When I was in high school, I grew enamored of the works of Ayn Rand. One sentence stayed with me: what the capitalists of the world lacked was "a moral sanction." She meant a philosophy which explicitly endorsed a mode of being, a coherent set of principles. She provided one.
John Galt's long radio address laid out the Objectivist philosophy. It was written at a time when, in Rand's view, America was turning its back on its capitalist successes and embracing collectivism, especially that of the Soviets, which she had experienced firsthand, to the sorrow of her and her family.
Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957. Thirty years later, things had turned around, as in Gordon Gekko's speech in Wall Street in which he said, "Greed is good." Since then, we have seen capitalist excesses--oil industries that cause environmental crises, for instance--that make it hard to grant a pass to all who toil for profit.
But more worrisome to me is the withdrawal of a moral sanction from the public sector. For a long time now, the "greed is good" folks have pushed a consistent message: government is evil, taxation is theft, civil servants are incompetent petty tyrants. I know this to be false, a big lie that slanders important work.
My own belief is that neither profit nor non-profit organizations can be trusted. They are human enterprises, meaning that they are run by people. Some people are ethical. Some are corrupt. And we can be talking about the same people.
The consequence of "greed is good" is all around us. Right now, many people in America equate money with virtue, as in the prosperity gospel. A society in which there are grave inequalities of wealth and quality of life is one result.
The withdrawal of a moral sanction from those whose motives are not money also has consequences: civic disinterest, crumbling infrastructure, wholly avoidable poverty and suffering.
So one of the things I think about, a lot, is how to rebalance the scales, call out the solid value of thoughtful non-profit endeavors. Libraries are a sterling example, but they are not the only one. I think that message is important as the generations turn. It's one of the things I want to talk and write more about.
Comments
As a long time worker on electoral politics at the local level just learned a man in my state whose race for governor I supported with much time has been indicted for taking kick backs on development..."Tallahassee Commissioner XXX and his longtime associate,XXX agreed to plead guilty to three charges — wire fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy to commit tax fraud. They were originally charged with more than 40 counts each as part of an FBI investigation into corruption at City Hall." Just two examples of so many in my life where people disappoint.
Moral Sanctions--A worthwhile topic to ponder,