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Supply-Side Ethics

Supply-Side Ethics

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October 20, 2010

March 2001 -- A writer suffering from clinical depression finds relief from Prozac. Realizing how profoundly the drug's inventor has affected her life, she sets out to find him. But she is disappointed when she finally tracks down Bryan Molloy, a scientist at Eli Lilly. "How does it make you feel, I asked, to know that you have helped people? . . . 'I just wanted to do it for the intellectual high,' he said. 'It looked like scientific fun.' Reality is rarely what we imagine. Great and noble things do not always happen for great and noble reasons."

The story is a perfect illustration of what's wrong with altruism as a moral code. Bryan Molloy helped create a drug that millions have used to flee the dark nights of their souls. For the altruist mindset, however, the fact that he aimed only to satisfy his own curiosity makes the benefits to others irrelevant and his achievement unworthy of praise.

This blind spot springs from the assumption that the basic moral choice we face in life is self versus others. It is an ancient assumption. Conventional moral codes were forged in a pre-industrial era, when most people lived in societies based on ties of family and tribe. Producing food and other goods was largely a matter of routine, with little scope for the exercise of thought and imagination and little prospect of increasing output. Since the pool of wealth was more or less fixed, the key question was how to distribute it. Living in close dependence on their fellows, people survived the hard times by sharing, and at all times feared that the strong and rapacious would take more than their share. In the circumstances, it was not implausible to regard sacrifice, compassion, and mutual support, at least within the tribe, as important virtues.

With the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of complex economies, however, two facts have become blindingly obvious. The first is that production is not a routine task; the scope for employing man's highest powers of creativity, daring, and commitment is unlimited. The second is that wealth is not a fixed quantity; it can be expanded continuously through invention, trade, and investment; one person's success does not come at the expense of others, as long they cooperate and trade with each other freely. These facts may not have been obvious at the dawn of civilization. Now they are.

Economists have understood them for over two centuries, but moralists have not caught up. At a time when human intelligence is transforming the world at an accelerating pace, creating wealth on a scale undreamt of in human history, people still operate with the moral perspective of tribes eking out their existence.

Altruism is a demand-side ethic, based on the view that the distribution of goods is the fundamental issue in ethics and that the needy have first claim on goods. In defending egoism, Ayn Rand did not merely defend a new standard for the beneficiary of one's actions. She completely recast the framework of debate by denying that distribution is the fundamental issue.

Rand was the first thinker, to my knowledge, who proposed a genuine supply-side ethic. She recognized that achievement, not suffering, is the central fact of human existence. She honored the act of creating value above the act of giving it away. Pride of place in her moral code went to the virtues that make achievement possible--rationality, courage, productiveness, pride--rather than the virtues of benevolence to others. She was impatient with the altruists' obsession about whether a person is acting for himself or others. People have a right to live for themselves, and a creator has a right to the value he creates; that's a matter of justice. Still, when people are free to create, one person's gain does not come at another's expense; everyone benefits. But it is the act of achievement, from which those benefits flow, that deserves our highest moral honor.

The career of Michael Milken illustrates what is at stake here. In the 1970s and 1980s, Milken developed a market for high-yield ("junk") bonds, which he then used to capitalize innovative companies and to finance the takeover and restructuring of ailing ones. In the late 1980s, he was targeted in a high-profile investigation of Wall Street and eventually served two years in prison for alleged securities violations. His defenders and publicity people tried to counter public animus against him by citing the time and personal effort he devoted to education, medical research, and other philanthropic activities. But they could not overcome the perception of Milken as a symbol of "the decade of greed." That perception is still alive, and probably explains why he did not get one of President Clinton's last-minute pardons.

Imagine how different things would have been in a culture that valued achievement rather than sacrifice. To dramatize the difference, I once compared Michael Milken with Mother Teresa (on John Stossel's program "Greed"). Mother Teresa is the emblem of altruism: raising money for the poor and sharing their plight. She has a saintly aura not because of her works, strictly speaking--other philanthropists have done more--but because she is seen as deliberately sacrificing herself. She has cut corners at times, strong-arming donors and making deals with corrupt governments, but these flaws are easily excused as excesses of a noble soul.

In a supply-side culture, Michael Milken would possess that aura of nobility. Even if the allegations against him are true, they would count as no more than flaws of excessive zeal for creating wealth. What would be remembered and celebrated would be the new technologies he funded, the part he played in the spectacular economic boom of the 1980s, the foundation he laid for the information economy of the 1990s. He would be admired for his mind, energy, and vision. It would be a compliment, a moral tribute, for a creator to be compared with him.

The cultural change that Objectivists seek is nothing less than this.

This article was originally published in the March 2001 issue of Navigator magazine, The Atlas Society precursor to The New Individualist.

David Kelley earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1975, and later taught cognitive science and philosophy at Vassar College and Brandeis University. His articles on social issues and public policy have appeared in Harpers, The Sciences, Reason, Harvard Business Review, The Freeman, and elsewhere. His books include  Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence; The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand; The Evidence of the Senses, and The Art of Reasoning, one of the most widely used logic textbooks in the country. Kelley is founder and executive director of The Atlas Society.

TNI articles by David Kelley          Atlas Society articles by David Kelley

David Kelley

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

David Kelley

David Kelley is the founder of The Atlas Society. A professional philosopher, teacher, and best-selling author, he has been a leading proponent of Objectivism for more than 25 years.

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Dr. David Kelley
About the author:
Dr. David Kelley

David Kelley fundou a The Atlas Society (TAS) em 1990 e atuou como diretor executivo até 2016. Além disso, como Diretor Intelectual, ele era responsável por supervisionar o conteúdo produzido pela organização: artigos, vídeos, palestras em conferências, etc. Aposentado do TAS em 2018, ele permanece ativo nos projetos do TAS e continua atuando no Conselho de Curadores.

Kelley é filósofa, professora e escritora profissional. Depois de obter um Ph.D. em filosofia pela Universidade de Princeton em 1975, ele ingressou no departamento de filosofia do Vassar College, onde ministrou uma grande variedade de cursos em todos os níveis. Ele também ensinou filosofia na Universidade Brandeis e lecionou com frequência em outros campi.

Os escritos filosóficos de Kelley incluem trabalhos originais em ética, epistemologia e política, muitos deles desenvolvendo ideias objetivistas em novas profundidades e novas direções. Ele é o autor de A evidência dos sentidos, um tratado de epistemologia; Verdade e tolerância no objetivismo, sobre questões do movimento objetivista; Individualismo inabalável: a base egoísta da benevolência; e A arte do raciocínio, um livro didático amplamente usado para lógica introdutória, agora em sua 5ª edição.

Kelley lecionou e publicou sobre uma ampla variedade de tópicos políticos e culturais. Seus artigos sobre questões sociais e políticas públicas foram publicados em Harpers, The Sciences, Reason, Harvard Business Review, The Freeman, On Principle, e em outros lugares. Durante a década de 1980, ele escreveu frequentemente para Revista Financeira e Empresarial Barrons sobre questões como igualitarismo, imigração, leis de salário mínimo e Previdência Social.

Seu livro Vida própria: direitos individuais e o estado de bem-estar é uma crítica das premissas morais do estado de bem-estar social e da defesa de alternativas privadas que preservem a autonomia, responsabilidade e dignidade individuais. Sua aparição no especial “Greed”, da ABC/TV, de John Stossel, em 1998, provocou um debate nacional sobre a ética do capitalismo.

Especialista reconhecido internacionalmente em Objetivismo, ele deu muitas palestras sobre Ayn Rand, suas ideias e seus trabalhos. Ele foi consultor da adaptação cinematográfica de Atlas Shrugged, e editor de Atlas Shrugged: o romance, os filmes, a filosofia.

 

Obra principal (selecionada):

Conceitos e naturezas: um comentário sobre A virada realista (de Douglas B. Rasmussen e Douglas J. Den Uyl),” Reason Papers 42, no. 1, (verão de 2021); Esta resenha de um livro recente inclui um mergulho profundo na ontologia e epistemologia dos conceitos.

Os fundamentos do conhecimento. Seis palestras sobre a epistemologia objetivista.

A primazia da existência” e”A Epistemologia da Percepção”, The Jefferson School, San Diego, julho de 1985

Universais e indução”, duas palestras nas conferências do GKRH, Dallas e Ann Arbor, março de 1989

Ceticismo”, Universidade de York, Toronto, 1987

A natureza do livre arbítrio”, duas palestras no Instituto de Portland, outubro de 1986

O Partido da Modernidade”, Relatório de política da Cato, maio/junho de 2003; e Navegador, novembro de 2003; Um artigo amplamente citado sobre as divisões culturais entre as visões pré-moderna, moderna (iluminista) e pós-moderna.

Eu não preciso“(Diário do IOS, volume 6, número 1, abril de 1996) e”Eu posso e eu vou” (O novo individualista, Outono/Inverno 2011); Artigos complementares sobre como tornar real o controle que temos sobre nossas vidas como indivíduos.

Ética
Ideias e ideologias