It’s true that self-interest in
its place, used well and with the right limits, can be a force in society which
is very powerful for the advancement of the economy, for human innovation, and
for the comforts we enjoy in America today.
Such is the invisible hand doctrine and we can see that it has achieved
some pretty big victories. Everyone
looks out for themselves and everyone benefits.
I think it’s time we
acknowledged, though, that sometimes there are behaviors for which no one pays
a price except everyone, and others from which no one benefits except everyone.
That is, there are plenty of
things you could do that wouldn’t benefit you – that don’t make sense for you –
but which would benefit the world, benefit society. There are plenty of things that wouldn’t harm
you – that make perfect sense for you – but which would cause a cost to
humanity, to society. And in those
circumstances, the invisible hand malfunctions.
The invisible hand guides us powerfully toward those harms and away from
those benefits.
Oh, there is good in people’s
hearts, and when it’s called to our attention, sometimes behaviors that don’t
make economic or individual sense become commonplace anyway. (As long as it’s not too much trouble.) And we have in many cases made laws which
instead of promoting strict capitalism are designed to promote prosperity by,
as it were, pushing the invisible hand back in the right direction. Laws against behaviors where we find
self-interest leads to intolerable inequities.
Tax revenues into things we think help everyone and taxes on things we
think hurt everyone. Etc., etc.
I’ll add that in many cases,
the cure is worse than the disease.
Someone can easily make a law to fix a problem, to give the invisible
hand a shove, and discover that there are unintended consequences which are
worse than the original problem. Hence
long stories about government incompetence and the legend that it really needs
to just leave us alone.
But the invisible hand left
entirely alone is not a magical force for good.
Let’s not forget that. Let’s not
think that everything would be hunky-dory if the government would just let us
engage in the free market with no restrictions whatsoever. And let’s not forget that sometimes we need
to appeal to people’s consciences, to guide them against just their own
self-interest and toward the interests of the whole. Unbridled capitalism could, in a society of
good people, be a fine enough thing. In
a society where if it is legal, if capitalism will allow it to you, and if it
is in your own self-interest, then everyone will declare it to be not merely
legal but good – in that society, unbridled capitalism is death. Literally death for the poorest, for those
who cannot compete. Death for the
crippled, death for the retarded, death for the young children whose parents
cannot support them.
Time to stop being
abstract. Time to give one concrete
example of what the invisible hand has done to our society. Just one.
There are many others I could add, but here’s one.
Advertising.
Imagine your life without
advertisements.
Imagine that if you were
looking for a given product, you could learn the facts about it, but no company
would ever bombard you with emotional appeals about how much your life would be
better if you only had this thing.
Imagine if there were no
billboards. No pop-up ads. No spam.
No telemarketers. No public
landmarks or sports events covered in ugly endorsements. No commercials.
Now, I grant that marketing is
what pays for at least a large percentage of a great many other things we enjoy
in life. For Google, for TV broadcasts,
for so much more.
I also grant that once in a
blue moon, I’ve actually seen an advertisement for a product I genuinely wanted
and wouldn’t otherwise have known existed.
Something that, when I paid for it, I was truly glad I had.
But let me ask you: If you could eradicate all advertisements
from your life, what would you pay for that?
Consider this: Because of self-interest, because the company
wants, needs, for consumers to know about their product, it’s good for them to
distribute the information widely.
Because once in a blue moon, they’ll hit me with something I want and I’ll
pay for it, they’ll continue hitting me with hundreds of things I have no
interest in. As long as they pay less
for a given advertisement than the profit they make off the products sold, they
win.
What’s the key problem
here? They don’t need to pay me for my
time, for the annoyance, for the waste that they caused me. Telemarketing companies don’t need to pay for
the productivity cost, for the destructiveness in family life they cause by
calling at the wrong times, for the stress and the unpleasantness. The only financial cost they have is the cost
of using the phone lines and paying the telemarketers. They don’t pay any cost to the people they
hurt with their activity. Meanwhile,
they have financial rewards from literally everyone they benefit and likely
some people they didn’t benefit. (The
latter would be people whom the product doesn’t really help, at least not more
than whatever competition they were considering, but who were convinced by the
rhetoric, emotional appeals, etc. to buy it anyway.)
I’ve seen and heard a few ads I
was glad for, ads that got me to buy products that I was glad to have, products
that were worth the price. But I would
happily give those products up if by doing so I could have an ad-free life.
That just considers the
annoyance I face. What of the social
harm advertisements do?
Unrealistic expectations of female
beauty. Anorexia. Rape.
Objectivication of women.
Materialism. Greed.
Selfishness. Inability to delay
gratification. Addictions. Lack of discipline. Dissatisfaction. Ingratitude.
What if the advertising
industry had to take responsibility for the women who starved themselves to
death in part because of the things advertisers did to sell products? What price could atone for that? What price could make up for the slow poison of
the constant fostering of the belief that things will make you happy?
If you could eradicate all
advertisements from your life and the lives of all those you come in contact
with, what would that be worth?
I’m not sure what the best
solution is. I’m not sure if there is a
good solution. But I am sure that when
it comes to advertising, the invisible hand is not our friend.
