Morality And Markets - the WE vs the ME
“Morality is essential to freedom. Lose morality, and eventually, you will lose liberty. ”
— JONATHAN SACKS, MORALITY - RESTORING THE COMMON GOOD IN DIVIDED TIMES 2020
Friends!
It’s been a short and yet a long week. Don’t you think? This strange stretch of life makes time move faster AND slower. Its’ weird. We can’t wait until the election is over, the pandemic is over, and when we can meet and hug our friends again. But yet progress is slow and sometimes moving backwards. Interpreting the news is more challenging than ever. I keep looking really hard for positive signals among all the noise. Some days I come up empty. But all days I can count my blessings. So I return to gratitude as the sanctuary of relief. Whiskey isn’t too bad either! But thankfully there is love, beauty and plenty of adorable grandkids too!
This week I have been reading Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks new book. I have waited for it for months! I have referenced his work in prior blogs. And I am certain to do it again in the future. I believe him to be one of the more influential voices in my own soul. I was fortunate to be given one of his early books (Politics of Hope) in the 1990s and since then I have been deeply inspired by his work. I find his ability to articulate our inner journeys, his way of putting words to our yearning for a better humanity, and the balanced references to both theological and philosophical underpinnings that explain thinking, rituals, customs and beliefs to be of tremendous value. Particularly in a time of such transition and uncertainty as we are living through now. I owe him a great deal. He has helped me make sense of many of my own inner questions.
His latest book cannot be more relevant to us right now. I was lucky to grab a “seat” at a virtual discussion between David Brooks and Jonathan Sacks. As any follower of me knows, this was like getting a first row seat at your dream band playing. My two favorite contemporary thinkers talking. Best hour in a long time! I found David’s first question to Jonathan Sacks to be poignant. “You have written over 30 books. This is your first one titled morality. What took you so long?”
It made me smile. And it made me think. My top two emotions.
The book is making the case for the commons. It basically argues that during the past decades, individualism has trumped allocating our resources to the common good. The two main forces in our lives have been business and politics. Both juxtaposed against each other in a hopeless zero-sum game. Neither true nor effective. But the investments and recognition in the commons haVE somehow been less discussed, appreciated and ultimately understood.
What is the value of a park? What is the value of broad-based high quality public education? What is the value of decency and kindness? What is the value of affordable, available daycare? We are increasingly living inside the Oscar Wilde ethos of; “The cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing".
Markets need all of it to work well. They need a well-educated public as consumers. They need roads, energy, telecommunications, clean air and fresh water. The “me” needs “we” to function well. They are inseparable but in our pursuit of maximizing “me” we have somehow eroded the “we”.
“The reason we cannot outsource morality to the market or the state is that they operate on completely different principles. The simplest way of seeing this is by a thought experiment. Imagine you have $1,000 and you decide to share it with nine others; you are left with a tenth of what you had at the beginning. Imagine you have total power, say a 100 percent share in a company, and then decide to share 90 percent of it among nine others; you have a tenth of the power you had before. Wealth and power operate by division. The more we share, the less we have. Imagine now that you have a certain measure of influence, or friendship, or knowledge, or love, and you decide to share that with nine others: you do not have less. You may have more. That is because these are social goods: goods that exist by sharing. These are goods that have a moral or spiritual dimension, and they have this rare quality that the more we share, the more we have.”
— JONATHAN SACKS IN MORALITY - RESTORING THE COMMON GOOD IN DIVIDED TIMES 2020
My own inspiration for starting this weekly newsletter and blog was a desire to “elevate” our conversation away from this hopeless binary and false choice between collectivism and individualism. I feel the most challenging problem we face as a society right now are NOT the problems themselves (climate, intolerance, inequality, pandemic etc) but rather the “cultural climate change” (to quote Jonathan Sacks) that makes discussing and ultimately acting on the proper solutions impossible. We are stuck in a tug of war between two ideologies that only helps foster division and extremism by force-fitting every single problem or challenge a too narrow of a label.
This, to some extent, is the story of my own life. Growing up in a 1960s-1970s Sweden in an entrepreneurial home, I experienced personally the ideological tension between the left and the right. Between socialism and capitalism. Between individualism and collectivism. If you were for profit you could be for yourself only. And if you were for others you couldn’t or shouldn’t make money. For most of my life I have rejected this simplified political continuum of left and right. It’s time we abandoned that trade-off. 2 things can be true at the same time.
First, capitalism and free markets is by far the best way to create wealth. There is no doubt. We have tried all other forms of systems and they have always led to horrific outcomes anyway you measure them. Second, markets cannot govern themself. Like us, they need a moral framework. The job of politics is to set the rules such that we make sure markets are fair, that they have sufficient competition, that they price collective and necessary assets such as land, water, air, raw materials etc in a way that makes sure we leave the planet in better shape then we found it etc etc. Too much collectivism is bad for competition, innovation and ultimately freedoms. Too much individualism is bad for the fabric of society and ultimately make us all alone.
I think it is very clear to me that the western world needs to redefine and reimagine this continuum. We need to invest more resources in our collective assets. The assets that make ALL of us better, kinder, more human and ultimately happier. But equally we need to recommit to the free market as the “engine” of the system. But use smarter rules (tax “bads“ not goods, incentivize longer investment horizons, put price on air, water, carbon, etc) that pushes innovation, entrepreneurialism and risk capital towards solutions to important challenges we face.
Morality, like responsibility, is a difficult thing to talk about. It is that thing that we all want OTHERS to have more of. But it starts with us. By asking ourselves what kind of context we want our lives to be lived in. They day you witness people bringing home park benches, street light poles etc because they feel it is “theirs” then the idea of society is lost. We need the commons to be as hot of a commodity that it truly is. And we need to elevate, invest and protect the bonds between us as much as we invest in ourselves. Because in the end, it is in the sweet reverberation of togetherness that life is most wonderful.
Below you can listen to a few of my favorite Jonathan Sacks interviews. I would point in particular to the first one where I trimmed a short piece from his interview with Tim Ferriss and where he answers a question on “safe spaces” and “cancel culture”. It’s critical that we help change our public discourse such that we all embrace difference of opinion with more love, decency and constructive attitudes. This is a major reason for why I am writing this and why I hope you are reading this. Rejecting people based on difference of opinion is as bad as rejecting them for any other reason. A free society must be open to all in order to work well.
Here’s to the commons. You, my dear friends, by engaging and reading (and hopefully sharing) the contents of this blog are helping me to connect with a breadth of feelings and thoughts weekly. And for that I salute you, I celebrate you and I thank you!
Really appreciated this interview with B' Lab’s Andrew Kassoy. We do indeed need a Declaration of INTERdependence. President Kennedy gave a speech on the same in 1962. You can watch of here.