The-Morality-of-Capitalism-PDF

after assessing the situation, settled the transaction by orderingthe bailiff to take 80 percent of the goods and leave.The book next describes another transaction in which the buyerthinks the asking price for the goods is too low as the quality ishigh, while the seller insists that the goods lack freshness andshould be considered ordinary. In the end, the buyer chooses fromthe worst of the seller’s goods, causing the crowd nearby to accusehim of unfairness, so the buyer takes half from the high-qualitypile and half from the low-quality pile. In a third transaction, bothparties begin to quarrel while assessing the weight and qualityof silver. The party paying with silver sternly says that his silveris of poor quality and inadequate weight, while the party beingpaid states that the silver is of superior quality and weight. As thepayer has already taken leave, the party being paid finds himselfobligated to give what silver he thinks is extra to a beggar visitingfrom a foreign land.There are two points raised in the novel that are worth exploringfurther.The first is that when both parties decide to give up their shareof the profits or insist that their share of the profits is too high,an argument ensues. In the arguments we encounter in real life,most stem from us pursuing our own interests. As a result, weoften make the mistake of assuming that if we were to always sidewith the other party, such disputes wouldn’t occur. But in TheLand of Gentlemen, we can see that taking the interests of othersas the basis of our decisions also leads to conflict, and as a result,we still must search for the logical foundation of a harmoniousand coordinated society.Going a step further in our investigation, we recognize that inbusiness deals in the real world both parties to a transaction seektheir own gain, and through negotiations over terms (includingprice and quality) both sides can reach agreement. By contrast,in The Land of Gentlemen, such agreement is impossible. Inthe novel, the author must enlist an old man and a beggar andeven resorts to compulsion to resolve the conflict. 30 Here weencounter a profound and important truth: negotiations inwhich both parties are seeking their personal gain can reachequilibrium, whereas if both parties are looking towards the45