Economics as a Social Science: An Approach to Nonautistic Theory

5. Ethics and Economics

CHAPTER 5 Ethics and Economics People who have to make political or economic decisions on matters which could affect many other people’s lives will, unless they have lost all sense of reason, . . . ‹nd themselves forced not only to account for their ethical motivation of conduct but also to gauge the likely consequences of their activities on the basis of their knowledge and conscience. —max weber Even as early as Aristotle, it was axiomatic that man is a social animal. This is a universal human and historical truth. In an environment dominated by animals, which were stronger, faster, and ‹ercer, human beings survived and prevailed through cooperation in social groups. The Bantu-speaking peoples of Africa say, “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” that is, “A human being is a human being because of other people.” Even today, when a fellow human is confronted with peril, the deep instinct of human solidarity comes to the fore. At sea, a sinking boat diverts any craft close to the scene to help. In the movie, The Russians Are Coming, which was made at the height of the cold war, there is an instantly credible scene: an escalating American-Russian confrontation is immediately defused when a child is in danger. The fundamental truth, and paradox, of human existence is that we can only realize our individual potential in a community. We need to live in a society—this is a fundamental inner human need. And if we are to live in a society some ethical considerations have to be embedded in our lives (Williams 1985, 13, 27, 45, 47–49, 150). There must be limits on the individual expression of human freedom and of sel‹shness in the interest of some ideal of justice for all within the community so that the community will continue. Behavior that increased the strength of the social group in a hostile natural environment conferred an evolutionary advantage. Experiments have shown that people identify those individuals who cooperate and those who cheat. When people who cooperate work together, they do better than those who are guided by sel‹sh self-interest. 68 John F. Welch Jr., the creative chairman of the highly successful General Electric Company, got rid of people who, even if they were highly talented, “won’t block for others or play as part of a team. Their debilitating effect on the team can outweigh the bene‹ts of their individual talent” (1994, 3). Every society that survives has to form the character structure of its members in such a way as to make them desire to do what they have to do in order to ful‹ll their social function. In addition to the universal ethics (such as “Thou shalt not kill”) that are common to all great cultures, every society has its own set of norms. These socially immanent ethics are the prohibitions and commands that are necessary to the functioning and survival of a speci‹c society. A society and an economy are more ef‹cient in attaining their particular goals to the extent that the character of their members is molded to value the behavior that best suits their modes of production and life. The more effectively people are brought up to want to do what they have to do, the more successful the society and economy will be in attaining their objectives. Thus, in a hunting society courage and endurance are important virtues and in a subsistence farming community patience and cooperation are particularly prized (Fromm 1947, 199, 237–44). There is a human inclination toward conformity; we want to ‹t in. We learn very early to take advantage of the accumulated experience of our society. Tapping into societal knowledge informs our social behavior and our perceptions of what is regarded as acceptable. For anyone who is not a sociopath (i.e., abnormal), social norms do affect how we behave. Thus, under some circumstances the demands of society (as of soldiers in battle) may lead us to actions that are contrary to our individual self-interest. Sel‹sh Behavior and the Ethical Framework Neoclassical economics, while positing the fundamental assumption of individual sel‹sh behavior, does not face up to the question of whether this behavior is controlled by feeling for others, that is, constrained within a framework of ethics in the society. The ethics of an individual embodied in his or her conscience—the inner voice—govern the ends an individual will try to attain and what means he or she will adopt...