From: lion@netcom.com (carl loeber)
Subject: Re: The economics of morality
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 08:54:22 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

Yes I also believe small independent business is the ideal ..
or employee owned corporations...

As for morality and economics...

I have written on this too.

And yes I believe that morality, values, is the basic of economics
since it is about 'what is of worth' to economic actors ultimately.

Regarding society, we can say that if:

1) we agree to be in a society with equal rights, and 

2) we say that what we control as a society, is the space on earth
that our nation inhabits, and that 

3) we each have a right to life, and that bit of autonomy that we
each can muster, 

then:

1) we say that we each have a right to a share of the natural
resources, and the social resources (unique factors which our being
a society creates, such as [if we specialize and trade] a market)
which our society controls,

2) to use for production and livelihood (the sustenance of our
lives.)

then:

1) one family (economic unit) cannot control (own) more of a
resource than is needed for their own sustenance, if that resource
is limited, increate, and vital. (such as generally land, air,
water, perhaps even space in the economy)

2) if one of us in society is much more efficient at production,
and we as a society do agree to allow this one actor to control
more than he needs personally, of a limited, vital, increate,
resource, then we ask that he share justly part of that production
which some others in the society will then be lacking.

3) ditto if we agree to allow and to charter the creation by our
law an unnatural, impersonal, legal entity (a corporation, or joint
stock company) to control part of our limited resources. (on which
we depend for the basis of our life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness)

By equal rights, of course I mean political equality, and the right
to the common ground of life.

In the reasoning above I differentiate between goods which are
produced by personal effort, and resources, which are not
personally created. 

Resources, as I said, may be natural or social.

Another example of the other type of resource, the social resource,
is a safe, and protected social environment, made possible by such
things as the police, and the military.

The first type of good, personally created, is not required to be
redistributed by our free society, not on the initial order of
morality.  

The second, the resources, if limited, need to be rationed, so that
all have sufficient if possible.  

If however, for some reason, we do not ration the necessary
resources, then we shall distribute the resulting production in an
amount sufficient.  (It is clear that we do not ration resources,
except for some like water, and air.  Historically, society has
allowed, and [how often?] by political inequity, promoted,
centralized private control of resources; especially now by
corporations.)

This is then a matter of justice, and not of mere charity, even to
a libertarian and conservative logic.  The liberal political 
morality in American today has not expressed and taught this, not
to my knowledge.  I come at it from the initial conservative
philosophy of autonomy, but the consequences of freely entering
society, and noting its perversions, are inescapable.

This reasoning, I believe, was understood by several of the
Founders:

"Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and
unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so
far extended as to violate natural right.  The earth is the common
stock of man to labor and to live on."  Thomas Jefferson, letter to
James Madison, 28 Oct 1785.

Speaking of vital resources, we could ask; "What is the right of
private property?  That a man may own as much as he wants?  Or that
each man may own what he needs?

"Private Property... is a Creature of Society, and is subject to
the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require
it, even to the last Farthing;  its Contributions therefore to the
Public Exigencies are not to be considered as conferring a Benefit
on the Publick, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of
Honour and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously
received, or the Payment of a Just Debt. ...the personal Securities
of Life and Liberty, these remain the same in every Member of the
Society; and the poorest continues to have an equal Claim to them
with the most opulent, whatever Difference Time, Chance, or
Industry may occasion in their Circumstances."  Ben. Franklin 
"Queries and Remarks Respecting Alterations in the Constitution of
Pennsylvania," Writings, X, 58-60.

"Common Sense" by Thomas Paine express much the same as you know.

a fine collection I found in one of my roomates paperbacks,
_Intellectual Origins of American Radialism_ by Staughton Lynd,
Harvard Press, 1982. (see esp. Chapter "Earth Belongs to the
Living")

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