Re: MD Duty to Oneself Only? Or Others?

---

From:  Arlo Bensinger <ajb102@psu.edu>
Reply-To:  moq_discuss@moq.org
To:  moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject:  Re: MD Duty to Oneself Only? Or Others?
Date:  Sat, 01 Oct 2005 11:05:53 -0400
>Hi Mark,
>
>Glad you've been listening in.
>
>[You wrote]
>
>I think the "50 yard line" problem of wealth accumulation can be
>avoided if we simply agree that wealth accumulation is not
>inherently bad,  but is immoral only insofar as it negatively
>affects the well-
>being of others.
>
>[Arlo]
>Of course, I've never meant from this football analogy that I
>believe there to be some absolute "line in the sand" where "wealth
>accumulation" becomes immoral. I was merely attempting to focus the
>conversation of the easily seeable endzones (or poles) before
>getting bogged down in a mire of detail, that as you suggest (and I
>agree) may be something that needs to take multiple factors into
>account, and also I think have some degree of historical placement.
>
>I also want to emphasize that a big problem in the dialogue is the
>use of the word "poor". We use it, because we've been enculturated
>to do so, in a near-strict capitalistic sense. And this is precisely
>the problem with the valuation of people based on an economic
>marker. In the sense we use the word, the Amish are "poor". They
>lack financial capital, they lack material acquisitions we use as
>strong measures of succcess, but the Amish themselves don't consider
>themselves "poor", quite the opposite, many have expressed (I know
>this from personal encounters) a feeling of great wealth. That is,
>"rich" and "poor" in their views are not economically derived, as
>they are in ours.
>
>When Erin talked about "making people richer" versus "making people
>poorer", I had hoped to start to talk about this discursive shift in
>meaning. Namely, is the only way of "making people richer" giving
>them more financial capital? Does a loss of financial capital equate
>with "becoming poorer". What makes the Amish feel wealthy, even
>though we consider them poor?
>
>As a short, and simplistic, example, I offer "public libraries". By
>using taxation to fund this community service, people are (in the
>economic model) "made a little poorer". They are deprived of capital
>means they would otherwise possess. But, at the same time, they are
>"made much richer" (I'd argue) by being part of a community where
>access to information is egalitarian and not class-derived.
>
>Now, this is not to support a "capitalist" system gone awry that
>deprives most of its people of true socio-economic power, or keeps a
>notable segment living in or near poverty, that somehow this should
>be ignored and people should just be content and measure their
>"richness" in other ways. That would, and has been sadly, the
>opiating role of consumerism and warped religious doctrine. No, only
>when both the economically "rich" and the economically "poor" come
>to see "value" as more than money money money, would such a shift be
>beneficial to society and not merely a ploy to make the "poor" feel
>they should be content with their economic reality.
>
>You suggest three very good questions to begin the process.
>
>[MSH]
>
>1)  What did you do to "get" it?
>2)  What are you doing with it?
>3)  What are you willing to do to keep it?
>
>[Arlo]
>All of these, as is obvious, places "wealth" outside of economic
>measures. Ask these three questions of most Amish (and again, I use
>these not as some Ideal, but as antithesis to mainstream thinking
>about "wealth"), and you'd find that although their financial levels
>are low, they score "rich" on each of these questions. (Of course,
>there have been some Amish communities that have turned to drug
>running and prostitution. Go figure.)
>
>In short, I like these questions as a springboard into the dialogue.
>Indeed, these three questions are just what Bill O'Reily (that great
>Marxist pundit) was trying to ask/say in his criticism of the oil
>companies and their gauging "the little guy". They made money, yes,
>but they fail in a morality check on these three questions.
>Hopefully, although I doubt it'll happen, O'Reily will begin to
>apply this critical thinking to other situations (such as, I've
>already mentioned, slashing healthcare of laborers while CEOs and
>boards reap millions and millions in bonuses, options and so-called
>"golden parachutes"). He lacks the language to do this, of course,
>because in his (as in most) views, the pursuit of wealth is a
>measure of personal worth. And you can't fault someone for seeking
>to become "better" (aka "richer").
>
>[MSH]
>For example, I bet we'd all agree that becoming wealthy by writing a
>book like ZMM is morally superior to becoming wealthy by
>manufacturing land mines or cigarettes or depriving people of life-
>saving drugs.
>
>[Arlo]
>Like all dichotomous dialogues, one is placed in the seeming
>position of supporting an elimination of wealth, gulags, Stalinism
>or such when one begins to question "wealth". Such is the entrenched
>notion that "wealth acquisition" is an Axiomatic Good, an
>Unassailable Goal to which we should all pursue (or at the least,
>not impede the more-valuable people who do). I've never stated, nor
>do I agree, that no one should be rewarded, or profit, from their
>endeavors. But the system is not just. There are people who work
>70-80 days, 6-7 days a week, doing hard labor who will never receive
>any just-reward from a system that separates people from the rewards
>of their labor. To "conservatives", these are "bottom feeders",
>worth nothing more in life than the minimum wage they bring home.
>Truly "valuable people" rise in the system (they believe) and earn
>money based on their value as people. But the truth of it is, as you
>know, that people (the vast majority) die in the same socio-econo!
>mic class as they are born. Whether this is due to access to social
>networks, imbalance in education, or other factors is another good
>question.
>
>For example, yes, Pirsig did deserve the wealth generated by his
>work. But, let me ask a difficult question. Pirsig was not born into
>poverty, his parents were economically well-off, and he attended a
>privileged private school. He had familial wealth to support his
>"wanderings" during the years he formulated what would become
>Qualtiy. What would have happened, hypotheticall, if Robert Pirsig
>was not born into such wealth, but rather born as the son of a day
>laborer, or unemployed factory worker? Would he be where he is
>today?
>
>The point is that economic privilege at birth bestows advantages to
>the child that pretty much secure the child's success and wealth in
>life (um, Paris Hilton?). This is not to challenge the notion that
>Pirsig's wealth is morally superior to those whose wealth was
>generated by "manufacturing land mines or cigarettes or depriving
>people of life-saving drugs", only that part of the equation that
>must be addressed is the "potential" of participating in a system
>that obviously, by all accounts and measures, favors what I call
>"wealth gravition", namely that there is little vertical movement or
>participation in the system.
>
>This is, obviously, part and parcel of the problem of "wealth" as a
>measure of value. People who have accumulated wealth have no
>dialogic reasons for parting with it, to say make someone else's
>life easier, when such an act would mean a devaluation of their own
>social standing.
>
>The final thing I want to comment on is this.
>
>[MSH]
>Is someone who cracks a  bank vault at night morally beneath S&L
>owners who stole millions from taxpayers during the 1980's? (FYI,
>the few who went to jail received sentences one-fifth that of the
>average bank robber.)  How about bankers who have become wealthy by
>knowingly laundering drug money, or by straight-forward
>embezzlement?
>
>[Arlo]
>Yeah, this always cracks me up. You'll hear how we do address "white
>collar" crime, but when you look at the numbers people get more time
>for stealing a purse than for embezzling millions from 401ks. Maybe
>it has something to do with celebrity. Maybe, as a society, we can
>relate to that greed? Maybe we are just accustomed to seeing the
>wealthy as "more valuable", so we don't inflict punishment on them
>the same way we inflict punishment on "the low life".
>
>Anyways, thanks for your thoughts.
>
>Arlo
>
>
>
>
>
>
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