Pursuit of money is not a zero sum game at all. A gets money from B by giving B something B wants. B is happy to be give A the money, because he got in exchange something he wants more. So it’s win win right there.
Now someone may argue that there is only so much money in the world, and if A gets it, everyone else has less. But taking money out of context like that, ignoring that money is always aquired by exchange for something valuable, is a twisted way of looking at things.
It also makes money the goal of the whole game being played, which it isn’t. The goal is to get what you like. And you can’t eat money or play music with it.
Basically seeing money as what it’s all about, like Scrooge McDuck taking a shower in it, is the underlying atitude of Mercantilism. The very mention of which should make one recoil in horror.
The pursuit of wealth is not a zero sum pursuit, because wealth is not strictly defined as money. You can’t live in money, you can’t eat money, you can’t drink money, you can’t have sex with money, you can’t drive money, etc… If all you have is a huge pile of money, all you have is potential wealth.
Until you spend that money, you are living like an animal, and you are not going to live for very long. You are going to partake in transactions, if for nothing else, just to survive. So you can’t have all the money, even hypothetically, for more than a very short time.
Unless you take money by violence, you must exchange something for it. To take in a lot of money, you have to put money out, generally a sizable chunk, in the hopes of getting more back. That is not zero sum. You got more back than you put out, but all the money made in the deal didn’t go into your pocket. Even after a long series of such succesfull deals, your pile is bigger, but so are a lot of other people’s.
I think that the presentation of accumulation as a “zero sum game” has been presented as a kind of boogey man by socialists to justify redistribution strategies.
Crap. I didn’t realize it’s on a timer. It looks like you have only about 5 minutes or so to delete a post…and maybe 24 or 48 hours to edit one. Good to know.
Yes, that makes sense now. Is it possible that the Left’s worldview dictates their view of man and the Right’s view of man dictates their worldview?
Granted, man is not perfect in the way that you defined it, but all men have reason, and through reason have the ability to do what’s right (even to the extent that they could do it all the time). To hear Sowell in the interview, it is as though he believes that since men are inherently flawed, they cannot strive for perfection, that they cannot work to do what’s right. I would rather live in a world where people incorrectly tried to attain the ideal than one where everyone believed that no ideal could be attained and simply went with the flow, right or wrong.
Your summary is fascinating, thanks for sharing. I could see a modern anti-Machiavelli in this kind of work.
I don’t think it is sufficient, however, to shrug off the zero-sum problem as a red herring. The Prince, as you put it, can only stay in power with the backing of a number of followers, and those followers have to support the Prince by whatever defense they choose. My argument is that their line of defense is an ideological one based in the zero-sum problem. They support the Prince because they think he is the only one that can solve the problem. They aren’t cognizent of their blunder, and in fact they seek to do good (they are ‘do-gooders’, as they can be called), but it is this problem that animates their actions.
To be clear, I’m not justifying any logic that says the pursuit of wealth is zero-sum. But I am trying to figure out why people think that. The logic might be twisted, but it has a hold on many otherwise bright people, so it begs some sort of reconciliation.
Consider those who might look at it in this twisted way. Aren’t there those who might legitimately see money as a goal in itself? The latest hip hop record will undoubtedly prove that at least someone out there claims that money is the ultimate goal. Gangsters and high finance traders also come to mind as people who seek money for money’s sake.
I would also argue that almost everyone pursues money as an immediate goal to achieve before the ultimate goal of real wealth. They may know that ultimately they want food, shelter, a working car, and a trip to the Bahamas, for instance, but their current focus is on money. They know that before they get any of that stuff, they must first get money, which means that they spend their time figuring out ways to get money. They don’t spend their time figuring out how to real wealth–they know that real wealth comes as a matter of course when they have money–so their intent is focused on money.
Twisted? Perhaps. But, then again, I would say that is exactly what money does to an economy–it twists it up by abstracting real wealth into an artificial form.
By the way, thanks for the dramatization with Scrooge McDuck–very compelling!
I’m less sympathetic to the statist. While most apologists for the State are, as you say, “do-gooders” they are also inconsequential. That is, they are not part of an opinion-molding class either because they do not hold an opinion-molding position (such as academic, journalist, TV anchor) or because they are not otherwise influential (politician, business magnate, etc.) What such people think about the State is unimportant except on a “collective” scale. These are “the masses” (in which I include myself, in case my language seems to suggest I imagine I am in the opinion-molding class).
While I’m sure there are varying levels of disillusionment - ranging from outright cynicism to romantic delusion - in the opinion-molding class, I think that the majority of people in this class engage in Orwellian double-think and they can never be completely unconcious of this fact. They have to at once seek their own advancement by furthering the agenda of the Prince (which is organized plunder of the masses) while at the same time holding in the forefront of their mind the “social justice”, “equality” or other noble goal which is supposed to justify all this self-seeking behavior. Such individuals do not believe false things - such as that voluntary exchange represents a “wealth transfer” or that war destruction can “stimulate” an economy - merely as a result of poor reasoning skills or bad information. These beliefs are motivated beliefs or superstitions, not rational beliefs. They have to believe these fairy-tales because it is the only way they can sleep at night.
So, no, they do not believe that the Prince is the only one who can solve inequality through wealth redistribution in the sense that I believe 2 + 2 = 4. That is, it is not a conviction which is consistent with rational deliberation and careful, dispassionate thought but, rather, it is an unshakable superstition which cannot withstand scrutiny because such scrutiny would reveal that it is a baseless belief motivated by naked self-interest. This is why the talking heads on cable TV all look like alcoholics with the bags under their eyes and the line-worn faces, serious as the grave - they’re eaten up by the anxiety at the back of their mind that, in a very real sense, they are getting away with murder while holding neighborhood barbeques, attending their kids’ school plays and appearing on TV to bloviate on the dog-and-pony-show of “democracy”.
As for it being a red-herring I maintain that it is indeed a red herring because the opinion-molding class would much rather espouse crappy economics than defend immoral behavior. As bad as it is to be ignorant or stupid, it is not nearly as bad as being outright evil. The real issue is that the Prince seizes property to which he obviously has no legitimate claim whatsoever (taxation) and uses it to enrich himself and his ecosystem of political enablers while justifying this behavior with transparent claims of using their ill-got gain for the general welfare. The miraculous thing is not, as Hoppe has noted, that anyone would try to operate a government since the advantages of a territorial monopoly on law and force and forcible collection of revenues are obvious but, rather, that anyone tolerates the existence of a government. This remains a mystery but it is my hunch that this is possible because the State manipulates evolutionary vestiges in the human psyche that were adaptive in the ancestral environment but are maladaptive in the modern environment (as evidenced by the fact of the existence of the State). That it is possible to operate a government is no more evidence that government is good than the fact that it is possible for a man to rape a woman is evidence that rape is good.
Now, to come back to the issue of zero-sum economics… yes, clearly, the idea that free exchanges are zero-sum wealth transfers has been exhaustively debunked from every conceivable angle by economists ranging all cross the ideological spectrum… even Marxists must nominally admit that voluntary exchanges are mutually beneficial, they simply redefine the conditions of voluntariness. Zero-sum economics is like 2+2=5 or not believing in the existence of the number zero, it’s obsolete superstition. Which raises the question… how does it happen that people in the supposedly “enlightened” modern world can so blatantly cling to obsolete superstitions unless these are motivated beliefs? While continuing the battle of repeatedly debunking these neophyte mistakes in economics is clearly valuable (ala Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson or Sowell’s Basic Economics), this is not sufficient. It was Rothbard who pointed out in the article I linked above that the first mistake of modern “conservatives” was to cede the moral high ground and grant that social justice or equality is a “noble goal.” It is not a noble goal and when used as a transparent ideological cover for the Prince’s plunder of the masses it is twice ignoble.
To this, I would say you are incorrect. Money cannot grow like real wealth in deals as you suggest. Given a constrained amount of currency (which I realize is unlikely with the Fed), two people involved in deals with each other cannot grow their monetary piles. One can only gain if the other loses.
I suppose you might be able to look at it that way, but in the end, I don’t think you can start with the worldview and use it to comment on the nature of man…for it is humans that act…it is literally what we do that makes up the world we live in. So no matter how much someone may want to say “the world makes man what he is”, it is really man who makes man’s world what it is.
Think about it. If someone has a certain worldview, (i.e. “this is the way the world is”)…what they are talking about is “this is the way the human world is.” They’re talking about the human world that we live in…the societies, the culture, the interactions, the inventions, the emotions, the relationships. It is man himself that makes up this world. So it is impossible to say that somehow the world that man makes is what makes man what he is…
But it is quite easy to say, the nature of man is what makes all those aspects of man’s world what they are.
You can’t draw a conclusion about the nature of man by saying “We have the wrong instutitons. That’s why we have all these problems. If the institutions were different, then man wouldn’t act this way and people wouldn’t be suffering.” That’s not drawing a conlcusion from a worldview, even if you want to claim it is. You are beginning with a notion about the nature of man…you are saying “man acts one way, but that’s only because of X. If you remove X, man would be restored to his natural state of being.” What is it that makes you believe that man would act differently if the institutions were different? It has to be a rooted belief about the nature of man.
Now, of course some will argue “that’s just a chicken or egg question…it’s like art imitating life imitating art.” But that’s nonsense. Sure, one’s environment can have an influence on one to a certain extent. Even to a large degree. But to propose that somehow the flaws that exist in every man…the things leftists point to and complain about…the things that are the very source of almost all the world’s ills…are somehow the result of simply living with the wrong institutions or the wrong setup? Can anyone seriously argue that every single human being has the same basic flaws and instincts because of nothing other than their environment?
Just look at how they argue. A leftist will look at the financial crisis and say “oh that was just a bunch of greedy business men being greedy in their capitalist businesses. If we just had the right people in charge of those companies / in the government then none of this would have happened. It’s greedy people and their capitalist institutions that are the problem. If people just weren’t so greedy, everything would be fine.” It’s the same nonsense spouted by those Venus Project ignoramuses. Money is evil, and it makes people do bad things. If only we eliminated scarcity and the institution of money, there would be no more crime. Seriously? You really want to claim a medium of exchange is what causes one man to want another man’s wife? You really think scarcity of resources is what causes one man to be jealous of another man’s athletic prowess and want to hurt him for it? It’s complete bullshit. Man is how man is.
The world is not perfect because the humans who make up the world are not perfect. We are naturally greedy, self-righteous, survival-focused, procreation-driven, power-hungry, self-interested creatures. That doesn’t make us evil. It’s just a part of what we are. Christians, Jews, and Muslims all believe we are this way because of something called Original Sin. But whatever reason you want to believe, the fact remains, man is not perfect and will never be perfect. And therefore, the world is not, and never will be perfect.
As Milton Friedman said: “Nirvana is not for this world.” Again, it is imperfect man who makes up man’s world that makes it imperfect…not the other way around.
Those with the unconstrained vision believe man is naturally a virtuous creature, and that it is only because of these institutions we now have (be them religious, commercial, political, educational, or whatever) that we have the suffering we do. If it weren’t for these institutions, man could live in peace and prosperity. That’s why they constantly argue in favor of more power and more control. They feel like "if only the right people were in charge and we set it up so that they had enough power, everything would be okay. And once everyone saw how great the world could be, we wouldn’t even need a government or laws or private property…man could live in harmony. That’s basically Marx’s communist utopia. The strong centralized state was just a stepping stone. They operate under this assumption that angels exist, and that in fact, all men are angels. “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains”, Rousseau said. If only we just got back to our natural roots.
Those with the constrained vision, however, believe that man is naturally greedy and self-interested, driven by his instincts and biological and psychological urges and that there is nothing you can do about that. Man is predictably self-important. He is not perfect, he is not a saint. He predictably responds to incentives. Therefore, it is not about getting rid of or having the right institutions to get man to be able to operate in his supposed “natural” state of virtue…but rather it is about operating under the assumption that man is only human, and is constrained by his humanity…his emotions, his urges, his desires. Friedman illustrates this quite well when he explains why it isn’t necessary to “throw the bums out.”
I do not agree that man could do “what is right” 100% of the time. If he could, he would have the ability to be perfect. And I do not believe that’s possible. Even the Pope goes to confession at least once a week. But even that is beside the point. Even supposing man could act in a moral, virtuous manner his entire life, I would think even you would have to agree such a task would be quite difficult. Why? Because it would be against his nature. Man is not naturally virtuous, despite how much he may be able to act in such a way. In fact, some say that that is actually what makes an act virtuous…that it is a conscious effort against our natural instinct of self-importance. I’ve heard it suggested that that is what separates us from the animals…that it is the ability to consciously choose to act outside of our natural greedy, prideful tendencies. That is what makes us civil. And yes, that does come from the ability to reason. But the ability to act outside of the natural tendencies, even for a lifetime (which I still don’t believe is possible, but supposing it were), doesn’t change those tendencies.
Think about it. If man were naturally virutous, would he really have such a tough time being that way more often?
You suggest that those in the opinion-molding class are not pure evil, but from your description of them, I cannot see a difference. They try to exploit the masses, obtain positions of power to do it, and lie to the masses in order to make it sound like it’s in their favor. What can be more evil?
Whether or not the opinion-molders are evil, one does not readily find a solution in your argument. How does one break free from this situation you describe if not through outright revolution?
I agree, but do you think that everyone thinks this way?
Many leftists, especially the materialist ones, believe that the world (i.e., nature) is all that there is, and that men and their civilization are only a small part of it.
Whether or not we are molded by the world completely, you have to agree that man is influenced by the world in some ways, right? For instance, I waste thirty minutes at stop lights every day because of the influence the world has on me. Acknowledging this makes me want to change the system to a more efficient one. And isn’t that what we’re all trying to do here? Libertarians in general have to believe that if the institutions were different (e.g.., minimized or withdrawn altogether), then man would act differently (e.g., more morally). Otherwise, they wouldn’t be so adamant in their beliefs. Otherwise, they would be nihilists.
What gives a person who believes this the motivation to do anything right or just? If we are to simply accept the notion that all men are greedy, lustful, and sinful, doesn’t that eliminate all moral responsibility?
I think this underscores what might be a conflict of definitions here. It is not clear to me that we are using the same definitions for the words ‘nature’ and ‘virtuous’. To begin, I agree that man has natural instincts toward selfishness, greediness, etc., but I don’t know that those are by definition wicked. Natural instincts are natural instincts and he is not wicked for anything he has been given inherently. I would argue that man naturally has reason, intellect, and free choice. Through these instruments, man can and has been able to direct the natural instincts to virtuous and productive ends. He is not wicked just by having base instincts, but he is wicked if he doesn’t use his other natural abilities to guard against unjust behavior. Man is not virtuous or wicked by nature; rather, he can be either depending on his choices. And yes, the right choices are difficult because they must be made sometimes against his natural instincts, but they can also be made in accordance with his natural reason and will, and that is the determining factor for all actions.
Only two people, who between them poses all the money in the world, dealing only between themseleves, for money? I guess if you limit conditions to such an extent as to be completely absurd, and impossible, then your “zero sum” game can work out?
In the real world, a world of scarcity, I stand by my analysis.
Well, what they espouse - the State - is pure evil. It is organized plunder or what I call the Day Mafia. I think there are varying degrees to which this is understood and I suppose that the lower a person is on the totem pole of power the less clearly they must understand the true nature of their master in order to serve it in their capacity.
As for solutions, outright revolution is clearly not a solution as history is filled with examples of revolutions every single one of which has failed to increase human liberty. I’m not convinced that there is a solution to the problem… perhaps we are doomed by the very fact that human nature permits governance to live under tyranny. Perhaps, in the long run, a person is either lucky enough to be born into privilege (with the only drawback being the psychological difficulty of justifying one’s existence) or sentenced to be born into servitude and there isn’t a damn thing that all the libertarian philosophy in the world can do about it. However, I’m a bit more optimistic than this because of the rapid adaptability of the human prefrontal cortex (higher thought) and the evidence that this remarkable capacity for higher thought is what lifted Homo sapiens or one of our ancestors out of an animal existence (red in tooth and claw) into the early tribal cultures where some form of law other than raw instinct regulated behavior. Perhaps we can transcend the tribal morality of statism and evolve into a higher morality where everyone - princes, public bureaucrats, judges, priests, soldiers and policemen included - is held to precisely the same standard of behavior no matter his family name, bank account balance or official capacity. I am skeptical that this process can be completed in years or even decades, if it can be completed at all. Rather, it is going to require generations to breed out whatever psychological hooks permit the manipulation of the masses by demagoguery in addition to a good deal of lost time being made up in the discipline of moral philosophy which has nearly lain dormant since the 18th century.
I agree completely with your assessment of the zero-sum mentality and that it is best in all ways to view the pursuit of wealth as a non-zero-sum condition.
But, to clarify my point in bringing all this up, there are those in society today that view the pursuit of wealth as a zero-sum game (perhaps the majority). That belief affects their behavior in economic situations and it also influences others’ behavior on them. And these consequences are real and troublesome. In effect, these people behave as if the pursuit of wealth is a zero-sum game, and so, for all intents and purposes, it is a zero-sum game to them. We agree that it is founded on false premises. Now, to get them to understand this is another ball game completely.
Thanks gain for your case-in-cartoon–compelling and very entertaining!
I’m glad to hear that you reserve some optimism. I have to think that a conversation like this, on a website like this, and the very fact that there is such a thing as the Internet, means that there is hope. At the very least, we freedom lovers need to keep positive and energetic because we have absolutely no chance if we give up. Thanks again for your input.
Whether they think that way or not, they are still making a judgment about the nature of man first…whether they admit it or not. That was kind of the point I was making. Even if your argument is that man could be perfect if only he lived in a perfect world, you’re still making the judgment that man naturally has the ability to be perfect. (Not to mention you’re operating under the assumption that the world could be made perfect…and who exactly would do that? Obviously man would.)
So again, it’s a judgment based on the nature of man. Not the other way around. Think about the gun argument. Anti-gun people claim that if there were no guns, there would be less violence and less crime. Even though they are blaming guns, they are still making a statement about the nature of man…saying that if only we didn’t have X, man would be in his natural state, and everything would be dandy. The Earth didn’t make guns, therefore they are unnatural. Man is only unhappy because of this introduction of an unnatural thing that is not useful for anything other than violence.
Anyone who believes that less guns would automatically equal less violence is stating a belief that it is not man who is violent, but that it is simply guns that are violent. Basically at the heart of it, they’re not fans of the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” meme. The really do believe that it is guns that kill people…and that if there were no guns, there would be (at least) less killing. That is a statement of belief about the true nature of man.
Sure. And they ignorantly believe that man in his “natural state” is happy, peaceful, and carefree. That’s what all the hippie commune nonsense was about. Every few generations you have some kind of movement in which people think they are enlightened, they think they’ve got it all figured out…and they profess that if we just got back to our roots…lived in nature and got rid of all this commercialization, technology, and capitalism…that if we just lived together and shared everything…nothing belongs to anyone and everything belongs to everyone…then we wouldn’t have all these problems. It is these capitalist, exploitative institutions that make men greedy and wish to take advantage of one another. If we got rid of those, man could be free. He wouldn’t be stuck in the chains of a world where you have to exploit others and make a profit. People wouldn’t have to be wage slaves.
It is the institutions that make men suffer. If we didn’t live in a world of haves and have-nots…if everything belonged to everyone and no one had to be a wage slave, then man wouldn’t be greedy and selfish. It’s just that in this world we live in, these evil institutions force you to either take or be taken advantage of…to either be an exploiting owner, or a wage slave. If we just got rid of these institutions like “private property” then things would be much better.
The problem is the people who believe this nonsense not only don’t have the faintest understanding of the basics of economics, but they wouldn’t even have to if they would just look at history…and all the failed attempts at such nonsense throughout the centuries. They think they have something new…that’s all they ever talk about: “Those old-world conservatives are stuck in the old world. They don’t know anything other than this antiquated way of doing things…this institutionalized capitialistic way of running the world through exploiting people, blah blah blah. What we’re talking about is something new. A new way. We want to move on from that old world and make a new, better world. We want to ‘progress’…that’s why we’re the ‘progressives’…and they’re the ‘conservatives’. They just want to conserve the old world, we want to progress to a new world.”
Again I’m not sure you’re fully reading my response. I explicitly stated man is influenced by his environment. But that has nothing to do with the fact that regardless of his environment, he is self-interested, procreation-driven, and greedy, with power-grubbing tendencies.
And I think you are actually making assumptions about the nature of man that are a stretch. From this post as well as your last one, it sounds like you’re essentially arguing that if it were believed that it were impossible for man to be perfect, then man would never work toward improvement. And I completely disagree. You seem to be stuck on this notion…it’s almost like you have to believe that man could attain perfection because otherwise no one would strive to better himself or the world around him. And that is not the case at all. In my own life I do not believe I could ever be perfect. That doesn’t make me want to kill myself or sit on the couch and never do anything. I don’t think people strive to improve themselves or make their life more comfortable because they think they could somehow achieve perfection. They do it because they want improvement.
The difference between statists and libertarians (or liberals and conservatives) is that liberals operate as if that perfection were somehow attainable. They operate as if it were somehow possible to eliminate suffering…segregation, racism, violence, inequality. As Friedman points out, they will almost never admit or claim that that’s what they’re aiming to do…but if you follow the logic of their arguments and the “solutions” they promote, that’s the direction they’re moving. Whereas Sowell points out conservatives don’t assume that there is a solution out there…they understand that we live in a world of tradeoffs, and that everything you do has a cost. But liberals don’t consider that. Their philosophy is dictated by the notion that inequality exists, and it shouldn’t…and we should eliminate it; even if it means taking away the very freedoms of life, liberty, and property.
No, it does not. Just because you know you aren’t a perfect creature and are bound to make mistakes it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t or shouldn’t strive to do the right thing. As I said, that’s certainly not the case for me. And as Ayn Rand put it, “[The phrase] ‘Nobody is perfect in this world’ is a rationalization for the desire to continue indulging in one’s imperfections, i.e., the desire to escape morality. ‘Nobody can help anything he does’ is a rationalization for the escape from moral responsibility.”
Just because you have imperfect urges and are an imperfect being it doesn’t remove what some might call your “moral obligation.”
So…what exactly would you call someone who does nothing but indulge their greedy, selfish urges, without care to the individual rights of others? Would you not consider him wicked?
Here again, I do not believe you are fully reading what I wrote. No one said simply having those urges makes man wicked. Again, I explicitly stated that wasn’t the case: “We are naturally greedy, self-righteous, survival-focused, procreation-driven, power-hungry, self-interested creatures. That doesn’t make us evil*.* It’s just a part of what we are.” [Seriously, did you completely skip that part?]
But just because having those natural tendencies doesn’t make man evil, it doesn’t mean having complete disregard for the rights of others is not bad. You even go on to say yourself that it is whether man chooses to do those things or act in the opposite manner that determines what kind of man he is.
That conclusion of yours does not align with your previous statements. I think in your zeal to argue that man is not inherently evil, you are reaching to a point where you are essentially saying evil does not exist (or at least cannot be defined). Think about what you just said. You are not sure if greediness and selfishness are wicked, simply because they are a part of man’s nature, and man is not wicked for his natural tendencies…so therefore those natural tendencies cannot be wicked.
That doesn’t make any sense. It’s almost like evangelists who say: “A lot of people wonder how we can trust the Bible. But they need to read First Corinthians 5 where Paul writes…” You’re trying to make the arument that man is not evil even though he is naturally greedy and selfish, because you don’t necessarily think those things are evil…because you don’t think man is evil. You might as well just cut out the middle man and say “Man is not evil because man is not evil.”
And don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying man is evil. And I’m not even saying being self-interested is evil. There is nothing wrong with that. But disregarding the rights of others is wrong. Being greedy and selfish to a point at which you violate others’ rights, is evil. So yes, man has tendencies that can lead him to be evil. And as I said, it is our conscious effort against our natural instincts that separates us from the animals…that it is the ability to consciously choose to act outside of our natural greedy, prideful tendencies that is what makes us civil.
I’m not sure why you have such a problem with this. The only thing I can figure is that it is important for you to believe that man can be perfect because you are under the impression that if he can’t, then there would be no incentive to work for improvement. But I have no idea what leads you to believe that when all the historical and practical evidence points to the contrary.
Thanks for your thorough response. Without delving into a point-by-point rebuttal, can you help me out by explaining the difference as you see it between the following concepts: striving for an ideal, striving for a solution, and striving for improvement?
And please, if it’s at all possible, can we avoid talking about personal motives behind this discussion? Not only is it irrelevant, I also think your speculation is well off base. Thanks.