On the other hand is the utility aspect of economics, revealed in the critique of Christmas giving as less useful than it could be. Here economics does pass judgment on preferences, preferring those that are useful over useless whims. Here, too, is the connection we expect between economics and learning to be economical and to economize. In this aspect economics is not a means to any end you may think up but itself an end, a way of life--the life of efficiency and frugality. This life is bourgeois, middle-class, and opposed to your wasting your money on whims, as do rich aristocrats.
In the history of economics there is a movement from objective utility to free, subjective preferences, but from the first, economics was divided between utility and liberty. Adam Smith praised the free market as "the system of natural liberty," but he also deplored spending on "trinkets of frivolous utility," which are naturally bought and sold under that system. In The Wealth of Nations he contrasts the waste and vain display of aristocratic hospitality (the ancestor of the free lunch) with the productive, profit-seeking frugality of the commercial class. The fundamental incoherence in economics is that it wants to pinch pennies (utility) but has no reason to stop you if you don't (liberty). That is why economics is always important but never decisive. Economists never say, Listen to me! They always say, Listen to me if you want to know what I have to say.
To justify Christmas giving we need to
look past the hasty confusion of the "consumer," so described by economics, to the soul of the giver and see how it is improved by the virtue of generosity. The benefit of giving is more to the giver than to the receiver--a paradox better known to common sense and the Bible than to economics. For having a generous soul saves one from living in the relentless anxiety of never knowing whether one has enough for oneself. Of course, to be generous one must calculate what one can afford, and one must observe the chosen recipient carefully to see, not merely what he wants, but what good thing he can be induced to enjoy. Thus economics has an honorable role in the service of generosity, a role more useful, hence more economical, than attacking generosity.
And let us not forget the advantage of generosity to liberty. The commonest form of slavery is slavery to money, and generosity is a kind of liberation as well as utility for yourself. A country gentleman generous with his rustic hospitality had a better inkling of that liberation than Adam Smith with all his studied devotion to natural liberty. With the aid of a little feudalism lingering in our democratic, materialist age you can have the two great goods economics wants you to have but does not know how to achieve on its own. You can then crown these goods by taking a reasonable measure of pride for having spent your money well. Instead of damning a commercial society for being materialistic, instead of despising Christmas giving for not being properly materialistic, you can do your part to soften our materialism and make it more intelligent.
Harvey Mansfield is professor of government at Harvard and research fellow in liberty and virtue at the Hoover Institution.
|
