DISQUS

John Brothers · 3 years ago

I like it! The purely logical part of me submits that cooperation is good IFF it allows human genetic traits to propogate and increase in number. That suggests one limit to scale - when we get so rich and powerful that we stop reproducing and human genetic variability and richness decreases.

For the more emotioanl side of me, cooperation is the best way to move humanity off of a single planet, thus reducing the possibility of human extinction. Once we reach the point where we can no longer become extinct, growth and cooperation are no longer strictly necessary.

There's probably more than one interesting short story and possibly an interesting novel in those concepts.

Rob L. · 3 years ago

Interesting post.

Although for that socialist John Dewey -- as it is for all progressives -- growth (not nature, not history) is the only standard for morality. An example of how this plays out is that one can only tell the health of a political community by how ever more democratic it is constantly becoming. Dangerous idea, to say the least! (But then a lot of people are under the dangerous illusion that democracy and tyranny are necessarily inconsistent).

Brad · 3 years ago

Very interesting post. One quick question: if growth doesn't facilitate our ability to live ever more meaningful lives in cooperation with one another, does it necessarily inhibit that ability? If not, then growth is not immoral (according to your definition), but rather amoral. Is this possible, and does it matter?

Will Wilkinson · 3 years ago

Brad, Great point. I think that's a real third option.

One of my problems with my argument is that I need to address the egalitarian critique. If the market surplus is divided unfairly, it may be that it enables people at the top to live ever more meaningful lives, but the externalities of the exchange network fall most heavily on those at the bottom, impeding their ability to put their share of the surplus to meaningful use. So growth could be both facilitating and impeding meaningful lives all at once.

If this was true, then it's a classic recipe for instability. To my mind, a big part of the point of the Rawlsian difference principle is to guard against this kind of destabilizing inequity. If the less well off revolt against the system, out of a sense of unfairness, then that is withdrawal of cooperation, and the size of the surpluses will contract.

This is in fact what is brilliant about Friedman's argument. His argument is the answer to the ealitarian critique. He is saying, in effect, that growth tends to self-correction. That it endogenously creates demand for the resolution of destabilizing inequity. What he leaves out is that the good thing about this is that by serving fairness growth enables yet more growth.

Bill Cismar · 3 years ago

"So, the way I see it, economic growth is more or less what morality is for"

I like it. I like it a lot.

I then maul this into “Morality is a derivative of economics”.

It rather neatly describes why there is divergence of "morality" in different cultures whom have had to arrive at different solutions to their historical challenges. It also is very effective at describing the variation of morality within a given culture across the financial strata, both long term and short term. In other words, Long term poverty, or depravity of those in excess wealth, as well as crimes of opportunity, such as looting, are all equally described.

It is helpfull in reasoning through a debate I am having on whether morality is instinctual, and thus geneticly fixed, or it is learned.