I identify as a liberal. I believe that we should pursue different mechanisms of economic redistribution, through government programs or charity, to end poverty and preventable deaths. To accomplish this, most in my political tribe commit a great deal of attention toward different ethics of redistribution - charity, policy, Effective Altruism, and others.
I support most of these efforts, but I think we make a big mistake by not emphasizing the moral significance of doing the bare minimum: working a job and trading goods and services. Namely, we don’t typically consider working a job a morally praiseworthy thing to do for society. And yet, by selling a product or service for anyone to purchase, one serves society. It’s understated how important that is!
We Understand Productivity Is Good Intuitively
We westerners internalize the belief that the only way you can do a moral action is by doing it without benefit to yourself, or by sacrificing something. That’s why we like talking about redistributive policies (taxation and charity) in moral discussions about economics, while employment ethics is often ignored.
To pump your intuition, consider the question: if you’re a teacher, plumber, or cook, do you give more benefit to society by teaching, plumbing, or cooking, or by paying taxes or by donating part of your income to charity?
I’d say it’s almost obvious that the service is more important, but if you’re not convinced, consider the math: most of your income is not taxed. If it were the case that the service was secondary to the redistribution, we would tax everyone higher and be enthusiastic for it.
On an intuitive level, we understand that this won’t work and that taxation and redistribution can only work up to a certain point. After that, taxation gets in the way of us pursuing our own happiness, which inevitably has more to do with acquiring and providing goods and services.
For instance, which is more directly beneficial to you when you need your car fixed? A free mechanic or $2,000? Most people immediately jump to the money, because we understand we need it to hire the mechanic, and money is optimal to exchange goods and services. But when it comes to getting your car fixed you need the actual service, not the exchange-rate value of the service. More money certainly helps to acquire goods and services, but without goods and services, money is meaningless.
Virtue Without Persuasion Or Proselytizing
Instead of looking at the market as a measure of cooperation between people, we westerners look only at its generation of monetary value. This oversimplification alienates us from the moral good we’re doing by cooperating with others and improving everyone’s well-being.
For example, if you’re a baker, you may have provided bread to 100 people in a day, but you’re alienated from that morally good behavior by reducing it to the amount of money you made. An anti-capitalist may complain that we’re monetizing everything, while my complaint here is different: We don’t appreciate how a capitalist baker can feed 100 people, while bakers under alternative economic models only feed a fraction of that.
Just because there isn’t much benevolence in this system doesn’t mean there isn’t virtue or morality in voluntary cooperation. Indeed, I’d say voluntary cooperation and service are both virtues. It’s only because we live in a society with abundant wealth and will to cooperate that we take cooperation, trade, and service for granted.
We Will Always Need Work And Business
I agree with the left that redistributive policies are good, but the emphasis on redistribution is a response to our society being insufficiently redistributive toward ending poverty and treating sickness, not from an objective evaluation of what reduces poverty over the long run. Again, I’m not saying we don’t need redistributive policies, but that reducing poverty and improving standards of living comes from economic growth and more goods and services becoming cheaper due to market forces, not redistribution.1
If we lived in a world without poverty, we wouldn’t need redistribution, but we’d still need markets and trade. We’d still need people working jobs to meet people’s needs.
And so, we need business and commerce to be successful today, so that we can continue this cycle of value creation and redistribute wealth and resources to poor and sick people who need it. We get there by encouraging people to work jobs, engaging in commerce, and participating in trade, and by praising people who do, while somewhat shaming able-bodied-and-minded people who refuse.2
Again, that doesn’t mean that working a job makes you more moral than those who don’t or those with more are better than those with less. But we should praise people who work for doing a morally good thing.
That doesn’t mean redistribution doesn’t fight poverty or it can’t help people find jobs, support them between jobs, and so on, but that employment and growth are always going to be better at solving problems than redistribution. I think there’s a threshold of redistribution that’s optimal for long-term growth (unemployment insurance, child tax credits, social security, health insurance for the poor, etc), and also a point where redistribution does more harm than good. I think the answer to those questions is empirical, but I don’t know what they are.
I think we do this well enough. I don’t want the take away of this post do be “shame lazy people more,” so much as it is “take pride in good work” if you’re employed.