Submitted by brian on April 4, 2009 - 11:44am.
From my journal last night:
It seems to me that we expect too much of capitalism if we expect it (or any other economic system that might be proposed to replace it) to keep people from being greedy, or to force people to act morally in general. While a given economic system may provide an atmosphere that is more or less conducive than other economic systems for generally moral behavior, a society is not defined solely (or even primarily) by its predominant economic system. There are a whole host of facets to a society; a partial list might include artistic, psychological, spiritual, cultural, etc. facets. Each of these facets could be defined by a principle, philosophy, or system. A healthy society will be composed of and structured by a number of different definitions, each for its associated facet.
We can't expect capitalism to provide the superstructure for general social morality any more than cubism or literary criticism would be fit to tell us how to structure our financial markets.
