Three people we’ve never met made our family beach trip much more enjoyable because they invented something called a Shibumi. This caused me to reflect a bit on morality and economics, in conversation with some recent reading.
When Catching (Shibumi) Shade is a Good Thing
This July 4th, our family took our first vacation in over two years to the NC coast. A relative of ours has a lovely house just off the Intracoastal Waterway, and we had a wonderful time. Two excellent days of good weather on the beach blessed us immensely. Additionally, the inventiveness of three young men and their product, the Shibumi Shade, helped make our time special.
What is the Shibumi Shade? TL;DR: a simple, easy to set up, and very portable shade for use at the beach. It boasts more coverage than an umbrella, but is much lighter and smaller than a full tent. The house we rented had one we could borrow, and it vastly improved the enjoyment of our beach time.
Last week I also read a little book on morality and capitalism by the American Enterprise Institute. I describe myself as a moderate free market supporter. As the authors outline, there are appropriate places for government to reign in some of the excesses of capitalism, but on the whole free exchange is necessary for a society that values free expression, free speech, human dignity, and property rights. It occurred to me that the Shibumi was an excellent example of the morality of capitalism they sought to defend.
The Shibumi Story
The story of the Shibumi is classic American entrepreneurship. Two brothers and a close friend grew up going to the beach on the NC coast, and they didn’t like the usual options for beach shade. They decided to try to make something better. They had an idea, took a risk, and it turned out to be a helpful product. As a testimony to its popularity, I about half of the tents we saw this week were Shibumi Shades.
At its best, this is how a free market works: people offer goods and services that other people want or need, and are compensated for them. Of course, capitalism doesn’t distinguish between good and bad desires, and can be an engine for the production and distribution of truly terrible things. But centrally planned economies suffer from the same issue, only worse: instead of production determined by the interaction of free people and institutions, it is determined by a central, bureaucratic authority often with little accountability for its failures or incentives to improve value.
When Helping Yourself Helps Others
The inventors of the Shibumi acted out of their best interests. In doing so, however, they improved the lives of thousands of people who had a similar need. This is the important distinction between selfishness and self-interest that critics of capitalism, who vilify the free market as an instrument of oppression, often miss:
“Self-interest – unlike selfishness – will often lead one to commit acts of altruism; rightly understood, it knows that no man is an island, that we are part of a larger community, and that what is good for others is good for us. To put it another way: pursuing our own good can advance the common good.” (p. 6)
By solving a problem for themselves, these three young entrepreneurs also served many others who will buy and benefit from their product. They will, rightly, be rewarded their ingenuity and innovation. While markets are not perfect (because people are not perfect), there is an inherent morality in the free exchange of goods and services, just as there is an inherent worth in free expression (regardless of how one feels about the content of any particular expression).
Morality in Free vs. Planned Economies
To make free markets moral, you make people moral. As Wehner and Brooks point out, it is non-governmental organizations like churches and non-profits and cultural institutions who teach people civic virtues and other communal values. The chief alternative is some degree of centrally planned economy. This demands making government bureaucracies not only efficient (a tall order by itself compared to the neat and tidy world of free people pursuing their own interests), but also moral. The former is difficult, but the latter strikes me as impossible.
A Counter-Example: Ayn Rand
While reading the AEI book above, I also read Anne Heller’s biography of Ayn Rand. Full disclosure: I’ve never read any of Rand’s work. While I have read texts in political philosophy that referred to her, her aggressive atheism always kept my interest low. That said, Heller’s biography depicts her as a fascinating, if troubling, figure. My main takeaway: in the end, the best argument against Rand’s ideas is how they played out in her own life.
The champion of individualism who supposedly loved freedom and despised totalitarianism ended up creating a circle of sycophants around her (not unlike L. Ron Hubbard). They were not allowed the slightest bit of deviation from her exact opinions, lest they face what amounted to excommunication. She despised authoritarianism and yet her minions held kangaroo courts in her home. She wrote about towering, larger-than-life figures and while her personal life was abusive, petty, and small.
Rand famously defended selfishness (Google John Galt’s speech for a classic expression) and despised altruism. If the gulag is progressive collectivism taken to its extreme but logical conclusion, Rand’s worldview offers a glimpse at individualistic capitalism taken it its nadir. Whatever a moral market economy looks like, it isn’t what Rand offered.
Conclusion
I do not believe the Bible simplistically endorses a particular kind of economic structure. Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, and every pre-modern economy all present unique ethical challenges for followers of Jesus. But if we believe that sin is endemic in the human condition, we would do well to be wary of schemes that claim to create perfect justice. Both the ends and means sought in such a system will be shaped by imperfect, if well-meaning, actors who will be often unaware of their own limitations.
For followers of Jesus in free market systems, we are called to resist the liturgy of the marketplace. We are not merely consumers of goods and services. As Augustine noted, unless our desires are aimed at and shaped by God, they are not inerrant. One of the best gifts the church can give a world shaped by capitalism is a people who desire the right things, produce the right things (like the Shibumi), and live below their means so that their generosity can benefit others.