion of Money. Our true moral imperatives have more to do
with resource efficiency, conservation, and the cooperation of brotherhood than
with what often passes for social mores.
What
we observe in Congress today more resembles an inquisition than a deliberative
body studying the facts and arriving at solutions. The high priests of the Word
demand fealty to a catechism supporting their agenda regardless of the
consequences on the ground. The things that really matter, such as feeding,
clothing, housing people, and a future for the generations to come take a back seat
to philosophical purity. A society that fails to put the children first may not
claim moral superiority. Ethics that do not provide for the future fail. If we
abandon the wisdom of our genes, God will abandon us. Unbridled competition
between individuals merely decides who dies last.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
3
