The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

47good baronsOnly a temperate prudence, not an intemperate greed, I say, is required tokeep an economy running well. The Wall Street investment advisor GaryMoore argues in Faithful Finances 101 (2003) that a focus on the spiritualpurposes of our lives even when we manage portfolios makes sense. Hereports that “I ...invested my son’s education fund in South Shore Bank ofChicago, an inner-city bank that uses investors’ money to rehabilitateaffordable housing for the poor, and found myself sleeping better knowingI had played a role in defusing racial tensions.” 1 Aimless greed, he argues, isa temporary, bubble-stage of speculation. “Some of my friends laughed atmy 5 percent as they bought Internet stocks.” After the bubble burst, Moorelaughed, with God.In my economics courses I illustrate the argument by dropping a twentydollarbill on the floor for all to see. “The scientific power of economics iswell illustrated here,” I declare, following an argument I first heard fromS. N. S. Cheung of the University of Hong Kong. “What would the laws ofmere physics say about what will happen to the bill if I leave the room?” Thestudents get the joke. The serious scientific point is that the modest amountof prudence to pick up a twenty-dollar bill lying on the floor is enough tokeep an economy working just fine.The degree of “rationality” required is small. No elaborate calculations.You see your opportunity, and you take it. Highly irrational people, bad atcalculations of cost and benefit—as we actually are, even in a bourgeoissociety trained in such calculations and honoring them—would arrive atabout the same allocation of any given bundle of goods as would soulless