In the introduction to one of his satiric songs written for the late, great show That Was the Week That Was (“TW3”) performed and recorded at the late, great “Hungry I” nightclub in San Francisco (the one that closed in 1970, not the strip club that replaced it . . . sort of), the late, great Tom Lehrer made the obvious and characteristic (“Seldom has any point to make except the obvious”) ironic comment that his Christmas Carol celebrated what everyone deeply and sincerely believes in: Money. Of course, St. Paul made a similar comment in one or other of his letters to somebody or other, that love of money is the root of all evil.
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| Tom Lehrer |
Evidently, finance has achieved the status of a religion for many and money the position of a god, be it the victims of Tom Lehrer’s jollifications or Ayn Rand’s fans and admirers who sent a floral arrangement of a six-foot dollar sign as a tribute to her funeral. This allegedly symbolized her Objectivist philosophy and her view of money as a symbol of human achievement. Uh, huh.
Finance is not a religion nor is money a god. It does, however, give us a useful framework for analyzing and possibly correcting popular understanding of money, credit, banking, and finance. That is, if we are interested in a monetary system that is both useful and ethical — moral, if you will. Morality is, in fact, the ultimate practicality (utility) if we believe Aristotle. As he said in the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, “All things aim at the good.”
Dragging in Aristotle gives us our starting point and a basis in reason for looking at money in both a practical and a virtuous way. Virtuous? Yes. Justice is the premier natural virtue, at least according to Aristotle and generations of philosophers and theologians who followed.
Aristotle
So, to have a practical and virtuous understanding of money, it must be consistent with the principles of justice; it must be just money, for unjust money — money used to control and oppress others, violating their natural rights, or money that is itself not consistent with its own nature — is contrary to morality and to reason. Money must therefore never be:
· Used to violate the natural rights of persons, especially the rights of life, liberty, and access to the means of acquiring and possessing private property, particularly in capital.
· Inconsistent with its own nature.
Money must therefore be reasonable — and therefore in conformity with the first principle of reason. Which is? It’s actually quite easy, if you stop to think about it, and can be stated in two ways, one “negative” and the other “positive,” but both ways say the same thing, that nothing can both “be” “not be” and truth is true:
· Nothing can both “be” and “not be” at the same time under the same conditions (the law of [non] contradiction), or
· That which is true is as true and is true in the same way as everything else that is true (the law of identity).
See? We told you it was easy. Okay, sort of. You might have to think a little about it, but don’t worry. Thinking doesn’t hurt. Much. Pay no attention to the man screaming behind the curtain; he’s reading Keynesian economics. The contradictions are killing him. Metaphorically speaking.
But wait! you might say — and rightfully so. Aren’t there different kinds of truth? Absolutely — just as there are different kinds of people, different kinds of food, different kinds of rocks, and so on, and on, and on. All people as people, however, they are all equally and fully people, just as all food is equally and fully food, rocks are equally and fully rocks, and so on (etc.). We do tend to get a little repetitive, don’t we?
There is a complex argument that could be inserted here about the difference between logical and empirical truth (determined by reason and observation) and poetical truth, but we won’t go into that. If you’re interested, go to Aristotle’s Poetics. Have fun.
What we’re interested in here is logical and empirical truth. A logical truth is one proved by reason. An empirical truth is one proved by observation.
We are also interested in whether what we’re assessing the truth of is descriptive or prescriptive. In other words, does the proposition we are looking at describe or define a truth, or does the proposition tell us what we ought to be doing? These have different characteristics, although that doesn’t change their truthfulness:
· Descriptive Proposition: What is the essence of the truth? This, in a sense, is neither good nor evil, just a fact. Of course, within the Just Third Way framework, everything is good by nature, but can be corrupted or used for evil, but the thing as a thing; the fact as a fact is neutral. You cannot disagree or compromise on a descriptive proposition. It is either true or false. If it is proved or not disproved, you are stuck with it.
· Prescriptive Proposition: What ought to be done? Is it true? Further, is it good? A prescriptive proposition — an application of a descriptive proposition — must (of course) be consistent with one or more descriptive propositions, that is, it must not contradict the descriptive proposition(s) it claims to be applying; you’re not “allowed” to say one thing and do the opposite. A prescriptive proposition must also be fully what it claims to be, e.g., “I am giving you $50” must not be used to describe stealing a picture of a dead president and Civil War general from someone’s wallet. Further, a prescriptive proposition must be good, that is, comply with the precepts of virtue so far as humanly possible, especially justice. You cannot say, “I am doing this for your own good” when harming someone for your personal benefit. Well . . . you shouldn’t be harming anyone; deriving a benefit from it just renders it more vicious (as in the opposite of virtuous).
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| Mortimer Adler |
Okay, that gives some basic tools of analysis, whether of religion, money, or the religion of money. What about the analysis itself? “Borrowing” (i.e., stealing) from Mortimer Adler’s interesting book, Truth in Religion (1990) (no, really; he uses a lot of big words, but it is very readable, especially in his collaborations with Louis Kelso, The Capitalist Manifesto, 1958, and The New Capitalists, 1961), there are three ways to analyze religion . . . and thus money (and probably a lot of other things as well):
· Philosophical: The philosophical approach is concerned with descriptive propositions, that is, determining the essence or truth of a thing as a thing and is therefore subject to proof or disproof. This is the scientific approach and is why philosophy is called a science — the Medieval scholastic philosophers, in fact, are credited with developing the scientific method that you memorized in high school and promptly forgot. Philosophy is concerned with things such as what is God, does two plus two equal four, and what is justice.
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| Louis O. Kelso |
· Dogmatic: The dogmatic approach is concerned with presenting the truth of something in an understandable (hopefully) way. The dogmatic approach is also concerned with descriptive propositions and is therefore subject to proof or disproof and consistency with what was determined by applying the philosophical approach. When someone is being dogmatic in this sense, it is not (necessarily) a bad thing, but if you disagree, be prepared to offer a logical or empirical proof, that is, make a logical argument or present hard evidence to the contrary.
· Apologetical: The apologetic approach doesn’t mean you’re apologizing for something. It means you are defending a prescriptive proposition instead of proving or disproving a descriptive proposition, i.e., “Here is what should be done and why.” When you are engaging in apologetics, you are making the case to do what ought to be done, not in describing what already is.
Obviously, when you are engaged in religion or finance (or, again, anything else of importance), you want to be able to say what you are doing (do a little philosophy and describe or define what you are doing), explain it to others (be dogmatic . . . in a good way), and defend what you want to do or want others to do.
Otherwise, what you are engaged in promoting runs the risk of being false religion or bad finance — not necessarily so, but it would be much, much better when engaged in religion (or finance) to base things on reason, albeit guided and illuminated by faith, rather than just go by faith . . . which often simply boils down to “Might makes right,” meaning the personal opinion of whoever has the most authority, money, or weapons.
In the next posting on this subject, we will look at two different analyses of money and see how they measure up to this little guide of how to understand money: that of Louis O. Kelso, and that of John Maynard Keynes.
Fasten your seatbelts. You’re in for a bumpy ride.
#30#
