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Another thing that I absolutely love about free markets is that in order to succeed, you have to actually do something for your neighbor that your neighbor wants you to do! Think about that for a moment. If nobody is required by coercion (laws) to buy something from you or hire you to perform a service, guess what you have to do: serve your neighbor!
The word “serve” is often used synonymously with things like “sacrifice” to imply that you cannot receive any reward for whatever act of service you have done. But service is a much broader term. We have departments in companies called “customer service,” and the “service desk” is a place where we can get help at the hardware store. “Quality service” is a mantra that many businesses use because if they live up to it that may mean more revenue (gasp!). My parents and grandparents used to call the place where we refuel our cars “service stations.” Why? Because they paid for a service performed, namely the filling up of a car and/or the checking of oil or washing of a windshield. I can assure you that the men who did this work on my father’s SUV were not doing it for charity. They were doing it because they wanted to earn money. But it did not diminish the quality of the service itself.
A Christian theology of community emphasizes the value and need for social connection and social cooperation. Church life, if it works well at all, is predominantly built upon social values of love and sacrifice. It is only since Western Christianity that we’ve valued individuality at the expense of the community. While individualism is excellent when placed in the context of human rights and boundaries of order, it is only one part of the equation in society. Community is necessary for vibrancy in personhood and the social order. Cooperation in market exchanges represent one method of community. When people are free to exchange as they see fit, they will be required to make decisions about who they will trade with. In short, they will cooperate with some people and ignore others. Whoever serves others’ needs and wants in the most desired way succeeds.
But what does cooperation have to do with service? In order to cooperate with somebody, we must give up something of our own. We all start with different resources available to us, whether we were rich or poor. Most of us have the ability to work and provide labor for somebody else. It all starts here. I willingly offer my labor to a company who will pay me. I’d rather not do it. I’d rather the company just give me the money. I’d rather stay at home and watch TV or read books or play on my iPad. I’d rather go fly a Piper Cub. But in order to do any of those things (all of which, by the way, are luxuries and not necessities), I have to serve somebody who considers what I have to offer worthy of wages. I have to give up something of mine. Once that occurs, I’ve earned my wages, and now I want food. I’d prefer that the grocer just give me food. (By the way, those of you reading who think health care is a human right, why isn’t food a human right? And why not the public outrage that we actually have to pay for the food we eat?) But I can’t just take the food. I have to give up something for it. Indirectly, I’ve had to serve somebody in society for that food.
Service is a broad concept, especially when we think about the way in which we interact with people every day. Our lives are filled with millions of choices, many of which are minor, but many that require us to sacrifice something. Today I went out to eat with some co-workers. I had to decide whether the $5+tip was worth more to me than the food I was potentially going to buy. The restaurant owner(s) had to decide whether or not it was worth it to spend ahead of time—before they had any idea I might want to eat at their restaurant—enough human labor and capital (read: freezers, fridges, food storage, grills, and dinnerware, to name a few), both of which cost them a lot of money. Each on the end of the transaction made a decision to sacrifice something in order to gain what the other had.
I marvel every time I go to Starbucks or the grocery store and the cashier says, “Thank you.” Huh? Why are they thanking me? I’m the one who got the product, right? All they got was a lousy green piece of paper with a dead mans face and a bunch of weird symbols on it. Yet the reality is that we both gained from the transaction. Even if the cashier wasn’t the owner, she has gained because I’ve been a small part of what keeps her employed at a place she apparently has chosen to work (yes, I realize that some people aren’t at their favorite jobs; but nobody is forced to work anywhere specific unless you’re a child under 16 and you must work at the local government school—but that’s another issue!). Both of us are better off after the transaction (or at least we have acted as such).
Cooperation is a beautiful thing. Progressives talk about it all the time, yet they seem to miss the point because they advocate for coercive methods in order to achieve their “social cooperation.” Libertarians advocate for freedom of association and freedom of exchange, which by definition requires people to serve another if they want to get ahead in life. Not only does this facilitate cooperation, it is a huge mechanism to thwart greed, which is a social and personal problem that the anti-capitalists blame on free markets. But that will have to wait for another post.
