One More Day Alive

By Chris Benguhe

Is humanity evil, and is it government’s responsibility to rehabilitate it?

Or is mankind innately good, and with the most basic of oversight and moral motivation will the majority of us choose to do the right thing, allowing government to focus on controlling only the most aberrant humans?

Maybe Michael Moore didn’t think about answering those questions before he concocted his attack on capitalism a few years back. But as President Obama attempts to “fundamentally transform” our nation by restructuring our economy, our society, and our national mindset hoping to ultra-regulate America out of immoral business practices and legislate morality with new social policies – these are a couple of questions which really need to be answered.
  
There are plenty of examples for the evil humanity argument. Over the last few years, we saw greedy hedge fund managers play a shell game with investors and invested funds.  We watched everyday people lie about income and fraudulently promise to pay more than they could afford, so they could have more than they needed in a nation seemingly obsessed with having more, bigger and better stuff.

Then we topped it all off with Wall Street financiers and Big Business bosses looking for government bailout packages, unions refusing to negotiate wages for the good of ALL the employees and the nation, and everyday folks all looking for what their country can do for them, instead of the other way around.

What do all these things have in common? They are all selfish and immoral. But was any of this really the fault of capitalism? Or was it actually quite the opposite, that these were all directly or indirectly the result of a combination of government intervention, greed and irresponsible stupidity and could capitalism save us?

To determine that, first we might have to get out from under the recent tirade of media maniacs deriding capitalism, to get a little background on how capitalism actually works.
 
You see, if you believe that human beings are inherently good, then you are also a fan of capitalism.  Because you also believe that people will eventually act in the best interest of society more often than not, when left to their own devices in a free market system. But when the system is played around with too much, for instance when government favors one industry, or group over another, such as the oil industry, or the real estate industry, or the auto industry, then it screws everything up. That stops people from doing the right thing, which they already wanted to do.  At least that’s the idea behind the philosophy of capitalism. It also leads way too many people to forget about what’s best for them and the rest of society because they are so busy trying to beat the system of government regulation.
 
Don’t take my word for it – listen to Adam Smith, the founder of modern capitalism.
 
Most unethical opportunists today point to Smith’s claims in his famous “Wealth of Nations” that self-interests alone are what make capitalism work. But Smith wrote another book. In his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” he explains “self-interest” includes the interest of the rest of society, since the social acceptance, status, and support of all affects the interests of the individual. He argues only a society which values social justice achieved through community and moral obligations can achieve prosperity.

In simpler terms any capitalist with a brain in his head knows that for him to prosper in the long run, so too must his neighbors, his community, his nation and his world prosper. Maybe the real problem is that a few too many of us capitalists forgot about that recently.

But Smith doesn’t stop there. He says not only “should’ we act morally, but free from the tyranny of government we “want” to act morally.
 
Says Smith: “However selfish man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though they derive nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”
 
That’s probably why despite the all the financial doom going on in America, Americans, left to their own compulsion to care gave over $300 billion away last year. None of that was caused by Obama’s stimulus package. It was given of our free will.

That, by the way, is another positive precept of capitalism – it fosters free will, which is a basic requirement for morality.  You cannot be moral if someone has forced you to do so. That’s the whole theological argument behind why God allows people to sin, because if he didn’t they could not choose to love Him and choose to do the right thing.

So maybe capitalism is a good thing, a moral thing. If so, then will less capitalism mean less morality? Or to put it more specifically, do we want government to tell our businesses and our people how to behave ethically ironically leading most of us to do the opposite?

Will such heavy-handed attempts simply enrage free-willed Americans making them less apt to act in accordance with their conscience? Will taking away our free will make us incapable of loving and respecting each other? A quick look back at the Soviet Union suggests so.

Do we really want to live in an Orwellian world where Big Brother forces us by dictatorial edict to do what it believes is right, or should we leave people alone to choose to act morally and let government concentrate on protecting the right to life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness?

We better choose now before the choice is taken away.

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