> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Marvin Long, Jr.
> I thought that Gautam's point was the virtuous government -- that is,
> government that promotes liberty, equality, free speech, and so on -- is
> one of the direct causes of a wealthy society because it enables people
> to live up to their full potential.
Perhaps that's what he meant, but the faultiness of the logic remains. It
is very, very dangerous to suggest that wealth is evidence of moral
superiority. I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but history is full of
evil people who managed to amass great wealth and power temporarily.
Perhaps more to the point, history is full of individuals and institutions
that failed to see how their core values applied to the world they had
transformed, or even worse, ultimately abandoned their morals as they
amassed wealth and power. The Church of Rome 500 years ago is a spectacular
example of what an institution can fool itself into believing.
The idea that one's wealth and power are a reward, rather than a blessing or
a gift to which you are charged with stewardship, is dangerous, morally
speaking. It can easily lead to a vicious circle in which immoral behavior
that results in wealth and power increasingly justifies increasingly immoral
behavior. That has been human nature for as long as there have been humans,
I'm sure.
> NOT that virtuous individuals are
> more likely to be wealthy than unvirtuous individuals. In other words,
> Nick, governments that endorse the liberal humanist values that you and
> I espouse are more likely to govern wealthy societies than governments
> that enforce tyrranical, straitened interpretations of one religious dogma
> or another.
I think the correlation between the virtues of liberty and wealth is valid
to a degree; the error is assuming that because a certain set of values led
to wealth and power in a society, then that society is therefore superior
forever. Christian values led to the creation of the Church of Rome, which
became incredibly corrupt.
Surely the founding fathers of the United States established a system based
on values that were superior, on the whole, to any other of their time and
for quite a while. But it is arrogant or foolish to assume that the system
that exists today is just what they had in mind, that we are presently
applying those values as well in today's world as they applied them in the
world of 1776. People keep saying that we live in a different world since
September 11, 2001. True, and it is also quite different from July 4, 1776.
So is our government. So is our economy. Our wealth and power today are
not just the result of our core values, they are also the result of
everything we have done to change the world, for better and for worse, since
this nation came into being.
Our wealth and power are evidence of our righteousness to the extent that we
have continued to adhere to and develop our core values in the contexts of a
nation, society and world that have changed dramatically. That is a very,
very arguable premise. For myself, I believe that our very inventiveness
has transformed the world much faster than we have figured out how to evolve
the application of our core values. To mention my favorite example, how do
we apply the core value of free speech in a world where five huge
corporations own the overwhelming majority of the media? Technology created
this monster faster than we were able to figure out how to cope with it.
And that's the way it always is, for the most part. The only antidote is a
good dose of humility, which the universe always seems to be happy to supply
eventually.
Nick
