(This is the fourth in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)
Greediness is a social sin that is likely akin to smoking—everyone knows it’s bad. We avoid people who are greedy. We stop patronizing a business that feels as though greed is what drives it. And we more often than not do not praise greedy ambitions. Yet as Tim Keller points out (in a sermon I don’t have the link to), greed is a sin that nobody realizes they have, and easily explain it away. Unlike adultery, where you don’t just find yourself naked in the arms of your non-spouse, and think, “How did I get here!?” greediness sneaks up on us from within. We don’t wake up and decide to be greedy. Somewhere in our minds, we justify greedy behavior by calling it by another name—ambition, passion, self-interest. Yet somehow it is something we all tend to battle. It’s all about us, we want things our way, and we want it now.
Critics of a free market often chastise the concept of markets as “based on greed,” claiming that since its foundations are immoral and suspect, the progress delivered by the results of a free market are also dubious. Yet this criticism is unfounded and unfair, in part because no serious free marketeer believes that “greed is good,” and even the oft-quoted “greed is good” from the film Wall Street, in context, leads us to admit that greed isn’t exactly the best word to describe how markets work. Whatever the definitions we choose for the words “greed” and “self-interest” (which is often equated with the greed), its connotations lead us to the understanding that greediness is an attitude by which somebody seeks self-gain at the expense of somebody else, and doesn’t concern themselves with the ramifications of the nature of such exchanges.
To be sure, everyone becomes greedy at some point and in some fashion. As human beings, we are selfish creatures, looking for pleasures wherever they are to be found. It is natural (and not inherently immoral) that we seek our own interest. Indeed, it is the only way which we are able to act, for the very definition of “acting” means we are consciously acting in ways that benefit us in either an intrinsic or extrinsic way.
If we act out of our self-interest, and if this is not an inherently immoral notion, what is it about greed that makes it immoral? It is the “at others’ expense” part of the definition of greed that sets it apart from the notion of self-interest. The person acting out of self-interest is doing that which is natural (even a “selfless act” is done at the intrinsic gain by the one acting for somebody else’s gain). The greedy person is doing it with no regard for what it may cost others. Note that this doesn’t necessarily have to cost somebody something at the greedy man’s expense, it’s his attitude toward whether or not it could.
So what does this have to do with Jim Wallis’s chapter, “Greed is Good”? Jim blames greediness, but he doesn’t just blame Wall Street, though there is plenty of blame to place there. He tells stories of the uber-wealthy and their 100-foot yachts that feel like dinghies to the owners to point out that there is always something more to covet, something greater to buy. And he even blames “normal people” who were willing to finance a “second mortgage” to get things they don’t need. Society has devolved into a “you are what you own” sort of culture, and we all tend to buy into it as “normal.” But as Dave Ramsey says just about every day, “normal is broke. We want to be oddballs.”
Wallis writes, “Without a clear sense of self, a strong identity, and a community of purpose, it seems our default mode is to identify ourselves by the things we own” (pg. 50). In a society where affluence is the norm (compared to most of the rest of the world), we tend to take for granted that we work less than our ancestors did and can afford leisure because we are more productive! We are so far removed from what “basic needs” are that we easily fall into the trap of identifying ourselves by what we own. We find identity in brand names, our cars, our homes, our kids, our electronics, our clothes, and our music. When asked “who are you?” we typically identify with various aspects of our favorite forms of consumption, rather than with something that reflects our self-understanding and inner awareness.
So when it comes to greediness, it is an important sin to purge, especially when such “social sins” can be so systemic they disrupt the economy as a whole. But blaming greed itself is like blaming alcohol for drunkenness. Not only must there be a provider of the alcohol, there has to be incentive to consume the alcohol in excess. So it merely begs the question: how did we become so greedy? What in our society permitted greed to run rampant? If the rule of law was meant to restrain people from doing things at the expense of others, what happened?
This is where Jim Wallis fails to go. I’d like to believe that he simply doesn’t know about this, but it is more than likely that he doesn’t want to admit the source of the greed-enabling because it would undermine his belief in a “good government” with power to manipulate the economy for “social justice.” So far in this book (and I’ve skimmed the rest of it) there has been no mention of the Federal Reserve, no mention of government intervening in the marketplace, and no mention of legislation that encourages excessively risky lending. As Thomas E. Woods points out in his book Meltdown
One of the most discredited ideas of the 20th century is central planning, the notion that the best and brightest minds in society, if in power, can direct resources throughout an economy in order to best appropriate them and put them to effective use. F.A. Hayek called this the “fatal conceit,” an arrogance that in hindsight is actually quite laughable. But instead of controlling the production of manufacturing of steel, or the extraction of oil, like the Soviet Union did, the Federal Reserve manipulates and controls the supply of money, making high-level decisions that ought to be left up to the market. Instead of letting the market set the price of borrowing and lending (i.e. the “interest rate”), the Fed controls that rate. When rates are lower than what the market would set, the result is an artificial boom. Stated another way, it is the appearance of wealth without the creation of wealth. Imagine attempting to build a home, and calculating you had 10 million bricks with which to build it, and so you plan a big house. But then you realize after using about 3 million bricks that you really only have another million left. You’ve got the same result as an artificial interest rate: less wealth (which can only be produced, not printed) than truly exists.
For a sermon, Jim Wallis’s chapter on greed works fairly well. But as a response to what he calls the “Great Recession,” it fails miserably by either refusing to ignoring the importance of putting his finger on a major source of the pain: the Federal Reserve.
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