Luck, merit and hard work

The ethics of capitalism can also be examined in relation to how it rewards individual luck, merit and hard work. Like in many other human activities, success in business results from a mix of luck, merit and work. There are always many that work hard and skillfully but who are unlucky in their ventures while many lazy and inept succeed through sheer luck.

Obviously capitalism does not determine luck. One either has it or not. However, capitalism raises the number of lucky opportunities available as well as our ability to profit from them when they come our way. Because capitalism is based on the principle of free entry (free markets), when one “strikes gold” nobody has the right to take it a away (private property rights) or to prevent its exploitation (rule of law). Moreover, if some do not have the necessary resources to dig it up they may use those of other passive capitalist.

One aspect about luck that cannot be corrected by capitalism is its reproduction and access. For instance, knowing the right people is often the best way to find the best opportunities. So, if one is born in a family of business people he or she is more likely to become aware of such opportunities. However, being rich also brings in many distractions and that partly explains why many business dynasties rarely go beyond the third generation. Overall, the small hereditary bias in luck it is not enough to deny the neutrality of capitalism in relation to luck.

Despite its few limitations capitalism is broadly a meritocratic system. Even if you do not have the required skills you may always bid for other people’s talent. And, should one fail to do so someone else will step in and force you out of the game.

However, capitalism is not a jungle where the strongest prevails in the fight for talent or hard work. By upholding the principle of free contracting, labor and capital usually negotiate long term work contracts rather than opting for piece rate pay. Indeed, this choice is based on calculated self-interest and is not necessarily the result of government imposition.

However, in the case of handicapped workers and less qualified workers there are circumstances when it would not be profitable to employ them even if they were willing to work as slaves. Such cases represent a market failure that needs to be corrected through subsidization or government employment.

With technical progress the number of tasks requiring high qualifications increases while those less demanding in skills are declining in relative terms. Thus access to education is of paramount importance in a capitalist system. The system can be trusted to produce efficiently the necessary qualifications but it cannot ensure equal opportunities in access to education, especially for advanced levels.

Given the importance that education has as a screening device for the top jobs it is normal that those with more resources use all kinds of aid to secure a top school for their children. This ranges from private tuition to crammer schools which are not available to the less favored. Nevertheless, provided that there is a market for student financing and that schools compete for bright students (whether they are poor or rich), those from disfavored families may still secure a place in top institutions.

In what concerns fair promotions and rewards for merit and hard work these are secured under capitalism by giving workers the freedom to change employers. Although there are many instances of nepotism in relation to family and favorites this cannot be extensive, otherwise firms will not be able to maximize profits and stay competitive.

There are however cases where in the short run it would be profit maximizing to lead workers to work to death. This was initially feared given the poor working conditions in the early days of the industrial revolution and because capitalists did not own the workers. However, history has shown that it would be counterproductive since in-the-job training and the costs of hiring would make such behavior untenable.

Indeed, a dramatic example of working slave labor to death was carried out in German and Japanese concentration camps during World War II and proved them to be both inefficient and resisted by some company managers. Obviously in a free labor market, as required by capitalism, workers themselves would not accept that.

Yet, there are industries (e.g. law, auditing and finance) where greed may lead professionals to accept overworking in return for a high compensation and the opportunity of retiring rich at an early age. It is interesting to note that such practices are more common on partnerships than on corporations. That is, the pursuit of profit under overworking conditions is not profitable in the typical capitalist firms - joint stock companies.

In conclusion, despite some early abuses, capitalism turned out to be the closest we got to a meritocracy, rewarding hard work and creating a level playing field to take advantage of one’s luck.

The ethics of capitalism

There is a never ending history of blaming capitalism for all evils in society. Vigilantes are always out there looking for market failures and externalities to "prove" the limitations or evils of capitalism.

The most recent accusation is that capitalism is responsible for obesity because the food industry is driven to profit from what Ken Rogoff called coronary capitalism.

The idea that capitalism promotes vice at the expense of virtue is historical nonsense. Otherwise, after 200 years of capitalism, western economies would now be dominated by casinos and brothels. Yet, these vice industries are still niche industries.

The ethic foundations of capitalism are not necessarily the same as the (protestant or other) ethics of the capitalist or the ethics in business. Business ethics is the study or practice of the good or right in a business setting. For instance, the responsibilities of a CEO in relation to the company’s stakeholders. Or whether in some industries managers need to preserve primitive hunting or predatory instincts.

The origins of freedom and individualism go back to Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who argued that a human being uses his rational mind and free will to pursue his well-being and personal happiness. John Locke (1632-1704) extended these concepts to include the state of nature, natural law, natural rights, social contract, consent of the governed, and the right of property ownership. So, the ethics of capitalism must be discussed around the foundations of capitalism – namely, the ethics of private property, the profit motive and free competition - and not in terms of the social responsibilities of businessmen.

For Adam Smith and Hume the morality of capitalism resided mostly in the virtues of prudence and reciprocity, respectively. For Smith, the first to study capitalism, economics was still a moral science. Only after Marshall, did the prevailing view of economics as a positive science takes its roots based on the assumption that preferences are “given”. The assumption of utility maximization was replaced by wealth maximization and “greed” was adopted as an undisputable microeconomic assumption.

Despite Adam Smith’s demonstration that 'self-love', could be the greatest driver of wealth creation as long as it was restrained by market competition, law, and customary morals, today many sceptics still question either the morality of money-making or wish it to be unrestrained. Some qualify money-making as bad and enterprise as good, but these are truly the two sides of the same coin because the first measures the success of the second.

For Keynes, the distasteful aspects of capitalism would have to be endured until the accumulation of wealth loses its social importance. In his words: “Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight. (JMK, CW, IX, pp.329, 331)”.

Of course capitalism is not flawless. It is true that capitalism is affected by moral dilemmas, market failures and externalities, but these are the exception not the rule. It is also true that it may cause some unhealthy patterns in terms of consumption. But in market capitalism these imbalances are necessarily temporary; while they are bound to be perpetuated under other economic systems and government rule.

In fact the food industry provides a unique proof of this principle. As soon as the junk food became dominant and inefficient, a growing number of enterprising capitalists stepped in to offer all sorts of alternatives without any government intervention; ranging from the organic food industry to keep fit and health clubs.

Indeed if the fast-food industry still caters for so many people it is because of governmental failures rather than market failures. It is because of government failures that we have an ever growing number of families living on social security and low-cost dinners. It is because governments provide lousy school meals that children acquire unhealthy eating habits. And, it is also because of government´s inadequate funding for scientific research in food and health that we have so much voodoo science in what relates to healthy eating habits.

On the contrary, capitalism is part of the solution for these government failures. By competing to provide low income families with affordable and varied meals it facilitates the acquisition of good eating lifestyles.

That is really the beauty of market capitalism. Instead of raising regulatory barriers to protect the incumbents in the food industry competition ensures that they will be under permanent challenge. So, it corrects not only its own imbalances but also those created by devious as well as well-meaning paternalistic governments.

Listing Virtues and Vices

The pursuit of virtues and the avoidance of vices are important for the progress of humanity. Both sets of rules and personality traits are designed to improve humankind individually and collectively. Two important affiliated questions are how many rules or qualities we need and how to enforce them.

Fortunately, nowadays, the internet facilitates listing the inventory of such rules. For instance, this site lists a total of 650 virtues and 350 vices. Obviously, not everyone will agree with the classification of a given rule or trait as a virtue or a vice and many rules are correlated or are only variants of other rules. For this reason we need taxonomy to group and classify them.

Indeed, the Wikipedia entry for list of virtues is based on 5 categories defined in relation to their purpose, namely: self-control, self-efficacy, regard, respect and kindness. Others choose to select the top 5, 10 or whatever number they feel appropriate. What is undeniable is that such lists or taxonomies reflect both their historical context and their religious or philosophical roots.

In fact these are often outdated and prevail over a classification system based only on an empirical analysis of their contribution to the betterment of humankind. For instance, the Ten Commandments, The Hadiths, The Modes of Sattva and the Ten Perfections followed by Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, respectively, have many virtues in common but cannot explain the civilizational differences between their followers.

So, when picking up a list of virtues one must choose on the basis of their universality, longevity, and rationality. On the basis of the first two criteria we must certainly include Aristotle´s list of virtues and using the third criteria one must include lists based on the philosophy of enlightenment.

Aristotle defined a virtue as a balance point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait that lies not in the exact middle, but at a golden mean sometimes closer to one extreme than the other (see list here).

From the enlightenment philosophers we can build multiple lists ranging from the popular list of 13 virtues by Benjamin Franklin to Adam Smith´s analysis of the amiable, respectable and intellectual virtues discussed in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Yet, some modern philosophers have associated the virtues of enlightenment with being tantamount to bourgeois virtues (e.g. McCloskey) or have criticized them for failing to include the Aristotle´s concept of mean (e.g. MacIntyre´s book After Virtue).

Following on Francis Wheen's defense of the principles of the Enlightenment against various strands of irrationalism in his book How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World; we believe that it is possible and desirable to merge the ethics of Enlightenment and Aristotle. We will try to do so in future posts on specific virtues and come up with our own list of enlightened virtues.

Taxation and Moral Values – the Case of Conspicuous Consumption

Everywhere, politicians advocate public policies to foster virtues (e.g. philanthropy) and discourage vices (e.g. smoking) through both the revenue and the spending side of the budget. However, they frequently treat them differently by failing to measure separately the costs of tax breaks and surcharges applied to achieve such policies.

Free markets do not require neutrality in the rates of taxation on property, income and consumption. Indeed, they should not be neutral in relation to the taxation of consumption for the satisfaction of basic needs (food, healthcare, etc.) and the taxation of luxuries and conspicuous consumption. Fiscal neutrality is often defined as in the FT Lexicon: “when the impact of taxes and of government spending cancel each other out, with demand neither boosted nor curbed”. Others add the requisite that it does not cause distortions. Besides, to some extent, the use of taxation for policy purposes goes against the principle of budget unity, and the repudiation of earmarking specific revenues for given expenditures.

However, in general, when it comes to differentiating between different classes of conspicuous consumption there is a strong case to advocate the rule of fiscal neutrality. We will exemplify with a choice between spending on impressionist masters and trophy wives, because the first may have some cultural value while the second may be morally degrading.

Imagine for example an ostentatious billionaire who is considering spending 50 million on a master’s painting or in marriage to a super-model under a pre-nuptial agreement that grants her the same amount if the marriage lasts three years. Since he is neither an art lover nor is he in love with his trophy wife both types of investment are morally questionable.

Yet, most countries will treat differently the two investments when he decides to file for divorce or sell the painting. Assuming that he cannot earn transfer fees on his wife and makes a capital gain in the painting, some tax codes will give him a tax credit on his divorce settlement and charge capital gains in the sale of the painting. As a result, he will be rewarded in the most degrading investment and will be punished in the cultural investment. This is exactly the opposite of the proclaimed objective of encouraging virtue and discouraging vice.

Not only is the taxation of virtues and vices difficult on practical grounds. For instance, it is impossible to distinguish between a genuine and a convenience marriage. But it is also impossible to make a distinction between capital gains and losses on ethical grounds. Therefore, taxation should be kept away from policies based on moral judgments. Its concerns should be based mostly in a fair sharing of the funding and the minimization of the government revenue collection costs.

You do not need to agree with James Buchanan and other libertarians that a moral order is preferable to moral anarchy and moral communities because it only requires a minimal intervention of the Government. Simple common sense tells us that governments are not apt to judge on the basis of moral merits, without becoming an easy prey of vocal interest groups.