More Than Wallets and Guns

Sometimes I make vague, open ended commitments. Our “yes” is to be yes, and our “no” is to be no. But there are times when I’m not sure if it’s yes or no just yet. So, I say something along the lines of, “Perhaps.” This sentiment will go a long way in my political career, I’m sure.

In my earlier post elaborating on the idea of money (which you can find here), what it is, and what it’s not, I hinted at more potential entries about issues related to economics in the unspecified future. Well, one of those unspecified time allotments has arrived. And so, here we are to continue the conversation.

In that earlier entry, I attempted to explain that money is to be understood as a unit of measure for productive labor. It’s not a measure of the time spent working. Rather, money is a measure of the value that the work produced, hence it is called productive labor. That value is determined by the one willing to pay for the work – someone who considers it valuable. This concept is important to always keep in the forefront when evaluating economic policy or listening to the next politician make his vague promises. Large economies can get complicated quickly. But they always boil down to productive labor creating value. The more value created, the more money there is.

So, why, if money is simply a unit to measure the production of value – in other words, productive work – is it at the pinnacle of so many conflicts in this life here under the sun? Why is money intermixed in so many of the problems we face or see exploited in the news? I’d like to purpose an answer that may seem a bit too simplistic at the surface, but which, in fact, I do believe checks a lot of the boxes.

When we say that money measures the value produced, the emphasis in that definition should land on the word value. Productive work creates value, and money quantifies that value. Value is the axel that connects labor to money. It’s only when work is valued enough by somebody willing to pay for it – somebody willing to be a customer – that money is brought into the picture. Placing the emphasis on the work or the money instead of the value removes the axel. Individuals and societies have done that, and continue to do that, and then wonder why the wheels aren’t spinning. When we set aside value creation and emphasize either the labor or the money in a vacuum, the wheels start coming off with everybody pointing fingers at each other.

Here’s the point: when we focus on creating value for the customer, we focus on serving the person assigning value to our work. But serving people, doing good for people, is an immaterial, transcendent phenomenon. Yes, the way we serve people is very practical. But the concept of “goodness” is in itself a transcendent idea. In order for us to be able to love our neighbor and serve our fellow man for his good, we need a connection point beyond the material world to the world above. We need this transcendent reality to even be able to interpret what good means.

The problem is that our culture today is full of materialists denying any kind of transcendence. What we see is all there is. Labor is visible. As is money. And so, the focus becomes how we can exploit one or both of those parts. The more we close our eyes to the transcendent reality upholding our world, the more problems we experience on all fronts, including economic ones.

The society that has materialism as the underpinning worldview propping it up will inevitably destroy itself. It first gets entangled in and then thrashed from side to side between two familiar forces: envy and greed. Materialism says that nothing, but matter exists. There is no transcendence, which means there is no morality. What we interpret as ethics is our brain matter’s material agency seeking our advantage. I’ll resist pointing out the inconsistency of seeking “advantage” in a materialistic world. That’s for philosophers to argue about. We’re a practical bunch around here.

Us practical people (as all people are when it comes to actually living life instead of just talking about it) boil down materialism to stuff. Life is stuff. How can I get more of it and then keep it? If I have more, it’s mine. If you have more, it ought to be mine. Envy and greed are two sides of the same coin. The only difference is if I have the stuff or you do. And so, the battle begins.

A free-market society can’t thrive in that kind of environment, because a free-market will only work when both sides are trying to provide value to the other side and get rewarded in exchange – employer and employee, seller and buyer, customer and vendor. As was already said, the idea of value is an arbitrary abstraction for the materialist. It’s only a reality – sure, a subjective one, but still a reality – in a transcendent world, where value transcends matter. The moral reason for free-market economics is important to understand because of the value-added impact free-markets have on human flourishing.

Karl Marx, the Materialist King, argued that capitalism’s driving force is the exploitation of labor. According to Marx, surplus value, also known as profit, is viable only if labor is underpaid. Those who own the means of production generate wealth by not paying the workers the full value of what they produce. But one of the key ingredients that Marx misses, apart from 2+2=4, is that value is not quantified labor. No. You cannot quantify labor with money unless somebody wants to pay for it. And one will only pay for labor when they believe it provides them with more value than the money they use to trade for it. Only when a person believes the work of the laborer creates something good is when they quantify it by paying a price. And this strange concept of “good” does not exist apart from a transcendent reality – a reality that we are always a part of, whether or not we accept and acknowledge it. That’s why communism has no choice but to be atheistic. As soon as you acknowledge the Lawgiver, you start to think that it matters how you treat others apart from a materialistic exchange, destroying the underlining assumptions of communism. Communism is more a philosophical religion than an economic paradigm. But then again, isn’t everything?

Greed and envy are derivatives of a materialistic view of the world. Because that view is not in line with reality, attempting to mingle with that company leaves us ravished and senseless – destroying and taking for the sake of having. It’s only when we align with reality that we can start having by creating and providing value. A thriving economy where all parties are enriched depends on our alignment with the transcendent truth. But that takes more than wallets and guns.