The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
It took a lot longer than I thought, but over at the First Things blog, Edward Skidelsky has raised the uncomfortable point -- buttressed of course with ample intellectual historical detective work -- that the ancient and medieval notion of avarice gradually disappeared or was transformed into an entirely different notion by the time of the Enlightenment. Not a new view, I suppose. The article is long and will take awhile to digest, but here's the passage that should intrigue a Ricochet reader and certainly Ricochet's Hillsdale faculty member, Dr. Paul Rahe:
Does the traditional ethical view of economic life have any future? The prospect, it must be admitted, looks bleak. Modern economics has built up a formidable body of theory from which thick evaluative terms are in principle excluded. “Avarice” and “usury” last made a serious appearance in the work of Keynes, but were swiftly disowned by his disciples, who viewed them as medieval gargoyles on an otherwise splendid hydraulic machine. Today, ethics impinges on economics only from without, in the formulation of policy goals and side constraints. The question of how to fulfill these goals, within these constraints, is a purely technical one. There is no space for an ethics of specifically economic acts and motives.
So, the debate is enjoined: Are conservatives battling with liberals as two hopelessly modernist economic ideologies riding a ship of state that is slowly sinking into the abyss? Or has the author erected an artificial barrier between pre and post Enlightenment thought?
I'm very curious as to what the membership thinks.
Note: The article appears in the latest print edition of First Things where, I can only assume, a lively letters column will appear a few months hence. Given our recent discussion here on Ricochet of Catholic Social Teaching as it applies to economic thinking, I'm looking forward to it.
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Oct '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
As I understand your premise, it is that "within" the economic sphere, a certain ethic should prevail that is, in fact, instructive of the economic milieu exclusively. On that I have difficulty. The ethical universe is, in fact, universal. What applies to economic acts is what applies to all acts.
I'm not an academic, so I really do want to hear what Paul has to say, but as I see it, there is no exclusively economic principle. We read God's will and place ALL elements under His guidance.
Jun '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
I have not read the article, but I will, after this. But I must say that economics is not avarice or greed. And collecting interest is not usury within a normal range of rates. Ethics operates best where men are free and such are the principles of economics that only free men are set to enjoy its fruits to the full. Lastly, God plays no role in economics, He works through his creation: Man.
Sep '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
As I understand your premise
Just to clarify, its not my premise. Rather its the premise of the article's author. Normally, I'm quite amenable to the argument that there's a radical split between the philosophy of the moderns versus the philosophy of the medievals. But, I'm very curious as to how this applies to economics, and I'm also not as well versed as I should be on some of the scholastic thinkers in the Iberian peninsula who contributed to international law as well as economics prior to the Enlightenment.
Jan '11
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
I'm still "digesting" Skidelsky's original article from First Things. (BTW, I consider First Things to be an excellent site, deserves its place on Sites We Like, and offers these sorts of articles all the time.)
My first reaction is to recall that this transition from the "sin of avarice" to a "consequentialist" view happens to coincide with the transition from a static understanding of monetary wealth to believing that wealth is created constantly. Once trade became easier, especially between far-off countries, it fostered a new perspective on value, and then in turn on wealth.
Many historians treat the Enlightenment as if it simply happened out of the blue, and that Europe simply woke up one day, "came to their senses," and threw off the church. The Enlightenment happened because of information overload, brought on by the sudden (historically) flood of new products and trade.
I'd say it's a fair question to wonder whether the attitudes about the accumulation of wealth changed because ... it was suddenly possible to actually accumulate it!
Sep '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
Many historians treat the Enlightenment as if it simply happened out of the blue
Not to mention that there were separate Enlightenments in England, France and Germany for a whole host of complex reasons. As well, the modern nation state did not exist back in Aquinas's time, and the development of the modern nation state -- along with international trade and colonial conquest -- created circumstances that had never existed previously.
May '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
Neoclassical economics derives conclusions from the assumption that people are income or profit-maximizing agents. By contrast, Austrian economics does not. It proceeds from the fact that humans act to achieve subjectively superior states.
Edited on Apr 22, 2011 at 10:49pmJun '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
So Skidelsky thinks we should work toward an economics that provides moral answers to economic questions, because, you guessed it, the answers that economics does provide are not to his liking. Last I heard there was no economics Pope claiming infallibility on all matters of moral economics. But, that's not what ticks me off the most about this pap. What really gets my goat is the concentration of "evil" in business hands. It seems the most evil are also the most wealthy for they are avaricious. Here's a news flash for Skidelsky, it's usually the most powerful that produce the greatest evil. Oh! that's powerful as in politically powerful. There are all kinds of imbalances, injustices, and sins in this world, so why are we always beating our breasts because some jackass is worth more than some other jackass? Last I looked envy was still one of the seven deadlies, so, perhaps, the best answer to Skidelsky's brand of jackassery is who cares.
Oct '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
You are correct, God's agent is man. To say, however, that God plays no role in economics is to exempt His agent, man, from the responsibility to reflect God's will in all his actions. Economics is neither the most important sphere of man's actions, nor the least. It is a name given to a subset of man's actions, that's all.
May '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
For an economic example: Clever of those Church Fathers to enrich themselves by selling indulgences.
Thomas Aquinas did not understand economics at all. Most of the harm in this world is done by people with an exalted moral vision but no bleeping understanding.
May '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
Referencing yesterday's post by Claire Berlinksi, this utter failure to understand economics is one of the important roots of Christian hatred of Jews. See Thomas Sowell's studies of the vital economic roles of middle-men, and how ancient Christians utterly failed to understand this, seeing middle-men not as economically productive but as parasites.
Feb '11
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
Niall Ferguson does a great job of explaining the role, origin and usefulness of financial middle-men in the The Ascent of Money.
Sep '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
I am so exasperated at the article which I scanned in haste I admit. It is fine for the author to question if we have produced a moral economic sphere when compared to what existing in some other time. Why I am exasperated is this this is all fluff. When it comes to the hard decisions of how to organize your society by its laws, you can't just wish for the city on the hill and hope for the best.
Free market capitalism is more moral than a centrally planned economy. Full stop. What the article calls greed I call self interest. Self interest works better than altruism in an economy in all cases every time. When the planning occurs that is when people should really watch their pocket books. There is no practical example I know of to support this view. Anyone?
Fine sentiments, bad governance. There are a lot of bad ideas out there. Let's hope these sentiments for central planning do not get a foothold.
Sep '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
The definition of usury is like that of suburban sprawl. Usury is what someone else charges for interest. Sprawl is where someone else lives.
One concrete example. For some time the state of AR chose to limit interest charges on credit cards (they may still do). A bank in Pine Bluff, AR offered one of the lowest interest rates in the country. However, very few banks in AR offered credit cards because it just wasn't worth it when banks in Texas were not dealing with the same rate caps.
I had one of the credit cards but eventually got a higher rate card because the people in Pine Bluff were such a pill to deal with and it was rare that I carried a balance anyway. Call it what you will but these were not moral issues of usury. It was just good intentions leading to bad governance (and bad service).
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
I am madly attempting to finish reading a very long manuscript for Cambridge University Press and do not have time to read the Skidelsky piece right now.
In response to the squib you quoted, Pseuododionysius, let me say this. Modern technology -- as imagined by Sir Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, and as achieved in and after the 18th century -- has altered the economic playing field.
Before that economics was a zero-sum game. One could increase one's own portion only at the expense of others. In such a world -- the world of subsistence or near-subsistence farming -- loans at interest tended to be predatory. Their aim was the appropriation of the surety. That is why Aristotle and the Greeks more generally were suspicious of all such loans except bottomry loans (which were extinguished if the ship went down). That is why Deuteronomy allows such loans only to non-Jews. That is why Christians were barred from usury.
The marriage of technology and the market, consummated by the patent of monopoly, meant that one's portion could be increased along with that of others. Loans at interest became venture capital, and acquisitiveness replaced avarice.
Edited on Apr 23, 2011 at 2:03pmRe: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
. . . and acquisitiveness replaced avarice. In such a world, what was once called greed could, if unleashed, benefit everyone.
All of this is, let me add, counter-intuitive. It is hard to get one's mind around. We tend to think of wealth as a thing. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, that is pretty much what it was. Thanks to the marriage of commerce and technology, however, wealth became a process and loans at interest a means of sharing the risks. Most of the loans made today are analogous to the bottomry loans of earlier times.
That this is good for the polity seems to me to be abundantly clear. Whether acquisitiveness is good for the human soul . . . that is another question.
Dec '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
"Most of the loans made today are analogous to the bottomry loans of earlier times."
Oh, would that it were so. But that is not how Wall St. operates, given its regulatory capture of the financial apparatus.
Your loan doesn't operate like that. My loan doesn't operate like that. But the loans of our government and Goldman Sachs certainly do.
Jun '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
KarlUB: "Most of the loans made today are analogous to the bottomry loans of earlier times."
Oh, would that it were so. But that is not how Wall St. operates, given its regulatory capture of the financial apparatus.
Your loan doesn't operate like that. My loan doesn't operate like that. But the loans of our government and Goldman Sachs certainly do. · Apr 23 at 1:21pm
That you can get some loans simply on the strength of your name is by past standards akin to a miracle. So before you charge off complaining about the type of credit available to you, bear in mind the alternative is no credit at all.
Dec '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
Excellent point, Cas. But my gripe isn't really the credit available to me. It is the credit available to the banks who get to use my tax money to finance their "heads I win, tails you lose" investments. When I run out of cash, the banks take my stuff. When they run out of cash, the banks tax our (collective) stuff, too. And on the off chance they score on an investment, they make a lot of money, disburse the profits internally, and-- in the current environment-- still won't lend it to me!
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
KarlUB: "Most of the loans made today are analogous to the bottomry loans of earlier times."
Oh, would that it were so. But that is not how Wall St. operates, given its regulatory capture of the financial apparatus.
Your loan doesn't operate like that. My loan doesn't operate like that. But the loans of our government and Goldman Sachs certainly do. · Apr 23 at 1:21pm
On the main point, I think that you are simply wrong. But let me mention one type of loan, which you might have mentioned, that is genuinely predatory today: credit card debt. The usurer in antiquity and the Middle Ages preyed upon desperate need: the fact that the weather varied and some years the crops did not come in, for example. Today's predatory lending preys upon self-indulgence. It is not pretty, but it is not as ugly as usury was in earlier times. After all, for the most part, those who get deeply into credit-card debt have only themselves to blame.
Dec '10
Re: The Conservative Wedge Issue - Avarice
We may be talking past each other, Prof. Rahe, but I entirely agree with you about credit cards. Don' t use 'em, myself.
May I suggest, though, you consider extending a little more charity towards those that are carrying balances? It is no doubt true-- as Rob noted in another post-- that we are unwisely spending more and more money on non-essential items as a society. But the fact that household incomes have been functionally stagnant for so long, I would think, has something to do with why credit card balances are so common.
It is because of this that they sometimes resemble the usury you have described.