Does Money Taint Everything?

2/18/08

Display Full Article/Printer Friendly | Send to a Friend During Lent, you will hear some version of the following from the pulpit: "This is the season to volunteer in charitable causes, to give back in service to the community, in a labor of love."   One cannot argue with the instruction here, or the sentiment behind it. Lent is indeed a time for giving and for sacrifice. My argument is with the choice of language, which is pervasive all year round. It contains a word and three phrases the common usage of which can be highly misleading.   Let's examine each.     Voluntary   This word "volunteer" is used to describe a person who does things in service of others, and we all know the intent of the term. We speak of volunteering all the time. The U.S. has what is called the voluntary sector, which is supposed to refer mostly to non-profit organizations. But think of the literal meaning of voluntary or volition: the act of making a conscious choice to do something. The opposite is to be forced to do something. So prisoners are forced to sleep on mats; people in the army are forced to march here and there.   It's true that people serving soup to the poor are not forced to be there. But in what sense does introducing wages or profit or money generally change the nature of choice? Are the paid administrators of homeless shelters any less volunteers? Not at all. They are making a conscious choice to serve the poor, just as the unpaid "volunteers" are making a conscious choice to be there. They are all free to do something else.   Let's expand this to the for-profit sector. No one who works in retail or software or any other industry in a free economy is being forced to do anything. They are all there by choice, a result of having evaluated a variety of options and choosing one option over every other possible option (the opportunity foregone here is what might be called the "cost" of that choice).   The doctor who administers medicine, the lawyer who writes a legal brief, the salesman who sells you a suit, the clerk who rings up the total -- these are all volunteers. The investment banker is a volunteer. The introduction of money into exchanges (and all actions, charitable or profitable, are exchanges) doesn't change anything about the nature of the action. It doesn't switch it from voluntary to forced.   This is not merely a terminological dispute. There is an ideological import to the use of the term "voluntary" to describe non-remunerative activities. It evidences a bias against the cash economy, as if monetary exchange and profit is a tainted motive, whereas the removal of money makes an action pure and beyond reproach. This is completely wrong.   It's time we demystify the role of money in society. It serves a useful purpose. Under barter, goods and services are exchanged directly for each other. That works for primitive economies, but once complexity appears, barter has its limits. You can't exchange a cow for an egg or an auto plant for a hat, because these goods aren't divisible. You need money to serve as a proxy for goods and services to exchange later.   Money also serves the vital function of permitting economic calculation, so you can know if exchanges are profitable (non-wasteful and productive) or yield losses (wasteful and non-productive). Thus is the institution of money not inherently corrupt or tainted; it is highly useful and necessary, and arises merely in responses to the desire of people to cooperate.     Give Back to the Community   "Give back to the community" is a phrase used all year to implore people who have been successful in business to donate their time, talent, and treasure to some cause besides their business. There is no arguing with the injunction to serve others, but there is a problem with the phrase "give back." It implies that people with money have taken something from others. But presuming that the businessperson has been successful through enterprise, their wealth comes not from taking but from cooperating with willing buyers.   Let's see how this works: When you need milk in a hurry, you dash to the convenience store and pick up a carton. You put it on the counter and the clerk says what you owe. At that moment, there is a calculation made. The clerk determines that he (or the person who employs him) values $2.50 more than the milk. You, on the other hand, determined that you value the milk more than the $2.50 you have been ask to pay for it. You exchange, and voila -- you are both better off as a result.  Prev - Next >> Page 1 2