Debt, Division of Labor, And The Human Condition
On the conditions and cures of the personal debt culture, and the inevitability of the division of labor.
Why is it that I invariably disagree with David Brooks? He seems like a nice enough guy, smart, sensitive… But I just can’t help thinking that he is mostly wrong-headed. Today, he writes an impassioned piece about the problems with our “values,” government policies, and economic institutions that have led to an exponential growth in personal debt over the past thirty years.
Brooks hangs his argument the idea that those who founded the country embodied traditions of “hard work, temperance and frugality.” He then niftily declares that these early traditions resulted in the country’s prosperity. (Thereby overlooking any other reasons why the country might have been prosperous — such as an abundance of natural resources, the absence of any incumbent public or private institutions that in Europe complicated and inhibited growth over the same period, and the immigration of millions of people who had the drive and ambition to up and travel thousands of miles by boat to seek their fortunes.)
Central to Brook’s theme is thrift. He points out that while we’re smoking less and trying to protect the environment, we’re ever more reckless with money. I’m grateful for these problematic comparisons because they give us an insight into where Brooks is going wrong.
People tend to smoke less these days because they realize it’s bad for them. People tend to care more about the environment because they realize that if they don’t we’ll destroy it. Brooks could have also mentioned the curtailing of promiscuity (primarily because of AIDS).
My point is that our behavior is influenced by perceived cause and effect as much as it is by our values. Or, put another way, values are nothing more than nebulous, intangible codifications of cause and effect that have become untethered from their origins. The reason that some people get into debt or anything else that’s “bad” for them is very simple — they haven’t realized how harmful it can be, or they can’t help themselves.
Citing history as a finger to wag at the present, as Brooks does, seems to be a sure sign of sloppy reasoning. People are people, after all, and we’ve been making the same mistakes and smart decisions for thousands of years.
In his Freakonomics column Stephen Dubner points to a similar example about specialization. Dubner makes a pint of ice cream at home for $12, exemplifying some of the problems with small scale, local production — it’s wasteful, inefficient and uncompetitive. Dubner points out that there has been specialization of trades in society for thousands of years — long before conglomerates, and mass farming.
Dubner’s in pursuit of a rational discussion about sound environmental decision making. But his train of thought also says something about the way that society naturally and inevitably reflects human instincts, reasons and choices. There will always be some people who want to make their own ice cream. And there will always be plenty of people who don’t. And just so long as there’s a profit to be made in mass production, it will continue to exist.
Related posts from around the web…
Have We Lost the Moral Values That Undergird a Commercial Society … - “At the same time, now that we have efficient debt instruments that in former times did not exist or were extremely costly, the role of personal debt (Brooks does not criticize corporate or government debt) in human welfare is more …”
How Do We Change Values? - “On Tuesday of this week, David Brooks had a very good column called “The Great Seduction†about the America’s epidemic of personal debt. The article is based on a new report issued jointly by the Institute for American Values (which …”
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