Subject:
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Re: Do market based societies select for virtue? (was Re: Will Libertopia cause the needy to get less?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 29 Nov 2000 21:07:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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737 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Scott's going to regret turning me on to Friedman!
>
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just can't buy this "people are
> basically bad, and societies that depend on honesty are doomed to fail"
> argument that comes from so many corners. (those that want police to
> restrict us, those that insist we must use a belief in higher power to
> overcome our nature, etc...)
>
> I've tried in the past to construct arguments showing why people ARE
> (mostly) fundamentally good, and why societies that depend on honesty will
> do better than those that don't... starting from first principles. Didn't
> get very far. Sigh.
>
> Friedman came at it from a completely different angle. He argues in these
> two articles that most people are honest/nice/polite/charitable/<your
> favorite virtue>, because it's an efficient (utilitarian) survival strategy
> to do so, and that actually being honest/n/p/c/yfv is easier than pretending
> to be. No matter what the society type. Even the cruddy totalitarian states.
>
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Libertarian/Virtue1.html
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Libertarian/Virtue2.html
>
> But I think the most amazing result comes in the second article where he
> shows that a market based society skews the proportion of virtues *higher*
> because the honesty/n/p/c/yfv advantage is higher in those sorts of societies.
>
> Is it all wet? I dunno. But note the novelty here. Unlike me, he doesn't
> suppose anything at all about basic human nature. He just shows how things
> tend to come out and why, and how when you measure for the right things, you
> get what you measure for.
Ok, I admit I haven't read Friedman since grad school. But I remember thinking
then that he ignores the vast motive to cheat the system. And the huge
benefits to one who cheats well. (Hitler is a case in point)
However, to say that there is an economic benefit for society, or a societal
benefit to behaving "good" is to ignore
1) the point about *individual* human depravity... Humans are individually
prone to act in "bad" ways - they know how to and do behave "badly" from
birth... Now why is that?
and also ignore
2)the fact that society behaves in ways that are good due to numerous
influences - many of which are driven by those acting under "good" belief
systems or the force (restraint) of laws and punishments.
-Jon
(I think I'm up to 3 cents now)
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