Over the years, I’ve written versions of this column as far back as 1989. With the politics of envy in full bloom once again, it’s time for an update. Plus à a change, plus c’est la mà me chose.
Leftists in general, and today’s Occupy Wall Street crowd in particular, are obsessed with the word “greed” to the point of irrationality.
They just don’t get it. A market economy is based on incentives. The prospect of financial reward is what motivates most people to work and invest. There’s nothing particularly ingenious about a system that recognizes this. It’s intuitive. More than 200 years ago when Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations,” he didn’t invent an economic system; he merely observed and analyzed what people do naturally when left to their own devices.
Socialism, on the other hand, fancies itself an ingenious system, an invention of coercive economic utopians, based on the notion that human nature can be elevated to a collective, altruistic plane. Its myriad failures in the real world include places like the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Cuba. The European socialist democracies are rapidly proceeding down that road, with Greece leading the procession. Ironically, the recent economic rise of Communist China is directly related to its increasing embrace of at least some elements of good old-fashioned capitalism, a system that has ably served its Asian neighbors in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
What leftists brand as greed is what conservatives call ambition. Ambition and reward are what fuel prosperity in a market economy. When you impose penalties and restrict rewards on economic activity — with excessive taxation and overbearing regulations — however noble your motives, there are consequences. You get less work, investment and output. That’s why we can’t tax ourselves rich. The fatal flaw of socialist economies is their inability to sufficiently reward excellence, so, inevitably, they get less of it. It’s that fundamental conflict with human nature that guarantees socialism’s ultimate failure.
To a leftist, greed is when someone makes too much. But how much is too much and who makes that judgment for others? This is an intriguing individual moral dilemma and may make for an interesting discussion with your priest, rabbi or favorite philosopher, but a market economy doesn’t ask that question, which, in any event, is impossible to objectively define. One farmer produces twice as much as another. Is he greedy, more efficient or a harder worker? It doesn’t really matter. The one who produces more should be suitably rewarded.
Adam Smith also observed that in a market economy, people pursuing their own prosperity are inadvertently moved as if by an “invisible hand” to promote the interests of society as a whole. This is precisely what Steve Jobs did. Whether his motive was entrepreneurial gratification, a quest for fame and fortune, serving humankind, or some combination of these, what matters most is that he put people to work, served consumers, elevated productivity and expanded societal wealth. In the process, he became wealthy himself. Perhaps the geniuses who are occupying Wall Street can tell us at what level of net worth Jobs crossed the line that made him evil.
Yes, there are greedy people in this world. There are also lazy people. There are producers and there are parasites. But it’s a futile moralistic exercise to calculate where ambition ends and greed begins. The virtue of a market economy is how it maximizes human energy for the private and public good. Leftists have little regard for the creation of wealth. They simply take that for granted. It’s the redistribution of wealth that excites their passions.
It may be difficult to define greed, but it’s easy to define covetousness. That’s the greed of leftists for governmental power to control the lives and confiscate the property of others.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
