Virtues in the Economy // SSCI 100

welcome back in this lecture we'll be going back to the previous lecture the lecture on basic economic principles and speaking about how virtues impact our economic lives so in the last lecture we were introduced to the economist world view and i argued this was a tool a way to understand the ways that people buy and sell things the ways that people choose careers the ways that we structure an economy and so on but in this class we need to take these principles further right many of you aren't economists and even if you are you bring

notions of morality what is good what is right to the ways you think about economics and in this class we're explicitly doing so when we think about justice so our goal for today is to think about how we might apply the tools of economics in a just and moral way right so how do we apply that tool in a way that's morally appropriate so even if economics can help us understand material well-being and help us lift people out of poverty uh it doesn't necessarily answer the question as to whether it makes us better people right

we need to think about what markets do to our soul what does economics do to who we are as people right who do we want to become is it worth it if we have the nicest house in town we're rich beyond all measure but our kids hate us and people think we're kind of a turd probably not right um when we think about these markets it's possible that markets and economics is really rotting our soul right we're turning into things that are like gullum from the lord of the rings where we just care about ourselves

and we have these obsessions that we can't turn away from right these blinding obsessions and as we do this we become corrupt right we become horrible caricatures of a human and so maybe we need to flee from this system we need to reject economics reject markets and just focus on eternal or important things or maybe not let's not go too far it can't be all that bad today we need a framework to evaluate economics economic life and the ways that we ought to apply the principles from last class how should we use those tools and

to do that we're going to outline a list of virtues right the title of this course is justice so justice will be one of them but there's going to be other virtues that we're going to outline and i'm going to argue that these virtues will help us understand the ways that those economic principles ought to be understood and used so let's start with justice as we seek to define justice it turns out that this is a little bit harder than we might imagine going to google google defines justice as being just well that begs the

question what does just mean google doesn't have much to offer on that so if you go to a more traditional dictionary um there's three elements three elements go into justice the first conforming to fact or reason the second conforming to a standard of correctness the third conforming with what is morally good and if you're like me as you think about those three components they just beg more questions conforming to factor reason in my mind that sounds more like i don't know like the scientific method or or doing a study properly in the lab doesn't really

speak to the ways that i think of justice in general so what i want to do is focus on this third aspect conforming with what is morally good we need to create a framework to evaluate what is and what is not morally good in the economy to create this framework i'm going to rely on a book by deidre mccloskey the bourgeois virtues ethics for an age of commerce and in this work mccloskey provides a list of the ways in which virtues impact the economy and in turn the economy impacts our virtues so the virtues that

we're going to think about and discuss today are hope faith love courage temperance prudence and justice so we started with justice and we'll return to justice at the end and i'm gonna follow mccloskey mccloskey doesn't give us a textbook or a dictionary type of definition for these virtues what she does is she plays with word association and i think this is helpful because i think it'll help us understand the richness of these virtues as well as the many ways they show up in our economic lives so let's jump into it the first is hope right

the first virtue mccloskey outlines is hope and with hope she associates words like optimism imagination and entrepreneurship right so when we think about the entrepreneur any product we buy it started with an entrepreneurial spirit that entrepreneur woke up thought i know how to make something that people will value right maybe it'll make their lives better off and this act of imagination they go off and they try to create that thing right maybe it's a farmer that started farming maybe it's a shoe company that thought it could make athletic wear whatever it is these efforts were

fueled by optimism right these people don't know that their product is going to sell they don't know that people like it right it's a it's a venture into the unknown and so every day we see that right we see companies we see workers we see people entering the economy fueled by optimism hoping that their work will be rewarded hopefully hoping that it will be fulfilling and so on the second virtue is faith faith we associate words like identity integrity loyalty honesty right so i'm a big coffee drinker so here's my bag of coffee this is

from water avenue it's uh a bag of coffee from ethiopia i've never been to ethiopia before maybe someday when you think about this bag of coffee and what it is there's a lot of faith in my buying it and consuming it right is it actually coffee i didn't go to the farm i didn't see people pick the coffee berries roast them put them in the bag is it uh safe is it clean i don't know right but i'm i'm drinking that cup of coffee and faith that that farmer has done their work that they're not

trying to poison me that they've farmed with integrity right and so by acting with integrity i drink the cup for coffee i find it pleasing i like it i reciprocate with loyalty right i'm likely to buy that same type of coffee again right so i appreciate this farmer and their work and their integrity by buying buying their product the third virtue love love involves words like connection friendship affection appreciation so that cup of coffee i might sit at my breakfast table and drink it all by myself or i might get together with friends or a

student in the afternoon to have a cup of coffee and that coffee helps me connect with these people i certainly don't need coffee to have a conversation but it certainly helps the famous christian author c.s lewis said that friends need a common thread that thing that lights the spark between them maybe it's coffee maybe it's a tv show that you and your friends geek out on uh for me one thing it's been is rock climbing so this is one of my pairs of rock climbing shoes that we'll mention later right so there's friends in my

life that the common thread is climbing and because of different products i'm able to facilitate and maintain friendships with them that either i might not be able to maintain or it'd be a lot harder to do so right so i think of my my smartphone it's easy for me to text a friend hey how you doing do you want to go climbing this weekend calling takes a little bit more time or we don't have to go back too far in history we're even calling is not an option right or we think about the products that

make climbing safe right it's a dangerous sport but with appropriate measures it's something that you can do so we have this common thread this group of friends that i have and these products that allow climbing to be enjoyable and safe is what kind of knits that group together next virtue courage things words like autonomy daring endurance right we think about that farmer again that maybe started their coffee farm with a little plot of land and as they brought wonderful coffee to the market and consumers purchased that coffee they were able to expand and grow into

something more something bigger or the shoe company that started in a shed and now sells shoes all over the world right or yourself right you are performing a daring act of going to college to get a degree and hopefully an awesome job this is a very courageous thing that you're trying to do in these goals right the goals in our lives that are the most valuable the most rewarding are the ones that take the most time that take the most endurance right so when i think of my life um and the career that i have

now grad school was that enduring time right writing a dissertation going through classes and so on um working at fox sometimes is an act of endurance as we wake up every day and take on those challenges or other areas of life too i think of my my family some of the biggest joys in my life have been seeing my kids learn to ride a bike to swim learning to read these are things that didn't happen instantly but are incredibly valuable and incredibly rewarding next virtue temperance temperance excuse me individual balance and restraint sobriety humility this

is about knowing ourselves and what's good for us and this is an area where i struggle when i think about economics and i think about markets markets inflame things in me that are not the best version of myself they can make me greedy envious and want more and more to not be content the climbing shoes that i showed you earlier often i justify the need for more climbing shoes i tell myself this will make me a better climber i take a turn for the golem i begin to believe that if i just had a new

thing right a new precious in my life i would be content i would be happy and everything would be better and we know this isn't true we know that materialism makes us our souls sick right that we want that new thing we purchased a new thing and then quickly it loses its allure right we know that no product will fulfill us yet we keep falling prey to it with the next virtue prudence hopefully we can get beyond that so prudence mccloskey associates words like know how self-interest wisdom right so with prudence we get this idea

of working to create the life that you want to live right reflecting on yourself reflecting on wisdom pursuing excellence being a steward of what god's given you but the hard thing with economics is that we often run into situations where our self-interest maybe runs a mock right for me maybe i become so obsessed with climbing shoes that i'm blinded to other needs in my life or maybe the needs of my kids right or if we think about the ways that society structures economics or excuse me the economy we could imagine this is silly but we

could imagine a rule that says you have to drink coffee coffee is the best thing for you it will wake you up right and that's kind of a silly example but maybe you don't like coffee or maybe it makes you really jittery right or maybe we decided you have to rock climb right i'm sure plenty of us would not want to live in that world right so there's ways in which we get together in society and mandate things and sometimes they're good and sometimes they're bad but if these markets facilitate and reward prudence wisdom know-how

self-interest when i intervene on your behalf and i affront your autonomy then i'm gonna limit your ability to live the good life then this really speaks directly to the principles from last class okay we're almost done we still have to talk about justice but before we do that a short assignment this is what i want you to do take out a piece of paper if you haven't and i want you to write down the virtues that we've talked about i want you to write down hope faith love courage temperance and prudence so again hope faith

love courage temperance and prudence and then what i'd like you to do after each virtue is think of a tangible tangible example of this in the economy right i've offered some examples with climbing shoes and coffee but i want you to think through your life right so with hope think about someone that started a business or maybe they set off on a career and it was based on hope right maybe it was a parent or someone that you look up to that took a risk to pursue a career for faith think about someone that acts

with integrity in the workplace or as a consumer or someone that maybe knows their identity and is solidly grounded in who they are for love what are ways in which a product contributes to a friendship right i gave the example of coffee in a smartphone think of something else something else that you have or you've purchased that helps you develop a little deeper friendship with someone in your life for courage think about a goal that you've endured to achieve maybe it was buying your first car maybe it's as simple as buying a nice pair of

shoes but something that took a lot of work to achieve temperance with temperance are there things that maybe you shouldn't consume or maybe you shouldn't consume as much of right for me i constantly struggle with coffee i want to drink too much i get too jittery i get too sweaty are there things like that in your life prudence how do you manage your life how did you decide to come to fox how do you navigate this thing that you're doing this education to turn it into a career right what areas of wisdom do you have

self-interest know-how right so come up with this list you may share them with others you may keep them to yourselves that'll be we'll talk about that at a later time so the last virtue the last virtue we come to is justice and mccloskey gives us this social balance right social balance and if you notice the other virtues had a much more personal application right i can talk about acting wisely if i'm being prudent or being temperate or acting with courage right but in its definition or in this word association mccoskey says social balance so with

this with justice we're forced to think about the ways that we interact with others it's not just about me it's not just about you it's about us and when we think about justice i want us to think about the ways in which the other virtues intersect it right can we have justice if people are not loving if they're not courageous so as we progress in this section of the course we're now in a place to take those economic principles from the first lecture incorporate them with virtues like courage and love to begin to talk about

justice and social balance so in the next lecture we're going to ask a big question we're going to ask the question how should we structure our economy to achieve social balance to achieve justice