The Morality of Money
‘Money, in the MOQ, is a pure and simple index of social quality.’
Robert Pirsig
With money representing social quality, the direct link between a government’s budget and what it considers as valuable becomes immediately apparent. Looking at the budgets of the US, UK and Australia is therefore a great way to see what each culture deems valuable.
A lot can be said about a culture by what it spends its money on. In fact it could be said that a culture is what it spends its money on, because a culture is what it values. I won’t get into the details of each budget and the morality of each according to the MOQ in this post but first I just want to spend some time discussing the limits of a budget, what they’re thought to be, and what they actually are.
Basically, current economic thinking claims that budgets are constrained by their deficit. A government’s budget is compared to a household budget and deficits are seen as some kind of a sin to be avoided and surpluses are seen as a good to be continued. However the problem with this thinking is that a government’s budget is not constrained as per a household due to the fact that a government, unlike a household, can produce its own money without constraint. How then, did we end up with this discrepancy?
Historically, the value of money had been pegged against the gold standard, and as there was a limited supply of gold, there was indeed a limit to how much money could be spent relative to the amount of gold available. However in 1971 President Nixon ended international convertibility of the U.S. Dollar to gold and floated the currency. Since then, standard economic thinking doesn’t appear to have adapted to the fact that there is no longer such a restriction in the amount of money a government can produce!
That’s not to say there aren’t constraints however. Simply speaking, the true constraint to an economy is inflation when ‘too much money chases too few goods’. This isn’t a risk though, when the output(goods) of an economy isn’t at a maximum as would be the case when there is unemployment. Because of this, a government backed Job Guarantee, would be not only obviously good for the individuals unemployed, but a great way to keep an otherwise unemployed workforce, skilled and available for the private sector when required.
And this is the argument of Modern Monetary Theory(MMT), which supports not only a Job Guarantee but also government deficits. Deficits are seen as typical because the private sector, which would then be in surplus(graph above), values saving money for harder times. Such economic thinking, resulting in a great increase in the quality a society can produce, is strongly supported by the Metaphysics of Quality and why I’ve written about it here. MMT is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to the austerity being applied to many struggling economies around the world.
Glenn Greenwald on Journalism and Values
Glenn Greenwald is a great journalist. Why? Because his view of journalism; that it’s firstly meant to act as a check to power, is a good one. Without journalists informing the public about what their elected officials are doing; there are closed doors and an environment which is conductive to abuse. The role of journalism as the fourth estate is that it tempers that power by making actions made in its name public and thus open to being held to account.
But it’s not just his view of journalism as a check on power which is good. He also understands, in line with the Metaphysics of Quality, that it’s impossible for anyone to hold an objective, value free viewpoint. As Pirsig writes in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
“The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to care! This is an ability about which formal traditional scientific method has nothing to say. It’s long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative preselection of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by those who make so much of these facts after they are ‘observed.'”
In fact, Glenn articulates that it’s this value free viewpoint that modern day journalists cling to as a defense whenever they saddle up next to those in power and stenographically transcribe what they say. They claim that they’re being ‘objective’ but really they’re just transcribing what the powerful wants us to hear rather than doing their job and looking out for those things which are valuable for the public to know regardless of what those in power say.
Along these lines, recently Greenwald had a fascinating exchange with the New York Times Bill Keller in which he summarised his view on modern journalism and the role of the NYT thus:
“My view of journalism absolutely requires both fairness and rigorous adherence to facts. But I think those values are promoted by being honest about one’s perspectives and subjective assumptions rather than donning a voice-of-god, view-from-nowhere tone that falsely implies that journalists reside above the normal viewpoints and faction-loyalties that plague the non-journalist and the dreaded “activist.”
Embedded in The New York Times’s institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world. And with some noble exceptions, The Times, by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Its reporting is no less “activist,” subjective or opinion-driven than the new media voices it sometimes condescendingly scorns.”
The discussion is centred around the new media venture of which Greenwald is starting with Pierre Omidyar. It should be interesting to see what form it takes. But I recommend the whole exchange as it’s a great intellectual discussion between a prominent modern day journalist in that of Keller and one of the more adversarial journalists of our times in Greenwald.
Intellectual Discussion and Dialectic.
Finding Agreement, Quality and Beauty in the World.
When two people discuss a concept intellectually – naturally there will be disagreement. What then?
In the two and a half thousand years since Socrates and the Ancient Greeks what two people aim for has been the truth. Disagreement has immediately implied that what one person thinks is false and therefore wrong, while what the other person thinks is true and therefore right. The way to determine this right and wrong has been to logically argue about what is true and what is false. Each participant in this dialectical discussion – using the rules of logic – determines the truth by watching for things like contradiction and consistency from their interlocutor. If someone is inconsistent, or shows contradiction, then what they are saying is false and thus the person demonstrating the contradiction is right. Quality, Values and Morals in these discussions are unimportant. Truth and logical consistency is the focus, not Quality or Values or Morals.
But of course – this isn’t how things are. Quality, Values and Morals do exist and *are *very important. Values actually create our ideas and opinions. And so if we are to ever reach agreement, we will not find it simply with the aid of logical consistency (although it helps). If we only keep our eyes on logical consistency we will be forever stuck in muddy water at the bottom of a waterfall – not in the clean water at the top. Unless we explain, beautifully, the values, the morals which form the quality of our opinions we won’t get anywhere but be stuck with a bunch of meaningless, valueless, truths.
This is true not just of one or two discussion – but of all discussions – everywhere. Why do people value the things that they do? Why do some people call one thing moral, while another group call something else moral? Of course, in these discussions there will be disagreement. But unless there is an openness to this disagreement, an openness to see something better, an openness to even try the values of another, an openness to be honest with yourself about your own values – then things will stay the same and not get any better.
Morality in politics..
“Lying just beneath the surface of (political) arguments with passions raging on all sides are big questions of Moral Philosophy.. But we too rarely articulate and defend and argue about those big moral questions in our Politics”
Michael Sandel
Michael Sandel has a great series on Justice which explains the currently competing philosophical theories of social justice that exist in the world today. Unlike anyone else I’ve seen he’s bringing the problems of Moral Philosophy to the public at large in an easily accessible way.
In the TED Talk above, Sandel gives a passionate plea to bring some of this intelligent philosophical discourse to our political dialogue. I share his frustration and it is heartwarming to see someone make such an argument in a public setting. Of course, the Metaphysics of Quality provides us with a vastly improved language with which we can discuss morality and it brings with it coherence and evolutionary context to these discussions where there previously was none.