KEY POINTS:
Greed is not good, but it's not the same as capitalism. Pure free-market capitalism exists only in Ayn Rand's novels, but according to some commentators, even our "mixed economies" (means of production both private and state-owned, and state-regulated) are synonymous with greed.
In told-you-so tones they blame any
form of capitalism for the current global economic disaster.
Not that capitalism is without its faults - most definitely it can spurn greed - but if alternative systems are examined, with their capacity for inflicting miserable poverty on human beings (except, ironically, the powerful elite of communist societies), then capitalism is, in general, kinder.
Greed is another animal altogether, and no government will ever be able to regulate against it, no matter how often the avaricious bring markets to their knees. Pass laws to ban or restrict one form of trading, and those who chase wealth for its own sake will find another way to get rich quick.
Last week two commentators, from opposites of the economic-slash-philosophic spectrum, blamed governments for the world's financial crisis.
Anglican Bishop Richard Randerson blamed "insufficient regulation of the market" because it "gives rise to naked greed and corruption". Without laws to protect the weak and the poor, he said, profiteers flourish. He also condemned "idolatry and social injustice".
Writing in the NZ Herald, Randerson's long-time nemesis, Business Roundtable boss Roger Kerr, also blamed governments for the "train wreck waiting to happen" but, no surprises, he wasn't calling on politicians to interfere: "ill-conceived government regulation" is the culprit, he wrote. When the dust is settled, one lesson we will learn "yet again is that government regulation often does more harm than good".
Neither thought to blame individual responsibility (or lack of it), that is, people making stupid decisions regarding debt, and I'm referring to lenders and borrowers.
We live on debt, it's our guiding principle. We borrow 100 per cent or more of a house's value in the imbecilic belief that, just as a golden labrador always eats, property prices always rise. Then we furnish that house with credit cards, or store cards.
We use money we don't have, to buy stuff we don't need, to impress people who don't care. And the lenders are paid performance bonuses on a headcount of loans they sign up - never mind the quality.
Why should those who've been prudent with debt - binned those letters offering us another $10,000 limit on our credit card, told the Amex touts at airports to get lost - be forced by politicians to bail out the greedy ones? Did American voters sign up to US$700b ($1042b) of their money being used to pardon the greedy?
Yes I know, we'll all suffer if they don't, and I agree it's a dilemma, but what happened to fear of failure being the greatest deterrent to taking reckless risks?
I've suffered from another's bankruptcy and it's not nice at all, but it teaches salutary lessons - pay your bills and live within your means.
If governments rescue the venal money lenders in the temples, what lessons will they learn? And greed goes both ways. What example is that bailout to those who borrow for fripperies such as cellphones, iPods, cosmetic surgery or flash new wheels for boy-racer cars?
We want what he or she's got, and we're driven by envy.
The problem, as I see it, is the dearth of Good Orderly Direction.
When spirituality, or religion, or whatever guides one's values and ethics, was banished from society, no alternative philosophy took its place.
Into the vacuum rushed self-regard based on material possessions and wealth accumulation, even if assets are garnered via borrowing instead of hard grind. Nowadays, being a good person no longer means paying your debts, honouring contracts, borrowing what you know you can service and it's no longer cool to live in Eketahuna, for example, in an affordable $80,000 cottage - first-home buyers must spend $400,000 in good suburbs in the belief it will make them happy.
We're raising a generation of financially illiterate, morally bankrupt, soulless cynics and it's not entirely their fault. Our Education Ministry's too scared to consider compulsory economics or religious studies in the curriculum. Instead, it has included a nebulous prescription of values based on relativism, lacking any form of judgment or discrimination against what is morally wrong.
Bishop Randerson was partly correct - at this year's election we should vote for the "what", rather than the "who". But as well as preaching to the converted in Wellington Cathedral, perhaps he could address the mandarins who control our schools, in a Western democracy where students who identify as Christian get mocked, but those who say they're Muslim have taxpayers build them a mosque.
