Devices of the Soul (Hardcover)

Chapter 20. A Taste for Number Magic

It’s one thing to work toward a worthwhile goal, pursuing it in an economically disciplined and profitable fashion. It’s quite another thing to make profit your primary goal and the measure of everything else.

Society’s welfare hangs upon the difference. The difference, moreover, is immediately recognizable in all concrete human contexts where people are actually paying attention to each other. It’s the difference between serving each other’s needs as effectively as possible, and using each other. And yet, the concerted drive of economic theory and commercial practice has been to obliterate the distinction. To succeed in this would be to obliterate ourselves.

It’s a strange and pernicious notion that has been foisted upon Western society by economists: you and I, they tell us, by giving free rein to greed, selfishness, competitive malice, and megalomania, perform a valuable public service. We can spend our days pitting ourselves against the welfare and livelihood of others, and then trust “the market” to transform our venality into a public good.

Nor is this aberration a peculiarity of the ivory tower. When the research director at an investment firm says, “Greed is good” (Business Week 1997b), an aggressive claim lies behind the intentional provocation. It is the claim that the only way to secure social value is to “pursue the numbers,” and if greed happens to be the motive for doing this—well, the numbers will still bless us. Somehow, through ...