The ethics of capitalist self-interest

For my first post, and our first discussion, I'll turn in the direction of an issue my wife pointed me. It's not precisely what she suggested, but the idea is a good one, and one that I can adapt to fit in the ball-park of political philosophy. The issue is brought up in a chapter of Peter Singer's book, How are We To Live? Ethics in an age of self-interest. Below I provide a link to that chapter, which I invite you to read before digging in on the discussion. It's a short chapter, only 11 pages (though each page of the PDF is two pages from the book, it's still a quick read - Singer is very accessible), and will help to keep you better informed about some of the details that may arise in discussion.  Singer only talks about the problem with raising animals for food on a couple pages, and does not provide a robust argument for vegetarianism here - he's written extensively about it elsewhere - I feel that this chapter dovetails nicely into one critique of capitalism, which Singer here argues is unsustainable and immoral.

"Required" reading: Chapter 3, "Using Up The World"
(Note: This links directly to the PDF file. Either you can read it in your browser, if it has the proper plug-in, or you can right-click the link to save it to disk and read it with Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

Singer does an excellent job in this chapter of illustrating the stark differences between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith. The west, with America arguably leading the charge, has followed Smith's theories closely, to the benefit of the few, a ceaseless struggle for basic necessities for many, and the detriment of much of the planet's environment. Smith was extolling the virtue of self-interest, and greed is on the same spectrum as self-interest; one may view greed as a much greater degree of self-interest (and a correspondingly lesser degree of concern for the interests of others). How Smith arrived at the view that as the rich increase their fortunes, the poor would somehow benefit is quite unclear. He often refers to the "invisible hand" as moving the actions of the rich in a particular direction, but that's a rather nebulous explanation. It seems more reasonable to expect that people who act in their own self-interest are much less likely to do anything in the interests of other people, and if you have an economic system which is ruled by self-interest, then you would expect that if some people receive* a disproportionate share of benefits that they would be motivated to keep it, rather than allow much or any of it to "trickle down" to the less fortunate. That is to say, if people are interested in looking out for themselves, and operate in a system which is based upon self-interest, then you can't expect them to look out for the good of society. If the good of a society as a whole is the goal, then our motivations should arise from concern for the increasing benefit of all the members of our society, not just ourselves.

John Maynard Keynes is quoted as having said, “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” I think this describes the problems with Adam Smith's theories very astutely. 




*I'm not addressing how a person receives their share of benefits or burdens, as I'm trying to make a point about the motivations and inclinations of persons operating in a system based on self-interest.