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american moral decline, economic cost of immorality, ethical economics, Ethics and economics, Hayek on morality, history of business ethics, history of morality, moral business, Morality in business, society and morality
Morality is something that seems almost cliché today, its meaning diluted and its influence waning. With today’s liberal “I am okay, you are okay” mindset it seems the ideas of a just and moral society have become old fashion vestiges of a time long past. In truth, if one sifts out the influences of the American left and post 1960 Hollywood radicalism one will find something long forgotten, it is America’s morality that formed the foundation upon which all that she has become was built.
Freedom and the free exchange of ideas are often lauded as the wheels upon which capitalism and the industrial revolution ran. If this is true then the road those wheels ran on was the emerging morality of the day. Protestant ethics encouraged the literacy, mutual respect and independence from the state that is the hallmark of free market capitalism. Without the emergence of protestant morality it is unlikely the world would of progressed much faster then it had the previous centuries. It was no mistake that the countries that were at the heart of this cultural revolution were also at the heart of a economic one. The freedom that makes free enterprise possible would not of emerged without these moral underpinnings.
As John Adams was fond of pointing out, liberty without virtue is impossible. Although the nature of man dictates that liberty without law last about as long as a “sheep among wolves” it is equally true freedom is smothered by a society whose every move is a dictate of the state. Where morality declines laws rise and where laws rise liberty wanes. This undeniable principle that forms the basis of the conservative creed “a society that seeks to be free must first seek to be moral.”
Capitalism and the unparalleled advancement of society it spurred was made possible by a moral revolution that had proceeded it. It is unlikely that the United States would have amounted to more than a footnote in history without its moral influences. Economists Milton Friedman often talked about the connection between morality and economics. An example of this nexus of economic activity and moral certitude he found within the Jewish diamond traders of New York. In these circles business is conducted without contracts and with nary a lawyer in sight. The bond is the word of those doing business together and ostracization followed by financial ruin the cost of breaking that bond. The result is an economic efficiency unmatched by others outside their circle. This is of course how nearly all business was done until recently; a man’s word was his bond and a handshake was good as a contract. This was how American business was run for most of the country’s history. A way of business that helped make the U.S. economy the envy of the world.
Unfortunately today the term legally binding has replaced morally bound as the mainstay of American contracts. The decline in business morality has been a bane to business and a boon to the legal profession. Another economist, Thomas Sowell, points out an additional cost of moral decline in a society. In his youth the streets of Harlem were safe and the stores relatively unpilfered. Today shopkeepers install bulletproof glass, sophisticated alarms and guards stroll the aisles of the stores and still the losses to theft are substantial. Such increase in business overhead puts inner city businesses at a distinct disadvantage and kills entrepreneurship in areas most in need of it. Moral decline comes with a definite economic cost. Even economist F.A. Hayek, not noted for his religiosity, noted the need for morality as a foundation for free societies and free enterprise.
The fact is moral decline effects all aspects of society, nothing remains untouched. Economies falter at the same time the burden’s society bears increase. In the U.S. as as the famous American spirit of self-reliance has declined it has been slowly replaced with an entitlement mentality. Today the cost of entitlements are on the verge of bankrupting the nation. Similarly personal responsibility has been replaced by universal victim-hood. The result is a social justice stew that is heated by envy and boils over from time to time into violence.
In government too there has been a cost associated with the country’s moral decline that goes far beyond just dollars and cents. Today students should be taught that the most basic laws of civics are that every politician is a demagogue and every bureaucrat a patronizing sycophant. Although this might be an exaggeration there is more truth in it then most would like to admit. Gone are the days of the citizen politician who goes to serve and then returns to family and home, at least at the state and federal level. There are no more George Washingtons. Gone also are the dedicated underpaid public servants working for the public good and the inherent rewards of public service. Who could debate that such declines in have taken place or that it has been injurious to our public institutions?
The lessening influence of morals has many sources with the education system arguably the most cited. Progressive liberals have led the charge against values in our public schools and have met with more than a little success. A High School girl just a few short years ago would have dreaded being described as not a virgin, now the opposite is true. Liberal educators declared students to be animals incapable of self-control or moral backbone, a self-fulfilling declaration that students have been all too willing to live up to. As a result the once rare occurrences of teenage pregnancy and venereal disease are now common place. Liberal educators have also had an impact on what it means to be an American in the minds of our children. Love of God and country are no longer universal themes that ring across the American landscape. Instead of being taught how they are the benefactors of a proud heritage students today are taught to be ashamed for a buffet of crimes both real and imagined. The great achievements of their forefathers are discounted and every fault or misstep elevated. In place of patriotism students are taught multiculturalism and that America is just one of many nations. Liberal professors in colleges and universities of course continue what the public schools started. The goal it seems is the creation of a new generation of multicultural, self-absorbed, government-reliant internationalists.
Schools are of course not the only culprits but they do figure prominently. Hollywood’s amoral movies filled with anti-heroes and a more then cooperative liberal press have had their hand in things as well. What is lost in all of this is morality is more then a personal attribute, it is thread that binds the fabric of a free society together.
Attempting to hold a society together by laws alone without the benefit of morality is a fool’s mission. The economic cost of doing business skyrockets as morality withers. Additionally, since the only replacement for self-restraint is legal restraint freedom is put at risk. The stresses of declining morality ultimately lead to a situation where only an iron-fisted police state can hope to keep order. It is no wonder that freedom thrives only when morality and a set of standards based on it are adopted by the vast majority. Equally true is the fact that evil expands to fill the vacuum when a society abandons its moral foundations. As surely as a democracy without the walls of a proper constitution and respect for individual rights will inevitably fall into disarray, mob rule and finally dies in convulsions of violence that give way to dictatorship; a society without a moral compass soon loses its liberty and is on the road to financial ruin as well.
“Liberty can no more live without virtue and independence then the body can live without a soul” John Adams
“A nation is not great by virtue of its wealth, but by the wealth of its virtue.” Unknown
The Conservative Mind
If this article makes you think pass it on
I guess, liberality is well possible without those strong corsets of morality. Yet, I admit, if education as a general phenomenon falls below a certain threshold, or didn’t reach it from the other side, those corset are necessary for a minimum of safety, security and predictability. It is bit like the epidemic effects of mass-immunization: Some diseases need a minimum level of pervasiveness to prevent outbursts.
My critique on this well written article is about the wording and the underlying structure: it is dual. It is excluding scales, degrees. Here morality, there liberality.I think that’s not the way we should go. Second, the morality you favor is centrally administered, either by state or due to religion. We know well from history that this does not work either. Instead, morality, and ethics as the theory of morality must be available for each individual. There are schools where children are taught philosophy and arts, but they are in minority of 1:10000 or so.
The film industry, esp. low quality films and gaming industries, producing those shitty (exc. me) vampire films, ego-shooters and other violent stuff are one of the largest threats to the moral healthiness of society. They train a large portion of the young people to commit homicide, killing etc, and their minds get used to it. They need not to turn into killers straight on, but surely their “instinctive” morality gets corrupted. War destroys morality, playing and gaming war does it also, these are not “games” any more.
This film industry also acts as if centrally administered. They all run into the same direction. Not to fight against such garbage and waste is misunderstood liberality, here I would fully agree.
I appreciate the comment but to correct one thing, I do not advocate centrally administered morality, that is not morality but tyranny. Morality is never universal in a society but core belefs in what is right and wrong and how one should live one’s life should be found across it regardless of religious affiliation. I mention protestant ethics only because it was their near universal acceptance that gave those nations that led the advance of civilation their edge. It is possible similar thoughts could come from other sources today.
The fact is morality needs to be first taught on a mothers knee and then reinforced throughout one’s life by school, work and entertainment. If it does not come from the bottom up it will be of no effect. The problem is liberalism is trying to subvert this process at every turn, in children’s formative years even good parents find themselves fighting an onslaught of influences that undermine all they are trying to accomplish.
ok, agree completely! So far, so good. Now a slightly different issue appears. If I understand you right, you refer to the “background (Searle), or the “Lebenswelt” (form of life) in the Wittgensteinian sense (hopefully not in the phenomenological sense as proposed by Husserl & Co.)
Your concerns seem to be about the relational setup of all the rules: they got a quite unfavorable shade. Turning from the more theoretical to the political, we have to care about the fact that the former always sets the milieu for the latter, for the expectations and the will to actualize them. Which kind of theory, what theory is working here? In your expectations, or in the current circumstances you (we) are so unhappy with?
You refer to protestantism. Taking a look to Zürich, Amsterdam, London or Boston one may conclude that there is indeed some salient relation. Yet, protestantism is – at least – at the roots of materialism, not just alone, but yet. On the other hand, liberalism turned into its predatorship only through materialism. Within materialism, the louder, more violent, the more primitive will always win, thus establishing a serious evolutionary tendency. Latest example: Barclays in London, or before Bank of America, etc… Yet, centrally administered regulations are speaking the same language: they are just the negative of it. (Marx: the same holy sh…). The same with occupy, etc.
In Switzerland, which is some refuge for the liberalism of the early 19th century, i.e. inspired by the understanding of the individual as a political responsible person, we still can find the non-materialist liberalism.
The question then seems to be pretty clear: How to corrode materialism into kind of soil for a different form of life? It may prove to be quite difficult, since scientism is just another flavor of materialism, despite its mostly beneficial effects.
My preferred answer would not lean so much to education in general. My feeling is more that we should spread a new image of thought that conceives of thinking as a technique, explicitly so. Only this would open a new level, that is, it would not need negativity, a revolution, a tyranny of whatsoever. Yet, it would introduce a corrosive element into materialism by a move that is essentially materialist itself.
Such a technique of thinking is informed by philosophy of course, but not necessarily in its explicit educational form, since it does not concern episteme. It is already around, though not recognized. I call it choreosteme. It would be interesting to discuss this further.
You brought up names I have not heard since taking logic and discussing philosophy in college but yes personal morality has no meaning. As far as liberalism I would spit it into two types: the classical version of say a Mill or Gladstone and the modern government centered one with roots in Rousseau. Both can be caustic to morality but the second is also caustic to freedom. As far as materialism is concerned, it is a relative term. The question of when materialism becomes immoral is answered by the amount of value one places on things. When things become more important then society, family or people in general one has crossed a line. A man who steals a manhole cover for a few cents of metal with no regard to the injury he might cause or the Wall Street executive that bundles a bad investment with others to hide it and make a buck are equally immoral. Again it is not the seeking of material comfort but the seeking of that comfort at the expense of others that is immoral. I would give two more examples of immoral materialism: 1. The person who seeks to take advantage of government programs that are paid out of the pockets of others when he/she has alternatives or can support him/her self. 2. To a lesser extant, someone who risk bankruptcy or even goes bankrupt for the sake of getting more stuff (lesser in that it may not be obvious to the person in question that his lust for things might cost others, he/she is just blinded by their perceived need for stuff)