1. Have an Interesting Snippet to Share : Click Here
    Dismiss Notice

Greed - II

Discussion in 'Snippets of Life (Non-Fiction)' started by ojaantrik, Jan 14, 2010.

  1. ojaantrik

    ojaantrik IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    3,535
    Likes Received:
    2,437
    Trophy Points:
    308
    Gender:
    Male
    Continued from Greed I

    Is the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:eek:ffice:smarttags" /><st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> President prepared to convert <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place> to a profit-averse society? This is a simple question and few would hesitate to come out with a straight forward answer. However, given that the world's economies have fallen back on Keynesian policy measures to prevent a total collapse, it could be a good idea to move backwards and rethink about Keynes' own approach to the capitalist ethics. The agenda is not too simple and it is here that I fall back on Skidelsky's insights.

    I need to move into treacherous waters now, since we are about to part company with pure economics and delve into Keynes' many sided genius. It appears that his wife, the ballerina Lydia Lopokova, considered him to be 'more than an economist'. And Skidelsky himself describes Keynes as 'the most brilliant non-economist who ever applied himself to the study of economics.' In fact, he goes even further. "Deep down," observes Skidelsky, "he was not an economist at all. Of course, he could 'do' economics ... He put on the mask of an economist to gain authority, just as he put on dark suits ... for life in the City." Skidelsky's entire book is devoted to prove this point. However, to address the question I started out with, it is best that I stick to Skidelsky's views on Keynes vis-à-vis the ethics of capitalism alone.

    Keynes, it appears justified the pursuit of money insofar as it led to a 'good life'. And here is the catch. Good life for Keynes was not a way of making people better off, it was merely a means of making them ethically good. The science of economics, as far as Keynes was concerned, was devoted entirely to a pursuit of ethical goodness. This viewpoint brings us perilously close to religion and signals a possible contradiction too. Accumulation of wealth is morally good, since it lifts people out of poverty. Yet, Christ had said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placeType w:st="on">kingdom</st1:placeType> of <st1:placeName w:st="on">God</st1:placeName></st1:place>."

    The contradiction has been all too evident in the recent awareness amongst people that though globalization has been praised by its supporters for the efficiency it leads to and the freedom it promises, it is becoming increasingly evident that the phenomenon has destroyed communities, wrecked environment and even undermined democracy by giving rise to inequalities of income and wealth. In other words, economic welfare and human well-being appear to have come into sharp conflict.

    It is in this context that Keynes' approach to capitalism assumes additional significance. It seems that Keynes was not an uncritical admirer of capitalism. As far as he was concerned, capitalism was a useful tool for lifting societies out of poverty, but once lifted he thought its usefulness would disappear. Of course, he was not a Marxist either who believed in the overthrow of capitalism. He chose, in other words, the middle path. Capitalism expanded possibilities of 'the good life', but the possibilities could not be realized without reference to religion's bounds on wealth accumulation. Or, to put it differently, while 'natural' limits on economic growth are well-recognized in economics, Keynes was probably suggesting moral limits too with reference to the goals of life itself. To quote from Skidelsky, "The empire of greed should be progressively retracted as its job neared completion".

    It is not too clear whether the reference to greed in President Obama's speech was guided by the Keynesian perception. However, it is important for us to try and figure out whether Keynes himself was trapped, willy-nilly, into a contradiction of his own creation. To analyse this question, Skidelsky collects Keynes' concern about ethics and economics under four different compartments: the link between wealth and goodness, the psychology of wealth creation, the role of justice in economics and the role of religion in economic life. I shall touch upon only the first three of these. Regarding the fourth it will suffice to merely note that Keynes, an atheist and a celebrated member of the <st1:place w:st="on">Bloomsbury</st1:place> circle, was nonetheless perturbed by the question: "Was morality possible in the long run without religion?"


    III



    Keynes on Wealth and Goodness

    Keynes' ethical framework was borrowed from the <st1:City w:st="on">Cambridge</st1:City> philosopher G.E. Moore, who published his Principia Ethica in 1902, when Keynes was a first year undergraduate student at <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cambridge</st1:place></st1:City>. For <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moore</st1:place></st1:City>, morals were subordinate to ethics. The basic ethical question was, "What is good?" or "What sort of things ought to exist for their own sake?" As opposed to this, the moral question was "What ought I to do?", "How ought I to behave?". The second set of questions can be answered only with reference to the first.
    What did Keyenes, influenced as he was by <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moore</st1:place></st1:City>, have to offer in answer to the ethical questions?

    1. First, what were the most ethically valuable things? Keynes included here states of consciousness such as 'being in love', 'experiencing aesthetic emotions' and 'pursuit of knowledge'. However, 'justice' did not find any place here.
    2. There is a strong connection between ethics and truth. It is not a question of preferences. The ethical goodness in question is intuitively known to be present or absent without being definable. It is this that creates a distance between Keynes and economics. He seems to be closer to Platonic philosophy or Christianity, where rational people are allowed to hold unanalysed ideas about good or bad.
    3. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moore</st1:place></st1:City> represented an ideal, for his philosophy implied the maximization of goodness rather than happiness. And the natural question that Keynes faced here was: Does the accumulation of wealth have any implication for the accumulation of goodness? Goodness being a notion that is different from happiness, one suspects here that Bentham faced far less of a problem with his philosophy of greatest happiness for the greatest number. For Bentham, the increase in pleasure producing goods is ethically desirable. For Moore and therefore Keynes, the relationship between pleasure and goodness is indirect at best.
    4. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moore</st1:place></st1:City> is concerned with 'organic unity'. One cannot arrive at the quantity of goodness by summing up individual states of consciousness. The ethical value of good could be more or less than the sum of the parts. In fact, Keynes rejected methodological individualism in both ethics and economics.
    5. Any value not specified as good in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moore</st1:place></st1:City>, however, could be an instrument for the attainment of goodness. Capitalism was one such instrument. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Liberty</st1:place></st1:City> and justice too shared similar characteristics.


    Business, politics or any other profession was a means then for Keynes to the end, an end composed of 'goodness of states of mind'. In other words, Keynes was taking recourse to pure commonsense when he thought that the process of becoming good was made smoother by a minimal level of material well-being. Modern economics differs from the Moore-Keynes vision, for it replaces the maximization of goodness idea by the maximization of wants criterion. And it is exactly here that Keynes' ethics comes into conflict with the present day approach. To some extent, the problem has been addressed in recent times by the distinction made between quantity and quality and the search for quality of life indices. However, there is no agreed criterion yet in this connection. Not that Keynes had a complete solution to the problem, but he did believe that quantitative measures should rule till material well-being was adequate enough to ensure that values pertaining to the quality of life take precedence over quantity.

    In our contemporary world, morals take precedence over ethics. Morals tell us cheating is wrong in any business. They do not address the question: Is this business worth doing at all? A part of the problem translates to our discomfort with the notion of greed, but we do not know where the upper bound on greed ought to be drawn. It is exactly here that the American President's attack on the excessive greed lacks a basis.


    Will conclude in Greed - III :crazy
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2010
    Loading...

  2. Kamalji

    Kamalji IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    13,153
    Likes Received:
    5,818
    Trophy Points:
    545
    Gender:
    Male
    Dear OJ,

    Too deep for me. But at the end u said, is business good at all ?

    Well as a common man, a small time , has been businessman, i would say, yes business is good, for it provides profites to the owner, and provides employment ona large scale in the private sector , as there are limited jobs in the Govt sector all over the world.

    Yes one can do business honestly, and one can be ethicall too.You give what u have promised to the customer, at the price agreed upon, at the time u promised.For example time is very important.You cannot deliver woolens during winters, for the would be useless.

    And yes, a businessman pays his taxes, various ones, along the way, parting with some of his profits to the Govt, and keeping some for himself.

    Some parts of the business are not clean, like avoiding a part of the taxes, which most businessmen do, bnribing to get yr work done quickly, for any delay can cost u pelnty.

    Thanks, my thought sare just the basics, for i hardly know what u learned exonomists know.

    Regards

    kamal
     
  3. ojaantrik

    ojaantrik IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    3,535
    Likes Received:
    2,437
    Trophy Points:
    308
    Gender:
    Male
    @ Kamal

    Dear Kamal:

    I think you are right in what you have said. The problem nonetheless remains. It's not a question of evading taxes and being corrupt. The question is, can we draw a line and say we do not need any more profit than a certain amount?

    Following your line of thought, can we see anything wrong in doing good business and maintaining a minimum standard of life for one's family and oneself? I cannot. A problem lies though in discovering the extent of good life one wishes to enjoy.

    Earning profits, doing business are ultimately ways of attaining the good life one desires. A means to an end. The complication arises on account of the fact that most people confuse between the means and the end. Ultimately, all across the market driven world, it is the means that dominates. And then money making for the sake of money making takes charge. Love for money becomes indistinguishable from love for good life.

    My basic question was: Why should this be considered a sin? Suppose one were to make a great deal of money without cheating. Is he a criminal?

    Christianity would consider him a sinner. At what point of the money making game do you turn sinner? I can't find an easy answer.

    oj
     
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2010
  4. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    12,626
    Likes Received:
    16,903
    Trophy Points:
    538
    Gender:
    Male
    My dear OJ
    That is a very profound question that no one has been able to answer for sure so far. Different people give different interpretation. Christ proclaims that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God but the term 'rich' gets redefined with each generation. Some one who was considered rich a hundred years back would be really an 'also ran' in today's perspective of opulence. If we read about the House of God that King Solomon built from the Old Testament, the house that Mukesh Ambani is constructing would verily be a hut!

    My take about this is this. As long as money making does not become a game, it is not a sin. If man makes just about enough money to keep his body and soul together, it can never be called a sin. Victor Hugo tells us of the pathetic story of the hero of Les Miserables, Jean Valjean, who gets to serve a prison sentence of 19 years for stealing bread for his hungry sister. Stealing was sin even in such dire circumstances. But today, the politicians and the powers that be loot the country in the name of good governance and such acts go unnoticed!

    The basic tenet of all religions continue to remain the same proclaiming that even eating more than one strictly requires is a sin. We do get reminded of such a tenet by the austere living of some religious and righteous people but otherwise we just care a damn. The greed that you have handled so well in your analysis will continue to plague us for eternity. And no one will be able to answer the question that you have raised about the money making game.
    Sri
     
  5. ojaantrik

    ojaantrik IL Hall of Fame

    Messages:
    3,535
    Likes Received:
    2,437
    Trophy Points:
    308
    Gender:
    Male
    @ Cheeniya

    Dear Sri:

    I have been trying to ask a question that has bothered me for a long time. You said in your Voltaire quote: "... one who is able to answer every question put to him is really ignorant!" From that point of view, I am at least not totally ignorant!

    As I grow older and older, I realize with ever so much more confidence that a question is not really worth asking if it can be answered completely. Since you say that my question will never be answered, I have a sense of fulfilment in my quest for a question. This is a question that I can keep asking for the rest of my time on earth. I will depart without knowing the answer, but that's what makes it my while to live in confusion!

    I have another question, which I tried to ask in a my long story Waiting for Priya. It was about Love between Man and Woman. I will write more on that -- may be yet another story -- trying to view the matter from another angle/perspective. I know of course that I will not be able to answer that question either.

    Going back to Poincare, I feel somewhat happy I guess. And I feel happy that someone with your intellect has appreciated the point.

    Thanks a lot friend.

    oj
     

Share This Page