The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

130 chapter 8need to explain why you get indignant when they are violated, and why inyour daily transactions you assume they will be obeyed.That does not mean you need to abandon tough-minded economic reasoning.Here, for example, is some tough-minded economic reasoning: themore people in the game, the easier it is to cheat, a new sucker coming alongevery minute. But the incentive to cheat is balanced by love, by shame, bythe Man Within. That’s sociology. Both prudence and solidarity rule. Here’ssome related economic reasoning: solidarity is especially, though not exclusively,powerful in small groups; prudence, in large. But such reasoning isalso classical sociology, the point of Ferdinand Tönnies’ book of 1887,Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, natural community and unnatural society,loving family and associational firm. And it is also, for that matter, classicalpolitical philosophy, the point of Aristotle’s Politics.Moving in 1980 from Chicago to Iowa City, I was startled by the reductionin the cost of doing business, and noticed the cost going up again whenI moved back to Chicago in 1999. Even in near-suburban Oak Park, where Ilived for a few months before I moved downtown, a store selling Irish merchandisewould not take back the same afternoon a cloak bought, but notworn, which I had decided after a couple of hours I didn’t want at the price.No way, the owner said. Tough luck, dearie. The virtue I thought we sharedhad disappeared once money changed hands. We had a contract, not anorder. In Chicago in 2003 trying to sell a car, before finding CarMax andplain dealing in the suburbs, I spent half a day swimming through commercialslime on Western Avenue. “Your car, ma’am? That Toyota Avalonoutside? I’ll give you $2,500.”I love commerce and I love Chicago. I love even my newly establishedidentity as a tough urban girl who can take it as well as dish it out. But everytransaction in Iowa City or Schaumburg was easier. Checks passed, groceryclerks smiled, auto mechanics did what they said they were going to do,clothing stores and Toyota dealers wouldn’t think of treating you in anyfashion but by the Golden Rule. When I visited for a number of weeks atDenison University in little Granville, Ohio, after three years of Chicagorehardening, with episodes in tough old Amsterdam as well, there it wasagain, like taking off tight shoes. I knew the local jeweler in Granville woulddo a good job of resizing my rings. He did. In tough old Rotterdam in 1996the jewelers needed close supervision, and often took advantage—well, notMarianne and Trees’s jeweler on Mauritsweg, whom we had grown to trust.