May 2008 - Posts
Reading the comments on this article, the thing that must surely strike one as amazing: the readiness with which the words "greed" or "profit" are demonized, and, on the other hand, with which words like "non-profit" or "selfless" are elevated. It is as though an action characterized by being "not-for-profit" is inherently more coloured with moral dignity than one which reveals pecuniary motives. No doubt, this is in part due to movements calling for "corporate responsibility", mistaken religious doctrine and the like. Yet surely this is a fallacy, and I intend to show in precisely what terms it is so. I want, here, to avoid any moral argumentation whatsoever. My analysis will be purely in the realm of "is", and will avoid any moral connotations whatsoever.
When one acts, it is a matter of apodicticity that they do so in order to substitute their current state of affairs for a better one, or perhaps even to prevent a worse one from materializing. That is to say, they act in their self-interest. At the most basic level, when one's expectations are realized, they will profit, as the benefits their action yields will exceed the costs involved. Here, already, at the most fundamental level of human agency we have the category of profit (or, in the case one fails to reach their goals, loss.) This has implications that are of no small significance. When the social worker gives up her free time to aid the needy, she does so because she feels that aiding them is a noble goal. It satisfies her, psychically, to see the poor being helped. She profits psychically. Man cannot survive on charity alone though, so we must go further than this. In order to acquire his most basic needs, man must engage in the division of labour and exchange goods. When he values the goods of another more than those he currently holds, and this other individual values his goods more than he values his own, trade will instantiate. Both will profit to the extent that the exchange yields benefits exceeding the costs they incurred. Again, we see the phenomenon of profit. Man's ends being virtually limitless, he will seek ever more means to help attain his goals. He is by his nature an acquisitive being. All that changes when money enters into the picture is that exchange is indirect, and measurable in terms of the monetary unit. So there we have it - at the most fundamental level of human action, we encounter profit and acquisitiveness as natural phenomena.
Be not fooled - the sanctimonious preacher, the moralizing politician, the devout humanist, these individuals all act to realize a profit, and gain ever more of it, their rantings to the contrary notwithstanding. The cognitive dissonance with which people analyze exchanges involving purely psychic profit and barter on the one hand and indirect exchange on the other must be purged from the intellectual realm.
-Jon
People will often sneer dismissively when one makes mention of fields of inquiry such as epistemology. Naturally, such idle endeavours must be hopelessly abstract and disconnected from the world of fact - perhaps a mere curiosity for those stranded in the Ivory Towers of academia. Not so. Epistemology profoundly affects every single aspect of philosophy it governs, and subsequently the sciences and political institutions of a given society. One can do no better than to consider the case of Ayer. He, like many other influential philosophers of the 20th century, was a logical positivist. Briefly, he posited that all knowledge is either factual - as in empirical - or pertaining to definitions (this is what constitutes the well-known analytic-synthetic dichotomy in philosophy.) For Ayer, the notion of a necessary truth that existed in the world as is would be fiction. The holes in logical positivism are many, and I will not here take the time to discredit a philosophy already mired in cobwebs. Allowing, for the purposes of this entry, the truth of logical positivism, where does this leave moral theories one might ask? What is a moral fact, if neither synthetic nor analytic (i.e. empirical or a matter of definitions)? But wait - moral fact? There's no such thing! At least, this is what Ayer would have us believe. As a consequence of his epistemological views, moral properties are mere emotive ejaculations. Why? Because clearly they are not empirical facts. Nor could they be analytic - for analytic truths are meaningless in the world solar systems, men, rivers, and the like. For Ayer, at best a statement such as "theft is wrong" is equivalent to "theft: boo!". Morality is thus rendered a matter of mere preference, of "anything goes", whether Ayer would admit it or not. As a matter of fact, it is interesting to note that in advancing his theory on morals, Ayer was hoping to dispose of a potential objection to his adherence to the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, and strengthen its plausibility. Personally, I view his attempt as entirely circular and wrong-headed. Logical positivism is dead. But it is a key example of how a theory of knowledge fundamentally affects every single aspect of how we view and interact with the world.
-Jon
A popular contrast between capitalism and socialism is that the former is an anarchic, imperfect system, ruled by emotions, whereas the latter is a rational, planned system. The truth is the precise reverse of this. The market system is the expression of man's rational faculty taken to its fullest extent. It is governed by reason, predicated on man's nature qua rational animal. All the system requires is the recognition of property rights as objective boundaries of man's spheres of autonomy (that is to say, resources he commands by virtue of having employed them in his various schemes of action - action being purposive behaviour aiming at satisfying one's ends with scarce means - and of course, command over himself) and the freedom to exchange titles over this property. The rest follows naturally, all setting into motion in a deceptively mechanical fashion. Reverse valuation of goods leads to ever widening circles of exchange, and the social division of labour sets in; as trade grows, the desire for a common medium of exchange arises. Money is born. Prices - objective ratios of exchange, past and present - are concretized cardinally and homogeneously. Man now has it in his power to extend his plans ever farther into the future and to ever more spatially distant localities. The power of his conceptual faculty, of his reason is infinitely multiplied. His store of wealth increases as his command over nature grows. All he needs is this minimal amount of knowledge, and he is able to direct his activities where they are most urgently needed; the system is self-regulating. It is impersonal, objective and at the same time inherently human. Now, compare this to the bleak image of socialism. Here, we have one central authority - often adopting the facade of "democratic" management - in control of all resources. It is faced with utter chaos. Its decisions are arbitrary, divorced from the desires of market participants, unable to correctly appraise land and capital. It is disorder in the extreme. In trying to sacrifice freedom for certainty, it eliminates both. In the case where it claims to advance freedom by absolving man of "need", it only does so by enslaving one set of men at the behest of another set, to provide for them their survival; Heaven forbid they should think for themselves, act for themselves! Such a notion of freedom is confused, contradictory and little more than an anti-concept. It is to be rejected, summarily, and substituted with a notion of freedom derived from a proper conceptual analysis of man's nature - via abstraction in the Aristotelian sense. Freedom can only arise alongside its correlate: responsibility. To desire freedom yet at the same time evade responsibility is to evade reality. Only the market can advance freedom, as well as increase man's wealth and control over nature. It is by no means perfect - nothing human is. But it is as close as man can get.
-Jon