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A Statue for Liberty – yet Devoted to License?

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Liberty and license, part 2.

Unlimited pursuit of wealth is a nearly unquestioned idea in US economic practices. The sense of license these practices reflect, preferably called “freedom”, relates to frequent detachment from social consequences, or ideas of the common good. The leading neoliberal economist Milton Friedman expressed this bluntly: “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”.*

In social matters such as family and community, the unlimited choice – license — of the individual is likewise extremely visible; the idea of the common good, especially as an idea of comparable importance, is hardly noticeable. We have “liberated ourselves” from such concerns.

Taken together, the economic and “radically individual” areas illustrate, briefly, why so many Americans will not want to discuss liberty and license: if you take the distinction as important, it gets in the way of simply doing whatever you want to do. (And reasons will be found to justify this.)

Still, criticism of the actual results of business practices are heard. The extreme practices of the industrial revolution were soon criticized. The extreme inequalities of global trade are frequently criticized now.

One hears and certainly sees evidence of a degraded family and community life in the US. Ideas such as family duty and basic civility, once prominent and shared, seem to have been largely replaced by ideas like (unlimited) lifestyle choice.

That there is a related philosophical principle involved for both areas is rarely noted. Individuals want to criticize the excesses or license of business, but want maintain their own nearly unlimited “personal” social choices – and might not see the logical problems involved. Corporations are supposed to be, the criticism goes, more socially responsible; but such social concern does not apply to individuals. So we have a seemingly permanent intellectual impasse. The logic of an important common good breaks down if applied so selectively; if applied according to one’s convenience or narrow agenda.

What are the real consequences of my actions? What effects will they have on other people? More philosophically phrased: what are my duties to my fellow citizens? If one takes the concept of the common good seriously: how do my actions relate to my conception of this good?

That such ideas might be considered and followed in private and commercial life – other than for an idealistic few — is clearly somewhat absurd. Yet one tries to maintain an ethically-centered humanistic exchange in the US, despite the obvious fact that very few will listen. The appeal to reason has its own perennial value, always beyond the intellectual fashions and ideologies of a particular time. A small number of people understand this idea.

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* “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”. Milton Friedman. The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970.(https://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html)