If greed is good and necessary for capitalism to work, then we should celebrate -- or at least equally tolerate -- greed wherever we find it: in the executive boardroom, at the union-management negotiating table, at the supermarket, etc.
If greed, collapses and blowups are inherent in capitalism's creative destruction, then we Americans should have a much more blase, stoic attitude toward them, and not demonize one industry over another, or ask anybody to sacrifice. Sacrifice for what, for whom? There is nobody else but me, says greed. Sacrifice does not compute with greed.
In other words, all these years when outsiders told the unions that they should accept even deeper wage and benefits cuts in order to preserve the U.S. auto industry, those outsiders were asking unions to do something un-capitalistic: ignore their own self-interest for a greater good, based on a long-term what-if. Likewise, all the smart bankers who saw that they were sitting on a pile of dynamite (bad debt) could not stop themselves, nor did their bosses encourage them to, because their immediate profits and bonuses while the getting was good were just too huge to ignore. None of them wanted to be the last to leave the buffet table. Uncle T. thinks they were dumb. I think he's naive. People in the financial press and in business schools were writing about the housing bubble and the danger of derivatives for years; just like they were pointing out the unsustainable legacy costs of U.S. auto makers.
Finally, I want to point out to you again the untenable contradiction in the conservative worldview: that in our work lives we must be greedy, self-interested, competitive, risk-taking individualists (and society should encourage and reward such behavior); but in our private lives we must be caring, yielding, unselfish, family- and community-minded do-gooders (and there we should commend such behavior). No matter what messes our former life creates out of its greed and heedless risk, our latter life, in all its steadfast love, patience, and charity, is there to clean them up. And so there is no need -- nay, there is no room! -- between those two opposing lives, believe conservatives, for Big Government.
Look, I'm no psychologist, but I think that if a man tried to hew to this dichotomy, he would become schizophrenic. Don't you think, to maintain his sanity and some semblance of moral clarity, that a man would eventually have to choose one way of life over the other, unable to lead this double life? Don't you, personally, skew heavily toward the latter view of life? ... And yet you defend and rationalize "thinkers" who promote the virtues of the former worldview, which is opposed to how you actually choose to lead your life, based on your Christian values.
Moreover, don't you see that the harm caused by the former way of life would eventually surpass the ability of the latter way of life to ameliorate it? That is, due to the scope and power of our modern global economy, can't a man do more harm from 9-6 p.m. at work than he could ever make up for in his individual free time? In our work lives, we are well funded, globally connected, and empowered; our decisions and actions carry immediate, often dramatic effects. Yet in our private lives, we are alone with our family and friends, unconnected to the wider world, with hardly any tools at our disposal to help anybody whom we can't see or touch. We kick a buck to charity. We go to church. We recycle. We mow our lawns. We shop and buy and shop. Only with great, sustained effort can we make our private lives more impactful than our work lives, and only at the expense of our personal profit. In real life, it is always either-or.
I recall the painting in Grandpa's office of a balding, sharp-eyed businessman in a three-piece suit sitting behind his desk, holding an animated but friendly conversation with a berobed Jesus Christ. The point of that painting, I guess, was that Jesus had a place in the business world, too. But how silly, naive, and impracticable is that lesson! How poorly the world rewards somebody who actually tries to follow it! Capitalism rewards the dumb and the lucky, to be sure. It also rewards the sharks, the liars, the cutthroats, the shouters, the aggressors, the egomaniacs, the prima donas, the backstabbers, the copycats and the yes-men, the amoral and the conscience-free. And then, to make matters worse, on top of their $ millions, we laud the rich with achievement awards, honorary degrees, magazine covers and TV interviews, paid speaking engagements, and political offices. Evangelical churches even defend their excessive wealth as proof of God's favor. How brutally and unequally the world rewards those who skew toward the former way of life vs. the latter! Only the businessman who strove for mediocrity wouldn't throw Jesus out of his office for wasting his precious time!
To come full circle, this is why I'm a liberal. Not because I'm better than anybody else. But because I'm just as bad. I humbly admit my natural limitations and the limitations imposed on me by life. I recognize that my private self is no match for my public self. I can't provide for myself and my family, enjoy some rest & recreation, and also "make a difference," "revitalize my community," and "change the world" after 8 p.m. on weekdays and a few hours on the weekend. I need government to pick up the slack. My good conscience demands that government picks up the slack for me, for everybody -- but especially for those whose destructive work lives grossly outweigh anything I could do to counter them. I need help. And so do you, if only you'd admit it.
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