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Wealth and moral character

by E.D. Kain

Jonah Goldberg makes some very good points about human welfare and markets:

I’m no unmitigated fan of Wal-Mart, but it can’t be denied that Wal-Mart—and stores like it—have improved the lives of a lot of low-income families by making life’s necessities, and even its luxuries, affordable. Lightbulbs put a lot of candle makers out of business[*], but lightbulbs also made indoor lighting cheaper, safer, and more widespread. That’s a good trade.

Indeed, the market is the only thing that transforms luxuries into affordable indulgences. A low-end car today has features that the best Mercedes didn’t have a generation ago. Teenagers have phones that are more powerful than the computers that NASA used to put men on the moon. Indeed, even leisure has become democratized.

[…]

One last point. I love the Templeton Foundation and I think they do fantastic work. But questions like “Does the Free Market Erode Moral Character?” bother me a great deal. As opposed to what? Socialism? Socialism certainly erodes moral character. Some of the most alienated, selfish, deracinated people I’ve ever met were people who grew up under the yoke of Communism. Arthur Brooks’s work has definitively shown that large welfare states siphon off philanthropy and erode altruism.

Adam Smith’s case for the free market rested on the fact that it encouraged good character (as Yuval Levinrecently detailed), and I think Smith won that argument a long time ago. A more fruitful question, with deep religious and philosophical implications and precedents, would be “Does wealth erode moral character?” Debating that would still allow for some healthy attacks on the free market, because without free markets, wealth really isn’t something to worry about.

First of all, I know citing Goldberg round these parts will earn me a whole host of angry comments.  How dare I quote the man who wrote Liberal Fascism!?  He’s a fascist!  He’s not very nice!  He strawmans liberals!

I admit, I have a fondness for Goldberg which allows me to ignore our many points of disagreement long enough to point out the many smart, sensible things he does write.  And this is one of them.

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March 5, 2010   106 Comments

Bruce Bartlett, Socialist Lackey

by Will

An essential post from Bartlett on the trivial differences between Europe and the United States. Speaking as someone who managed to survive growing up on that benighted continent,  it’s high time we move beyond gratuitously bashing our closest political and cultural cousins. I’m not in favor of replicating the European social model here in the United States, but appropriating its best features sounds like a pretty good idea.

November 13, 2009   19 Comments

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